Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (223)
September 9, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 145: I had vague notions of going somewhere with the family today, maybe a BART adventure to … I dunno. And with that stellar planning, instead I:
- Finally replaced the older elastic on JB’s school masks. Fresh elastic! Better protection!
- Finally ran that load of laundry I’d been planning to do since Wednesday. After helping me put an extra large load of wash into the washer, Smol Acrobat left the garage saying: dat’s enough for today. I should have taken that as a suggestion.
- Inspected my plants and planted several more snap peas in hopes they will crowd around the one plant that’s set apart from the others and puny in its solitude.
- Discovered that the onions I left in the ground months ago are sprouting new greens, as are the garlic cloves I lazily stuck in the soil and barely covered up. Low effort gardening win!
- PiC was struggling with patching a hole in Smol Acrobat’s bike tire so I started weeding, a thing the kids often like to “help” with, and ended up pulling so many weeds. And yet that wasn’t even half of them. Pah.
Prescription for poor judgement/overly ambitious chore tackling: Acetaminophen AND ibuprofen, hot shower, heating pad, a ton of water and a liedown.
Year 5, Day 146: I’m so sore today.
Our Vogmasks arrived! Finally. Happily, everyone’s sizes were correct so I may buy a full set to leave in the car. Inevitably someone will forget their mask at a bad time: they’re all in the wash or the backups are in the other backpack or bag, whatever. We carry them with us almost all the time, it’s that 1-2% of the time when you’re in a rush and didn’t realize you’d set your mask down for a minute and didn’t pick it up again.
JB wanted to beg off self defense today, offering to trade much house cleaning if they were allowed to skip. I really wanted to skip too but they’d missed last week already, plus a bunch over the summer, so I had to put my foot down for both of us. They were disappointed but didn’t complain. I had to lug work along and keep on working there, annoyingly, but still ended my workday at 10 pm. Grumble.
I took a break to make a big batch of spaghetti carbonara for dinner. This was appreciated by everyone but Smol Acrobat who complained: I wike de bacon and de gween beans but I don’t wike da pasta.
I knew they would be the objector but not to what, exactly. It might be the pasta shape. They’re used to ravioli and tortellini and lasagna, I can’t remember the last time we had a long pasta.
Year 5, Day 147: I don’t use TikTok but by golly are there so many cautionary tales about not being such a ???? that you believe everything influencers say to do. The latest is particularly relevant to this blog: “a viral glitch” to deposit a bad check and withdraw cash from that bad check when the bank makes it available immediately. That’s both fraud (knowingly depositing a bad check) and all kinds of setting yourself up for disaster. Have these people never been hit with an overdraft charge? Have they never seen how a single charge, if you don’t have that $30+ plus the money you overdrafted by, snowballs into months and years of financial chaos? It gives me hives just thinking about accidental overdrafts over the years that happened because my checking account was still a delicate ecosystem where being even two pennies off, or having two checks cashed in the wrong order, would set off an overdraft and chain reaction of panic as other bills came due and were processed. Luckily for me, I monitored that stuff obsessively and tweaked my system until I’d built up enough of a cushion that it could withstand any transaction going through in any order. But to be doing this on purpose with money you don’t have?? Noooooo!
Year 5, Day 148: Chatting with my sister about the kids and my fears and things, these things about Curran suddenly resonated so strongly. He built the Pack so his future family would be protected. I’ve worked so hard to build connections outside my bio family to provide my kids with chosen family they can rely on, unlike the bio family that I couldn’t.
He absolutely believed that Mahon would have kicked him out if he hadn’t taken care of the Rampaging Bear situation. My belief in the inevitability of abandonment by all trusted adults is just about ironclad. Still working on it. Chipping away bit by bit.
Also, the aswang from Grimm! Talk about the abusive sort of family obligation traditions.
Musing on bodies: What a terrible idea. The constant need for cleaning, and eating (multiple times a day!), flossing and brushing, dressing and undressing. It’s just maintenance maintenance maintenance. And that’s before taking into account illnesses or allergies or any deviation from a healthy state.
PTA meeting tonight – I forgot about it three times today. And just like that, our October calendar has filled up. Conference week, another PTA meeting, the fall carnival, a birthday party, a second attempt at SDCC registration.
Year 5, Day 149: I’ve been having vivid involved dreams again, not necessarily nightmares but alternate reality types of things. I usually wake up still half in that reality so I remember them pretty clearly, but they are weird.
I feel absurd for even thinking this but I was doing more research on native to CA flowers that aren’t toxic to animals (and people of course) and hopefully perennials. I planted poppies this year since we are currently without dog but that was unsuccessful anyway. I found baby blue eyes and am contemplating splurging on a ridiculous number of seeds (using a gift card!) in hopes they will be easy to grow and will produce the “field full of flowers” impression I’d like to have. $16 on more flower seeds that may come to nothing??
$16 on seeds may not produce physical flowers – but it might! And in the meantime it keeps you entertained looking for the. Seems worthy to me.
Yes, our bodies are a silly maintenance project – but have you looked at cats? all that hair and only their tongue to clean it??? I think we definitely are an upgrade from that situation – never mind the thumbs thing.
I keep waffling so I put them on my wish list for the moment. Maybe I’ll wish list some seeds for Christmas since I can never think of anything I want for our one friend to gift.
Okay, you make a really good point. We are very poorly designed but no fur at least. But they do get the compensatory claws and leaping ability! What do we get?? Thumbs, I suppose.