Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (311)
May 18, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 15: I wanted to try this roasted cauliflower recipe from Smitten Kitchen but we only had florets and no pumpkin seeds, so I accidentally overroasted the cut florets instead. Whoops. SmolAc claimed to love it, though, so we’ll try again tomorrow with a much shorter bake time.
It was a real mental slog today with the layoff-with-no-information still plaguing everyone. We still need the necessary information to make decisions, like say, LAST DAYS, and we’re *shocker* being strung along. Still. I had a medium chat of commiseration with my colleague who feels as despondent as I do today. They responded to my feelings of failure using my own words from last week which, ok, fine, fair play. We did the best that we could with the information that we had. For all that I regret not foreseeing this exact outcome on this timeline, my therapist reminds me that this is very consistent with all the reasons that I hated the new parent company coming into our lives in the first place. They’re callous, inefficient, incompetent, and entirely about money and power. I hated that at the start of my career, I hate it now at the end of this part of my career. I might be done with this industry. I’m good at my job but I’m terrible at the politics and you can’t survive in senior to executive leadership with my attitude towards politics (deep sincere loathing). I’m worse at tolerating incompetence, and it’s quite clear that that is the only way to thrive in this corporation and probably most others.
Year 7, Day 16: I’m less tired than yesterday but then burned some of that precious recovery going to my annual eye exam. I HATE eye exams. I always feel like I’m failing and this time, the results for the only test that I’m “good” at (the peripheral vision) were bad. The doc thinks that it was due to fogging in the visor thingie. We skipped the eye dilation in favor of the horribly blinding bright flash photos to view the optic nerves; that always makes me feel sick. The nausea wasn’t as strong as usual but it did leave me off kilter enough that, on my way home, I misjudged the distance to the curb and bounced off it a little bit. I almost panicked at the impact but managed to get myself into a parking spot safely. The rubber of the tire is a little chipped but I think it’s ok? I hope it is.
My mood isn’t good but the heaviness of yesterday eased up enough for me to do a handful of to-do items and that helps my mood immensely, generally. Submitted a praise nomination for an award for the compassionate nurse from last week. Submitted a change in camp schedule for JB. Submitted a request for a replacement debit card for PiC. Stopped by the bank and deposited cash from PiC’s recent sales.
Year 7, Day 17: I rescheduled one of JB’s camps for August to get around a schedule conflict. I hate how public school doesn’t just give us the whole year of scheduling in one go when most of these things that they give us so little notice for was set in stone for months! That’s going to cost a $25 cancellation fee which feels much less negligible then it used to feel. This reminds me I need to do an estimate of what camps that both kids might attend next summer to estimate what we should contribute to the 2027 FSA – best case scenario planning (assuming PiC still has his job in 2027) to go with my worst case scenario planning. I contain multitudes.
I’ve gone through our election ballot and selected most of our candidates for most position. I’m stewing over the governorship – why do we have SIXTY ONE candidates?? Argh. This is how we end up with a pair of Republicans in the general election! GRR.
Year 7, Day 18: A friend shared this cool site: https://reciprocard.com. You can check to see if you have reciprocal privileges at another library!
I spent 15 minutes looking at high-level job listings and have concluded I hate them all. I want to be independently wealthy, volunteer, and give my time and money to help people and animals.
MakeItSoPicard.gif.
We toured the middle school and the tour was led by sixth and seventh graders which was moderately annoying. We also didn’t get sufficient information on electives selection which I didn’t realize til long after we got home. SmolAc loved it because they snacked their way through the whole thing.
Year 7, Day 19: I’m feeling a lot like Stephen Colbert about my Schrodinger’s layoff: There are more important things in the worlds. I’m mostly concerned for my staff (and my financial future). I have no interest in litigating it at all. My colleagues/staff are all taking it really hard, and my primary job is to support them. Maybe I’m just numb (my instinctive coping mechanism), or being reasonably financially stable in a time of crisis for once (novel!), or because I’ve been through one of these already and they haven’t, or I know there’s simply no point in demanding to know why a corporation bought a perfectly good company only to strip it for parts. This happens all the time. Red Lobster. Party City. A hundred other companies I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Private equity is of the devil and so is “line go up” corporate business management. It’s all the same: they only care about extracting value and kicking the husk into the corner.
I’ve always been at least a little fatalistic about the world and corporations specifically, so really, after I absorbed how quickly this went down, I also have no desire to prolong the pain by worrying over how and why they can be so terrible. Because they have continued to be awful, of course. My laser focus is on getting my staff taken care of and making sure they pay me every penny that they owe me before I get the hell out.
I give myself a little job hunting time every day, and a little do whatever the heck I want on my chore/to do list every day. I’ll start to volunteer at the local rescue soon because they have remote volunteering options!, to give myself a little joy in my life, to try to offset the weirdness of being unemployed when that final day comes. I also need to think of what to send each of my staff to personally thank them for their time and efforts since they started, for the last day. My old bosses sucked – they couldn’t even be bothered to take a minute to say goodbye to me when I left my last job to come work again for my Good Boss, I won’t have that last day go unremarked for my people no matter how this ship went down.