By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (45)

April 12, 2021

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 22: The good thing about today was PiC was free of any meetings and I was able to give him the morning to work kid-free.

The bad thing was it felt like three days had elapsed by the time I collapsed in bed at 9 pm. It can’t be the same day, can it??

JB had three lessons. Smol Acrobat had two disastrously short naps and one almost not terrible nap by 4 pm. I covered the kids until 12:30 pm. Half the time I was entertaining Smol, the other half was overseeing JB who likes really hands on playtime with Smol. Smol Acrobat is highly amused / tolerant of JB manhandling them from one activity to the next and genuinely enjoys being plopped like a sack of potatoes next to their older sibling. This freed my hands so I could pack a box of hand me downs to share with a friend.

Then traded off with PiC so I could buckle down to work furiously for a few hours.

Year 2, Day 23: A thing I’ve been practicing is being ok with good enough. Good enough parenting, partnering, working, etc. It doesn’t come naturally or easily, hence practice. Today was a challenging day in that respect. We got two better than terrible nights of sleep with Smol, and then it went to hell again. So of course my body has no reserves of energy left and of course my mind takes me to task for being not good enough.

I wonder what kind of parent I’ll be on the other side of this pandemic. Will I ever get my patience back? Will I ever find my school age child fun and entertaining again? Will I ever enjoy anything again???

I do everything and anything for them but completely fall short on emotionally connecting. I plan and schedule and pay for all kinds of educational and interesting activities for them. We care for Smol day in and day out. I’m pumping milk twice a day and nursing 3 times a night. Everyone gets fed and clean and has clean clothes. Everyone but me gets some kind of outdoor time most days a week. Sera gets walked or outside time 3-4 times a day. But I can’t, just can’t, muster an iota of enthusiasm for being playful or patience for their foibles. I don’t want to be hugged. I don’t want to be talked at. I just want to be left alone. And lacking that last bit feels like falling down on the job. That’s the part they’ll remember. Not the practical stuff. You don’t notice that you always went to bed on a full stomach, had clean clothes, bathed daily if you’re being well provided for. You notice the lack of it. Like you’d notice how your mom is an angry zombie instead of the smiling hugging person they were before the pandemic. Wouldn’t you?

I hope this is all because it’s all too damn much and when we have some help again, I’ll be more of a human. I miss having the good emotions and not just the gritting my teeth to make it through one more day, one day at a time.

Year 2, Day 24: We’re still not eligible for vaccines yet. Looks like Californians 16 and up are eligible starting on April 15th.

*****

Smol got me up before 6 am and was so confuddled, I thought it was Thursday and that PiC had early-early meetings so I shook him awake. But it’s Wednesday and he had no morning meetings. Oops. Woke him for nothing. Well, not nothing, he still had to get up at some point, but I wanted to let him catch up on some rest. He’s been working late into the night almost every night.

Meanwhile, we continue to be befuddled by Smol Acrobat’s sleep (or not) and eating (or not). For the past few days, they’d demand to nurse but didn’t actually eat much, and all day yesterday they wouldn’t eat more than an ounce or two between naps. They’d sob hysterically, refusing to eat, pushing the bottle away repeatedly, because they were HUNNNGRYYY. We’d have to persistently offer the bottle and then at some random magic point, they’d lunge for the bottle as if we’d been withholding nutrition this whole time. It wouldn’t matter if it was formula or breastmilk, bottle or nursing, they reacted to feeding offers like we were trying to poison them. Some combination of luck and persistence midday today finally paid off and they had their usual 6 ounces before the last nap of the day. Sheesh!

I’m so tired I can barely lift my arms.

*****

Random thought. It was always the plan that sometime, when the cost of my surprise engagement ring stopped appalling me, I could pick out my wedding ring. That was a lot of years ago. Eleven years ago, in fact.

For the first 3-4 years, I wore the engagement ring, with the stone turned under, as my wedding band but every few weeks, my fingers would swell up like water balloons and I’d have to frantically pull it off before the ring became permanently embedded into the sausage I called “finger”. That got old, so I stopped wearing it entirely. I still haven’t picked a ring out and my fingers still like to swell up from time to time so I’m never quite sure that it’s worth it. If you’re partnered, do you wear a ring?

Year 2, Day 25: After another terrible night of not-sleep I found myself at the end of my rope today. I had to remind myself that I feel this spread thin for good reason. I am about to fall on my face on any given day.

Between not getting a full night of sleep in nine or more months, no childcare help so just the two of us are juggling someone constantly needing something (Smol Acrobat is full time on their own), trying to keep two full jobs going and keeping a trio of dependents alive at the same time, trying to keep JB’s education interesting and engaged… of course I’m going to fall on my face! Somehow, periodically forcing myself to face everything we have going on helps me realize that I’m not just weak or lazy. This is legitimately a lot.

*****

I’ve developed a perpetual sore throat, and injured my neck, and my lower back pain is aching forever. These are all a constant reminder that my body is running ragged. PiC and I have been talking about how to make more sleep possible for me. I normally take all the overnights and he takes more of the daytime childcare because it works better for us that way but it’s also hard on me never getting a full night of rest. It’s imperfect on both sides of course. He doesn’t get enough sleep either, covering the daytime means he has to work third shift to catch up on his work. But he’s proposed a couple ways to try to give me at least one night off each week. I’m hoping that one of them work, if we can’t get the best solution of all which would be Smol Acrobat just sleeping through the night.

Year 2, Day 26: It me:

via GIPHY

Smol woke up how many times last night? Like four. One of those wake ups was spent playing for 90 minutes. Because that’s what we do at 4 am.

This week I revived my old-bad-days-of-fibromyalgia coping mechanism of working from bed. It was too tiring to work from my desk in the snippets that I could manage. I feel like death warmed over but at least I managed to do enough work this way that I can justify keeping my job. Sigh.

*****

The thing I’ve been dreading about reopening and people getting vaccinated is already starting. We have some relatives who will need to be in town for things (all fully vaccinated) and we’re going to need to be human (and dressed) enough to receive them. It’ll still be outdoors and masked meetups since the kids won’t be vaccinated even if we adults manage to be.

These are actually people I like thankfully so I’m not dreading them. It’s what they represent: the cascade of people I like a whole lot less but can’t cut out starting to make their way back into our in-person lives and making their demands on our time and energy. Parts of the world reopening when we still have no childcare and a whole lot of work to do. Some things going back to normal but not others where invariably the math will be: things that are a drain go back to normal but the things that are a help do not.

Plus there are all the events that were postponed. It’s going to be weddings up the wazoo and wedding adjacent stuff for quite some time.

:: We made it through the week and I’m gonna call that a win. I’ll have to work the weekend to make up for some lost time but that’s just the way it is right now. How was your weekend?

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