Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (177)
October 23, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 206: I wrote to all our CongressCritters today to reject KOSA and genocide, and to ask them to support trans people and codifying access to abortion. The world is horrible and we’ve got to do what we can. A friend recommended the Jewish Voice for Peace site and 5 calls was also helpful.
I used to expect the holidays (and stresses) to begin in November but it’s sinking in that it really all starts in October. Harvest, Fall and/or Halloween events, pumpkin carving parties hosted by friends, pumpkin carving or decorating contests. Our weekends are triple stacked this month. Then it’s birthdays and Thanksgiving (which of course I have complicated by fundraising for the Pine Ridge reservation and I’m worried that we won’t be able to do much this year but I’d like to try). Before you know it, you’ve got to be ready for the end of the year.
This reminds me that I haven’t wrapped the gifts we’ve already purchased. Wrapping them would make me feel a little better.
Good thing: Smol Acrobat slept through the night last night! First time in 6? weeks? Have we ever strung together more than two full nights in a row? Not for a very long time.
Bad thing: They got stuck in Terrible 2s mode several times so we had to take two timeouts before dinner. That seemed excessive but ultimately helped. They had time/space to work through the explosive feelings. When they started acting out at dinner, asking if they needed another timeout got them out of the broken record cycle. They weren’t punitive timeouts, I sat nearby until the feelings petered out, it just removed the audience for the tantrum and the temptation for JB to third-parent which sets off the cycle all over again.
Year 4, Day 207: Yesterday I started the day at about a 1 out of 10 in energy. Today’s almost as bad but not quite. Let’s call this a 3. The morning walks weren’t as taxing today. Sometimes I forget, on the really bad days, that it can get a little better so this is my reminder that it can.
Reminding myself that, much like Sera š¶ needed 2.5 days to recover from Saturday’s dinner and playdate, my own body needs at least a week to recover from last week’s jam-packed schedule. I wouldn’t let myself off the hook for JB’s class this afternoon, despite my overwhelming urge to crawl into a blanket nest and shut the world out. It might be silly to think that skipping one class will lead to a rash of skipped classes but that’s where the whole “If you give a mouse a cookie” syndrome kicks in. Let me skip one, I’ll try to skip them all.
Also *whispering* two! Two nights Smol has slept through the night! TWO.
Year 4, Day 208: Huh, JB took the warnings about consequences if they keep making us drag them out of bed on school mornings to heart. They were up and dressed and making continental breakfast by the time I dragged myself out of bed. (With a literal pain in the neck, several vertebrae are deeply painful today.) Can this last? WE SHALL SEE.
The weather shifted abruptly from grey and foggy to Far Too Warm today, can’t tell if this correlates to the ache or not.
In any case, the sweet potato slips experiment is coming along nicely! Yesterday we spotted tiny rootlets on all three of the sprouts. They’re tiny (both the sprouts and the rootlets), so I had worried they’d be non-viable. Hopefully we’ll be ready to plant them this or next weekend. Our weather is all over the place, so maybe it’s best to give the roots more time to grow before challenging them to the Great Outdoors.
I do wonder why it seems like the green onions grow much more slowly in soil than in water. They shot up an inch or two every day submerged in water. Now, in the soil, they’re creeping much more slower.
Year 4, Day 209: This day is using up all my can, possibly even all my rolling with the punches. PiC’s morning meeting ran long so I had to mind Smol Acrobat during my early work hour. We spent it outside dumping potting soil in the containers. They enjoyed mushing up the dirt clods. Then they decided to dig for potatoes in the fresh soil. Applying the transitive property, their logic was something like: If that bag has dirt and potatoes in it, then this bag that now has dirt must also have potatoes in it! The green onions have a white fuzz on the top of the potting soil. Oops, overwatered. Scraped away the mold and set them out in the sun to bake up a bit since we’re having a heat spike today.
After just 20 minutes of frantically working to clear the work decks, I get a call. PiC’s bike blew a flat tire and they were walking the rest of the way to daycare. *deep sigh* That’s another hour lost.
“There’s stuff I don’t wanna miss, and I’m afraid I’m gonna because I already promised too much of myself to too many people.”
That’s a hell of a line to hear when I’m feeling the latter part pretty keenly in my own way.
Year 4, Day 210: Crawling into this Friday. My neck has been sore most of the week, always vastly more tiring than I remember between bouts. Luckily I managed to score an appointment with the massage therapist because she had a cancellation this week. I was a bundle of stress about the work I wasn’t getting done in that time beforehand but so glad that I didn’t talk myself out of it. My list of things to do for work and for home feels endless: get Home Depot to refund my money for the item they still haven’t delivered from a month ago, update the Chewy order for Sera’s š¶ meds and treats, pay our twice-yearly tax bill, make a list of things we need (to shop the Black Friday sales), set aside cash and checks for the school fundraiser fair, schedule next year’s eye appointments for earlier in the year so I don’t spend my fall ferrying people to and from the eye doc.
Water roots are faster due to the lack of both resistance and nutrients! Also not that you asked but knockoff osmocote is great for vegetable gardens and, when worked into the soil a little, doesn’t cause runoff contamination!
Oh, DUH! LOL I was marvelling at the roots in the water the whole time and never once thinking oh, these are like that because there’s no resistance.
Oh gosh I don’t know what brand fertilizer I bought but it wasn’t osmocote. I hope that it’s still ok and that their being in containers will limit runoff š¤š¤
I just like slow release fertilizer because I am lazy! Sure it’s fine in containers!
Definitely my mode as a gardener too, so I will look out for that next shopping run. Thanks for mentioning it, I didn’t know that there was slow release fertilizer!
And I also think I read your musing wrong. Indoor plants also tend to get tall and twiggy because they’re looking for more light than they can get! Kinda spindly.
Nope, you read it both ways correctly! š
Definitely spindly compared to the much slower but also much studier growth of the onions rooted in soil. I’m so impatient of course, I keep telling them to grow faster in the soil. They don’t listen.