Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (62)
August 9, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 141: What a day. We had all kinds of cleaning up to do. PiC and JB worked on three loads of laundry, I worked on reconciling a bunch of bills, filing a tax amendment, contacting the school because two weeks out we still have zero information beyond “everyone will be required to mask”. The planner in me hates this school district. I cleared away some time critical work, and sent important personal emails.
Then as a soul cleanser, I tackled our next Lakota family’s list. I didn’t mean to dive in already but I spotted, buried in the requests, a mom with a newborn and no car seat. We had to get on that!
Naturally I then had to go on and take care of the rest of the family too while I was at it. It took a few hours to sort out an order that would actually ship to Pine Ridge. I completed half the categories of the list: car seat for baby and clothes for the older kids. I added some household things for mom because she didn’t ask for anything for herself and I’m sure that she could use a basic hygiene kit. I’m trying to remember what I’d wanted in those postpartum days. The other half of the list, baby clothes and school supplies for the older kids, will go out later this week.
Year 2, Day 142: Another heavy work day with exponential stress. Lots of scheduling conflicts and people having bad personal stuff going on which require accommodations and trying to make sure enough gears keep turning at partial staffing. The only good thing out of this moment is the timing is good to make a push for a staffing change I’ve been wanting for a long time that will help us long term.
I assigned the rest of the laundry to JB for the afternoon, they were allowed to take reading breaks as they wanted, and so by the early evening all the laundry was put away with minimal fuss.
I was happy to finish up the school supplies order for the kids and then while I organized a new basket to hold books for the kids and organized Smol’s clothes, I pulled out armloads of their outgrown clothes to ship a bundle for the new baby. I need to replenish my flat rate boxes stash!
BUMMER. The car seat I ordered yesterday from Target has been cancelled. They say there’s a problem with the shipping address, and they can’t charge my credit card. Um, since you have charged it 16 times today, and shipped 11 packages there already, I would say both those objections are bunk. I reordered it.
Year 2, Day 143: Would you believe that the second car seat has been cancelled?? I finally went to Amazon to order it because it’s a time critical item and they’re taking TWO WEEKS to ship it even with Prime. What is this nonsense? So amid my fight with the school district, my inbox, and my towering to do list at work, I am on chat with Target demanding an explanation for why on earth this item cannot be shipped. It’s really really annoying.
School is starting up in a matter of days and the most information we have from the school is that we’re starting soon and that they have a universal masking mandate. That’s it. No policies on anything, no acknowledgement that COVID is still a thing, no recognition that Delta affects children, nothing.
On the bright side, despite my rising urge to scream at everyone, I finished a bare minimum of work and then consciously stopped to go draw with JB, fetch Smol from their crib to change and feed them, order pizza for dinner, feed the dog, and generally choose to prioritize my life and family for a while.
I had to put in a few hours after dinner because I’d spent so much daytime dealing with a combination of Smol, JB, organizing all the tracking numbers for the shipped items for our Lakota family (I wish I could have had them ship everything in one set of packages!) and dealing with the school district but they were all important things and I wanted to do them first. I should probably hold myself back from leaping into working on yet another family after this, though.
We’re also incredibly stressed about trying to figure out what’s going to work for JB and school. It very much feels like everyone has just given up and decided to go back in person and to hell with the consequences. At least we have confirmation of a mask mandate but to my mind, that’s the bare freakin’ minimum, they should also be telling us what the policies are for distancing (or not), for when the kids are eating, if kids get sick, if kids who aren’t exempt refuse to mask, and about ten other questions. PiC suggested that if we do go in person, we plan to to take JB to get tested regularly in case they catch an asymptomatic case. My immune system is trash, so if I catch it, there’s just about no chance I won’t get it Long COVID style. And what about Smol? JB was a robust little infant but we knew that from minor and normal challenges to their immune system like colds and suchlike. This little one hasn’t had the chance to be around common germs, yet. Not that that actually is a true indicator of how one might handle COVID since perfectly healthy people have been hit hard by it and I would presume that a formerly healthy person means they had a decent immune system.
Boo, money: I was annoyed at myself for missing an annual bill that was due on August 1st. Then I organized the payment and let it go because at least there’s a 30 day grace period and I only blew it by a couple days.
Yay, money: Our recent trip required pet fees at the hotel we stayed at but they were waived because the hotel did such a pisspoor job of providing a clean crib for Smol. I would have preferred a smooth trip and less annoyance but since that was already out the window, I am glad to get that $100 back.
Boo, money: I think this trip made it very clear that putting off a larger car, considering how much we are likely to be driving in the next couple of years rather than flying, is not going to be tenable. Booooo I don’t WANT to buy a new car now!
Year 2, Day 144: Just to be on the safe side, I’ve scheduled all of us for COVID tests. We traveled just before we got the update about Delta’s virulence and even though we maintained our masks always policy, we still want to be sure.
I was pondering how much easier it was to have patience with the kids when we didn’t have to work on top of managing the parenting.
Hand in hand with that, I was thinking how much easier it is to do a version of homeschooling with tutors rather than deal with a crappy school district that doesn’t apparently believe in learning from the past or proactively contingency planning whatsoever so we are mere days, not weeks, days from the start of school and they don’t even have a policy for drop off and pick up for us to familiarize ourselves with. How are we worse off going into the third school year of COVID?? The options suck, kids still can’t be vaccinated yet, adults still aren’t all vaccinated and the principal made it a point to stress to us that they aren’t required to be vaccinated right now which really drives home the likelihood that more than one someone on staff just doesn’t wanna and they’re going to be disease vectors.
They’re not going to do any screening, they’re going to hope and encourage parents not to send kids to school sick. That was in the letter they sent home. Thoughts and prayers and eff everyone vulnerable, I guess. You know what really sucks? The fact that the bare freaking minimum is a universal mask mandate and some places don’t even have that. I hate the situation we’re in, I hate that I wish we were in a rich San Diego district because my friends there have pretty damn good options and they had them three months ago, I hate that we are actually in a pretty relatively decent position compared to others (Texas’s Gov Abbott is just trying to kill people) and it still all stinks to high heaven.
Did I mention that our baby is vulnerable, and my immune system is crap? My six year old can mask but that’s, again, the bare minimum. PiC is in decent health and vaccinated thank goodness, but if he or I go down, this whole ship goes down. I’m back into this intensely isolated-feeling cyclone, worrying about the suddenly increased risk levels we’re being forced to bear.
It’s not just anxiety fueled worry. PiC’s workplace has a high number of vaccinated people, strict masking and distancing policies, offers weekly testing for people who need to be on site, and even they are seeing a rise in cases significant enough that they are considering delaying their reopening. I don’t pretend to know how long this spike will last, I know it petered out in the UK after a sharp spike, but they have a high vaccination rate. We have MAGA and antivaxxers galore. Yay us. 😒
We’re discussing alternative options that may cost the moon, but we need to keep our family safe and healthy and it’s unclear if the school district is equipped to do that.
I am tired on a molecular level.
Year 2, Day 145: Smol woke up hungry at 5 and as soon as I fed them enough, they threw their entire body back in protest. This was my sign they just wanted to go back to sleep. We obliged. We got another couple hours of sleep, thankfully, blissfully, I don’t usually manage to log any more after a wake up like that so here I am, grateful. We got a slow enough start that by the time I considered putting Smol into JB’s bed like a pack of spiders to wake them, JB was out, indignant: mom! You forgot to sneak up on me!!
Yesterday our sneaking was greeted by a teenager like sideeye and hiding under the covers, of course, today they’re mad that we didn’t come in for the baby bomb wake up alarm. Children.
All told, and this was a “good” day because after I covered the kids and dog until 1015, when PiC took over, I cobbled together 5 or 6 hours of working time. My day was nonstop. If I wasn’t working then I was parenting. If I was parenting, I was trying to squeeze in a minute more of work. If I was working, I was also fielding parenting questions or trying to deal with household stuff too. Most days I can be ridiculously efficient and fast, hammering out work at twice the rate others do. But that’s not everyday. Some days are so crammed full, it’s not possible to focus like I need in order to find that groove. No wonder I locked onto hating work. My brain is going to explode, I’m being pulled in twenty different directions at the same time and doing nothing well.
Good enough, sure, to get by some. And the time passes so the day ends no matter how I feel. But not well.
Sometimes I remember that we’re 18 months into a pandemic, so no one is doing anything well except for the filthy rich. But it’s hard to grind it out like this, day in and day out, parenting and working and working and parenting in an endless ourobouros and feel no satisfaction in a job reasonably well done. “Well, it’s done, anyway” is not at all motivating or inspiring.
I have got to find things to do that make me feel better that aren’t doing things for other people. I enjoy that a lot, but when time is at such a premium, there’s got to be another way to fill this bucket.
I feel so bad for you… that’s all I’ve got, no pithy advice, sorry.
Sounds like you need to give yourself permission to do the bare minimum until the pandemic ends
It’s “ok” in that there really isn’t any appropriate pithy advice that’s worth having at this point. Thanks.