Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (183)
December 4, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 244: I’ve spent all year preparing for the end of the year: clearing holiday shopping ahead of time, getting (almost) all the check ups done before December, etc. Now that it’s upon us, I’m flabbergasted. How did it get to be December?? SMH. Also, we’re back to the grind of just the two of us trying to do ALL THE THINGS. We had a very lovely reprieve, it was rejuvenating even though I was short on sleep the whole week. I forget how much feeling supported offsets feeling tired. Under the “but no thank you” heading, Smol Acrobat is sick AGAIN. I bought them
On Bluesky, @vikrambath.bsky.social skeeted: “Very normal college admissions process we’ve got here in the United States of America” with a screenshot of an article: “Esther’s academics weren’t “stellar”, Kim said – only a 4.3 GPA 1520 SAT and nine AP courses. But in her personal statement, she wrote about her mother’s fight with breast cancer. And she was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania. “That was her trump card. It was a unique situation that she overcame,” Kim said. “To be frank, she got really lucky.”
My good friends back in the day were accepted to Berkeley, UPenn, Cornell, Columbia. I never once thought about their application process back then but these little snippets into college admissions processes today are at least a little unnerving. I wonder how much of that is limited to the colleges I’d never have tried for and wouldn’t expect my kids to try for, and how much of this has spread across the board to more … normal? run of the mill? standard? colleges. I don’t know what to call them exactly, but the ones that are in our pay grade.
(Whispers so I don’t jinx it: Smol Acrobat fed themselves eggs this morning and salad at dinner! With their own hands!! The way they eat their pizza is a complete travesty but I’ll take it!)
Year 4, Day 245: What a day. Half the night was spent soothing a cranky toddler. Half the day was spent doing line management stuff that I hate but is very necessary to support staff. Then I worked through the worst part of the Thanksgiving backlog and the pile of correspondence that demanded answers: bills, charity soliciting, junk mail (contacting the various places to stop mailing us), birthday invitations.
Then we got a notification that a toddler classmate had lice. The toddler’s parent was good enough to message all of us parents separately to give us the detailed rundown on what really happened and how they addressed it, thankfully they caught it early, but apparently the report triggered a wave of staff swooping into the classroom to bag up all clothes and bedding, leaving a horde of zombie toddlers who couldn’t nap without their bedding. Personally I think they should have let the kids sleep first and then take it away but I could be wrong about that. Turns out, from the other parents, chiming in, lice is sweeping through daycares and school classrooms all over. Ugh.
So much shopping the past three days. Half my must-get list went unaddressed, though, the sales weren’t much good for a lot of things. We picked up large ticket items (a new e-bike, a power station for power outages) and a handful of household supplies (dishwasher tabs! laundry detergent! lotion!).
(Excited whisper: Smol ate their own mini tacos for dinner! I didn’t have to feed them! Two days in a row!)
Year 4, Day 246: Smol Acrobat is having the kind of morning where if I’m not hugging them or they’re not hugging my hand or holding my legs, they’re sobbing in despair and this doesn’t work for me. This especially doesn’t work for me when they wake up at 2 am shrieking for me and won’t settle for PiC, only me. Le sigh.
When it feels like I’ve shopped too much, even with planned spending, I wonder which holes in my life that shopping is meant to fill. Other days (today) you really need new cleaning gloves, bucket, and scrub brushes to properly tackle the grubby tile that, for the first time since COVID started, you suddenly care is yucky. Suddenly I really really needed to scrub it to about 80% clean. 20% is that corner I skipped because I finally heard my muscles hollering. Next week, when I wonder why my back is still hurting, feel free to remind me that I have only my brain and its random burst of “MUST CLEAN” to blame. It’s deeply unfair that our brains can go rogue like this.
After three loads of laundry and combing through Smol’s scalp with a lice comb and flashlight, we might be in the clear for the lice infestation.
Kissinger is gone! GOOD RIDDANCE. May his name be erased.
(Smol Acrobat was INCREDIBLY whiny about it at first, but they managed to eat their whole TWO green beans under their own steam. They enthusiastically ate their cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving and pasta.)
Year 4, Day 247: Our credit card bill this month will be truly epic considering we didn’t replace a major appliance or have any home renovation.
Also epic: the number of tantrums and meltdowns Smol Acrobat has had every morning this week. It seems like the price that’s levied for all the cognitive leaps we’re seeing in independence: eating breakfast, putting on socks and shoes, eating dinner without being fed long may that last, a major increase in language (like “I will deal wif it, Mommy!).
The crows passed through with a visit! I put down treats and they did that funny sideways hopping thing to fetch them before flapping away.
Year 4, Day 248: Usually I’m TGIF by mid afternoon but not today. Far too much stuff on my to do list. Laundry, running the vacuum, clearing the breakfast dishes, paying bills because I blinked and it’s December 1st?? Wondering why the Target Red Card only lets you make one payment per day and two per week, it’s ridiculous. Clearing up the accounting for the two Lakota November families we purchased for to make sure all the dollars and cents line up. Do a ton of work, answer a lot of questions, cover for a sick employee. Realize that I’m sick myself: that’s an earache and sore throat I’m feeling. Ugh. No one has time for this. Receive half the packages I ordered last week, unpack them and put the supplies away, break down all those boxes and get them into recycling before we’re overwhelmed by boxes.
Receive and process an e-check from the sneakers recycling program, apparently the shoes we considered unsalvageable were still worth a few dollars: +$4.00.
Call the local kid place to see if we can host a small gathering there in January. I hate calls but the dude was nice and answered most of my questions.
Whipped out the sewing machine to hem JB’s outfit for their thing tomorrow.
Plan to shove all the gifts into their gift bags that arrived today (early! yay!) so that’s one less thing on my mind – that might have to wait until Sunday. (Correction, done today! Just need to add gift tags and maybe a few books, too.) Fuss that I haven’t mailed out the gifts for the niblings who get gifts in the mail yet – I will manage that on Sunday. Other things to chew on between now and then: Smol Acrobat is attending their first birthday party tomorrow. They’ve been invited to two so far, but we couldn’t make the first one. By the time JB was 3, they had already attended a dozen birthday parties, so it’ll be interesting to see how Smol Acrobat takes to it. I need a gift appropriate for a 3 year old now. Ideas welcome! I also need to figure out JB’s birthday party for next year: planning, booking something or other, party favors if we do a real party?
We have a very early sport competition for JB tomorrow, I have to get good rest before it. This is their first one and they’re quite nervous. I’ve been nervous, too.
To be fair, the mom with breast cancer thing probably isn’t the trump card that article suggests it is. She has decent academics and most likely also has extra-curriculars. The actual writing and her SES probably also matter for Penn. The UCs are amazing and a lot of the Cal States have gotten way higher in the rankings since you were in college.
Lice is the worst. Sadly, this will probably not be your last experience with it. Kids, man.
You have a lot on your plate! Hope you feel better soon!
No, I didn’t think it was the trump card they think it is either. But I thought it was really sad that that’s the lens they’re viewing admissions through. Sad and kind of yucky.
Lice are so gross. They are one of my top three creepy crawlies that I can’t stand the thought of.
Medication is finally helping! But sure would be nice to have an immune system doing this work. PiC is unfazed by all the germs and I’m a little envious. I’d like some of that.
College stuff is weird. I graduated in the 80s, and like with many things in my life, my parents were utterly casual and disengaged about it (the Gen X motto). My dad was a university dean, so he knew something about college admissions. I don’t remember friends being any more obsessed. It was a different time, obviously, but it means that I look at current behavior and feel like an alien.
One child chose not to attend college after high school, was very successful in a niche art thing, is now doing community college online. Completing the AA will give them automatic transfer to our state’s flagship public university, where they have already connected with the relevant art department and are planning an arts administration kind of thing. This child had average high school grades and never took ACT/SAT. My entire involvement in this process has been to nag them to document their artistic activities and the auxiliary ones, like negotiating contracts. This got lots of eye rolls, but was what excited the arts faculty, so I feel I was useful.
The other child is a senior in high school. They attend a public school with a college prep focus, but I picked it for other reasons. They had a dedicated class every semester where they did interest inventories, researched colleges, wrote practice admissions essays, etc. Their advisor discussed courses and appropriate extracurricular activities. These haven’t been crazy – track team, a service club, some ad hoc committees. They have been accepted at a wide range of schools, and I’m currently white knuckling the FAFSA. The older one is an independent adult, so this is my first experience of that joy. Again, my involvement has been a kind of benevolent observation.
Friends have been hyper involved in their children’s college admissions for years, shlepping them to classes, going on trips, borrowing money for private school tuition. One told me she was worried that my kids wouldn’t be successful, and I’ve gotten a lot of shade for “educational neglect.” They are younger than I, so maybe it’s a generational thing? I don’t know, I guess I think there are lots of ways to be happy and successful. Their lives will go different ways depending on their college, but different doesn’t always mean better.
You’re right, different isn’t necessarily better or worse.
Yikes, educational neglect?? That’s over the top. You’ve taken care of them in a presumably healthy way and aren’t hyper involved or helicoptering. That’s more interest or involvement than my parents ever had in my education, and it sounds like they’re doing great! I hope to have about your level of involvement, give or take some.
Some of our good friends are doing more with their older kid who is enjoying a wider swath of activities because he’s an only child and they have the energy to do it.
I’d like to have more energy to let JB do more of what they want in addition to what we think is important (for survival), but until that magically happens, this is the best it’s going to be.
Ugh, crazy CC bill here also (a big chunk for summer school holiday programmes/care)
Lice seem to be going around here, hoping we can dodge!
Other things we’ve also avoided… ear infections to date?! Weird.
Hand food mouth circulated for a while, too. Yuck!!
Best of luck dodging the germs and the bugs 🤞🤞