Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (205)
May 6, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 33: My first morning of a work week without Sera. We didn’t start the day with our morning walk. No one’s watching me water the plants or waiting for me to come back inside after watering plants, or pretending she can’t hear me telling her to come back inside because the sun and wind is too nice.
It’s miserably lonely without her. I went through all the usual motions but it all feels hollow. Even the garden doesn’t spark a bit of anything.
I impulse shopped for this pile of seeds a month ago looking forward to planting them with Sera for company, probably trying to hold off the impending with hope for growing things. They took so damn long to ship and be delivered, 3 weeks, that they arrived after she was gone. Now it feels silly and bleak. I got some seeds into the ground anyway but. Well. There was no joy in it. Maybe they’ll grow and surprise me. Maybe by the time they grow, I’ll have healed enough to appreciate them.
JB and I both came down with the virus that had been plaguing Smol Acrobat and PiC a few days ago. This probably could have been avoided by breaking out my antivirals on the weekend but I was so overwhelmed I forgot. Now, we muddle through.
Year 5, Day 34: CA state testing starts today for JB but they woke up extra early (for once š¤¦š»āāļø) with a fever so we sent them back to bed. This was our first go at it so we didn’t know what if make up tests are offered. We had to contact the school to confirm we’d keep JB home and they could make it up later.
I popped my painkillers, and set to shoveling out the piles and piles of work that have stacked up for as long as I could before taking to my bed.
As much as I hate Sera’s absence, I can’t deny that having one fewer caretaking schedule let me get a little rest today. Maybe I’ll even get some rest tomorrow. Who knows.
PiC and I were up far too late tracking down pricing for some possible summer plans. I regret that whole thing. It really could have waited until I wasn’t sick.
There are peaceful protests on university campuses across the nations and the inhumane responses of the administration on those campuses, Columbia and UT Austin are the two I saw reporting and videos from, with the NYPD causing far more property damage than anyone else did and Austin police teargassing students, are brutal and a sickening parallel to the genocide in Gaza. The Palestinians just want to live, but they’re all being collectively decimated for the actions of the few in Hamas. These students are peacefully asking their universities to divest their investments in Israel because of the genocide, and the administrations are sending violent out-of-control armed police forces to terrorize them. The media is also resoundingly ignoring how many of those protestors are Jewish themselves because they don’t want this genocide, or the profit off genocide, in their names. The protestors are being branded as antisemitic when many are Jewish. It’s an awful and strategic erasure. This entire everything is utterly infuriating.
Year 5, Day 35: Turns out Smol Acrobat still wasn’t as over this bug as I thought. They woke up at 3 am in extreme emotional distress, right after PiC had just finally fallen asleep so I was up to the plate, that usually happens when they’re still feeling down from a bug. I’m just grateful they hadn’t spiked a high fever again. They calmed down faster than expected only to coherently ask “Can I sleep wif you?” Uhhhh that means zero sleep for me soooo…. how about I sleep here with you…. that worked well enough that I was able to escape by 4 am. I’m really feeling the broken sleep today, I feel more sick today than I did when this first started.
’twas also another day of lining up little medicine cups and pouring a series of medicine shots for the kids. JB’s fever is nearly broken and their energy is at least double mine but they still can’t go back to school until tomorrow. I assigned a series of light chores that they could intersperse with sick time activities like playing games, reading ebooks on Libby, and reading stacks of books from their shelf. Myself, I was assigned a stack of not-so-light work. I did my best.
I got a VERY last minute notification of a memorial service for a former teacher’s spouse. Unfortunately, while I would have thrown on something to be presentable and run out to get there, I just couldn’t. By that point I was already working in bed because sitting up was too tiring. I felt terrible but getting the “viewing is at 10-12” at 11 am was really terribly last minute. I’ve been meaning to check on that former teacher, I know she’s lonely from mutual friends but I’ve been so swamped and now sick. I haven’t had anything left with which to extend an offer of support. Sigh. I hate having limitations. I hate being human (emphasis: derisive).
But I’ve got to survive, first. Here we are.
Year 5, Day 36: Busy morning. School drop off, answered a bunch of questions for work before a work call, then an hour on the phone with the lawyer to walk through our trust changes, rescheduled my eye exam which currently conflicts with a school thing for JB, and then picked up an outfit for them I’d ordered. By the time I got back to my desk and got any amount of work done, school pick up time! Whoof.
I just realized I missed free shipping on Bookshop for Indie Bookstore weekend. Drat. I had intended to buy all the niblings their books for Christmas on that weekend. Now I need to start a running list of books to buy as gifts so I don’t miss another free shipping weekend.
I stayed up really late working to clear the decks because I have an appointment in the morning. Told myself it’d be one hour but I went over and could feel the moment that I went too long. After mostly managing to feel almost-ok all day, all my symptoms came roaring back and then some. Welcome to the congested head cold phase of this virus. Should have pushed off sooner.
One thing checked off my list: huge thanks to Music for warning me off eShakti. I went with Nordstrom since they have reasonable quality and a generous return policy for the ones that don’t fit. I tried on so many and found 3 dresses that fit comfortably enough for this summer’s events. My two Elhoffer dresses are at my sister’s for alterations and in the meantime, my body shape hasn’t felt comfortable in anything lately. It was worrying me that maybe we’d show up at the event and they still wouldn’t fit right after alterations and then what would I wear?? So now I have backups.
Year 5, Day 37: Between dropping off Smol Acrobat and an appointment at JB’s school, I’ve peopled entirely too much for one day, and my immune system went spiralling down the drain. It was all I could do to get through the critical work and drag myself to bed for a rest.
The one bright spot of the week: this is the first day that looking at my plants, white blossoms on the berry bush, loads of potato leaves coming up, made me feel a touch of joy since Sera’s š¶ passing. The kids helped me get the cucumber seeds into the ground on the weekend, and I tucked the lettuce and bush bean seeds into the soil on my own. š¤ for a real harvest in about 2 months.
That’s a good perspective on your seeds – hoping that by the time they are poking their heads up, you’ll be able to feel some joy, and it sounds like maybe that’s already feeling a little possible.
eeek about eshakti – that’s really too bad, but the comments on that post are pretty clear that the company is a mess.
I know I’m not healed yet but I think there’s a little bit around the edges that’s getting to be less painful. Maybe the plants will help that more as they grow (fingers crossed).