By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (320)

July 20, 2026

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 7, Day 76: Microburst cleaning: I bought a bulk pack of customizable compartment bead organizers and used one of them to organize my desk supplies. I’ve been using an old desk drawer organizer to hold odds and ends: binder clips, paper clips, rulers, calculator, staplers, tape measures, post it notepads, etc for the past 15 years but it’s very inefficient because it sits on a medium height shelf and I can’t see into it. Mostly I grabbed things by feel and memory.

This was a terrible way to inadvertently encourage detritus build-up, and a really ineffective use of vertical space. All the small items fit into two closed boxes after I extracted small supplies from another medium bin and organized them together. That emptied 90% of the tray and freed up 1/3 of the medium bin. The remaining larger items were rehomed into the free space in the medium bin, and voila! Neatness! This freed up some shelf space with better accessibility. It’d be even better if I could have it set up as a mini shelving system so they’re not sitting atop each other and could be pulled out but this is good for now.

I might tackle the kids’ Legos with the remaining boxes. I got into the beads briefly on the weekend but it turns out while JB has a vast variety of beads, they aren’t in the quantities I’d thought. They have wide variety but not deep supplies. We’ll need pivot to more shallow boxes. It’s possible we didn’t need all 8 of these deep storage bins but we’ll see.

Year 7, Day 77: Sticker shock at the produce shop we used to frequent: Corn on the cob was TWO DOLLARS AN EAR. Nectarines were $4 per pound. Asparagus was $6 per pound. If we didn’t need to bring produce to our friends’ BBQ, I would have fled empty-handed.

Five of my colleagues are gone now with another 15 of us scheduled to go in a bit over a month. I continue to harbor both deep resentment along with that weird layer of relief, but the bitter is stronger right now.

Year 7, Day 78: The ten bags and giant box of cousin hand me downs and community donations are sorted! I plopped on a stool and went through everything quick as I could, picking out a few things to keep, discarding anything that wasn’t good enough to share, and packing everything else. Four out of five pairs of sneakers went to recycling, one pair is in good shape. A stack of what might have been cloth napkins are quite yellowed, I might try to wash them before donating instead of sending to fabric recycling.

I kept a stack of undershirts for JB; a couple books in perfect condition; a set of heavy duty kids cups in rainbow colors which deeply pleased SmolAc – they hand washed them immediately. I kept a small crossbody bag with so many zippers to test. It seemed much too small at first glance but in the trial run so far it’s been quite nice to have all the separate pockets for keys, phones, wallets, masks and more for a quick outing like a dropoff and return home. If I keep this, I need to cover up the weird logo on the front. A cute nerdy patch would do the trick. I also kept a pair of squishy house slippers. The terrycloth doesn’t feel pleasant, but they’re free and squishy so good enough!

What’s left for donation fills two enormous boxes. I would fit in them comfortably with room for a kid to squish in with me. And I’m not tiny like I once was! Lots of clothes in good condition that have just been sitting closets, backpacks with plenty of wear left in them, that sort of thing. Once I do a sweep of our kids’ outgrown clothes to add, two more ~ 40 lb boxes will head to the reservation. That’ll make 7 moving boxes this year woo!

Year 7, Day 79: I just got the paper bill in the mail for a procedure a few months back. Delta Dental won’t cover part of the procedure so I thought we’d owe another $600 but they wrote off more than half of the remaining balance as a courtesy (proactively even, this is the first bill I’ve seen since getting the denial letter) so that trimmed it down to $200 we have to pay now. Whew, I appreciate that!

All phone calls this morning trying to get my CalABLE account problems squared away and to get Kaiser scheduling settled. Three hours of attempted phone calls (they kept saying we’re too busy, call later) or waiting on hold whisked away the last of my energy and I put myself to bed for a few hours of much-needed rest.

Year 7, Day 80: It’s July so of course the weather is All Gloomy. It’s so foggy that it feels like a light misting rain. I suspect this means the green beans I tried to start outside are not coming out of their shells. Maybe I need to bring them in to attempt inside germination.

I think my cleaning energy ran out for the week. I’m feeling deflated and depressed (not necessarily in the clinical sense, more in the metaphysical sense of feeling soul-crushed) and ever so tired.