By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (65)

August 30, 2021

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 162: We’re still cautious about in person school but we’re also well aware that unlike our friends across the country, our district has at least some of the most needed mitigation strategies in place: universal mask mandate, they claim to have updated all the ventilation and to have an air purifier in every room (the latter two I want to see with my own eyes before believing it).

Naturally, Republican Californians had to try to make this darkest timeline even worse with the ridiculous recall election. Newsom is not the best governor ever but at least we have mask mandates. Not a single one of the candidates on the ballot inspires anything but disdain or disgust.

*****

I’m on Day 4 of not getting good sleep. At least last night was just interrupted sleep but not as pain-riddled as the previous 3 days. I had finally escalated to the heavy duty pain meds and that helped enough so that when I slept, it was relatively decent. But not nearly enough. I can usually function on moderate sleep deprivation. It gets tougher when it hits high sleep deprivation like it has now. I took a long rest both Saturday and Sunday but clearly I need another rest today.

It makes me wonder if I should try caffeine but that’s not going to give me more energy. It’ll just stave off sleepiness, which isn’t the issue, so that doesn’t help anything. Right? That’s how caffeine works?

*****

Because just doing my own work at twice the speed anyone else would isn’t enough, I had staffers out today so I had to cover for them. I made a couple executive decisions: I’d take care of most of their stuff, within reason, most of my stuff, and bump the rest to tomorrow. And I’m taking a short rest today. I’m not going to kill myself for work. I’m not going to use up my last dregs of energy and then be a growling monster at my family because I’m clean out of patience. Priorities.

*****

Meanwhile, in Smolville, Smol Acrobat done lost their little infant sleeping mind. They were showing all the signs of sleepiness, including doing their yelling at me that they do when it’s naptime. I comply and go through the whole routine. Do they sleep? They do not. They holler for 55 minutes. We tried three times to resettle them, finally feeding them some more formula, before they finally passed out. I do not know what broke there but it was a whole lot of mess.

Year 2, Day 163: Boy, I thought the past few days were rough. They were. But then last night was the worst. I caught two hours of sleep, then was stuck awake for the next five because of painsomnia and anxiety. I’m guessing the fatigue is why I spent most of the work day (counted only as the time spent in front of the computer, not the time I was minding Smol) in a state of being poised for flight. I just wanted to run away screaming. Pandemic normal, right?

*****

I AM VICTORIOUS. I spent some fruitless hours trying to put together an order for our latest Lakota family that was a new challenge: beds and bedding! The bedding was doable but I was worried that I would not be able to get the beds within budget. We had some really amazing contributions recently, swelling the coffers enough for me to even attempt this one but it still seemed like a bit of a toughie. Then it all came together and I managed to submit a full order for all the needed items. Now I’m on pins and needles hoping everything ships and nothing gets cancelled.

*****

I caught the edges of a conversation where someone was pounding that “people just don’t want to work” drum and I pointed out that has not been my experience with hiring people. They were quick to say “oh not professional jobs like yours” but come on. I’d like to see you volunteer for retail and restaurant jobs and pay. Do that and then tell me that people aren’t justified in their feeling. By the way, *I* am the hardest working person I know by a long shot, among that particular group of people, and I don’t want to work. I’d like them to try and tell me there’s something wrong with me for feeling that way. HUMPH.

Year 2, Day 164: Sometime in the past three years, I decided that I would no longer buy clothes without pockets. It’s annoying that my like new supply of leggings predated this resolution, they need pockets badly since I wear them paired with big sweaters which don’t have pockets but otherwise all my dresses and skirts since then have gloriously handy pockets. I like that.

*****

I got my first night of good sleep in a week last night and realized that it came on the heels of hearing that a friend I’d been deeply worried about is still with us. They aren’t out of the woods, they have serious health conditions, but at least that one update alleviated the creeping worries that had been slowly eating my ability to sleep.

*****

We have a checking account at the local brick and mortar in the name of our trust but just in case we ever close that one and change over to Citi or another B&M bank, I opened a back up trust checking account at our online bank as well. It’s something I should have done a long time ago so that I have easier access (at least by check) to spending larger amounts of money than what I keep in our primary checking account which is also an online only bank. Maybe the conventional wisdom was to keep a B&M bank as our primary but I like the customer service with my online only banks so the physical banks are just a back up these days.

*****

The hits just keep on coming like clockwork. I’ve gotten bad news every month this year. Not, oh, the water bill went up again bad. Death and serious illness and massive disruption at work type bad. And with a week to go in August, 2021 delivered again. This time it was work. Another massive blow there. I can’t get into the details but this makes our next six months even harder, with double the work.

I’m tired. I’m beyond tired. I think it’s possible I’ve mentioned that before.

The reprieve that I thought school brought has largely dissipated. We’re both scrambling to get enough done in the few hours we have to work and mind Smol in between and still PiC has had to stay up unreasonably late every night this week to work. I think it’s because my workload increased so he’s had to take larger chunks of Smol time, and I still am not getting enough done. But today I made a bigger effort to take my share of Smol coverage to give him more work time and to give myself more time to reduce my internalized stress over the new developments at work. Usually I’d put my head and down and dig deep to get through work challenges but this is going to be a marathon and I’m still recovering from five nights of poor to no sleep.

I am consciously trying to make space for myself to rest and try to recuperate enough that I can face the challenges tomorrow somewhat fresh rather than working late and starting the day on an entirely empty tank.

Year 2, Day 165: Lots of moving pieces today. Running on fumes, I didn’t sleep until around 4 am, everything just hurt or felt wrong, and got up to take JB to school by 830. I guess 3-4 hours is my current normal and I hate it. I think it’s just the monumental stress from work that’s crushing me even though I’m doing my best to moderate how much I do and evenly spread my time across every area that needs coverage just to keep things rolling forward enough. I’ve lowered my expectations and managed my expectations and yet I’m still not sleeping.

It’s part stress and part missing a longtime friend who is out of contact right now but has been a daily touchstone in my life for a decade. I don’t like being out of touch with my people but she needs time to deal with her stuff and I respect that. I just miss her.

*****

Back to school night on Zoom was mildly comforting. The teacher was telling everyone to push their kids to do things independently like being responsible for their homework folders and packing their backpacks. She won’t accept “my parents didn’t X for me” excuses because she’s holding the kids responsible for bringing their own stuff. We’ve been doing that from Day 1. I made up a checklist on our little board and JB has been happily packing their own bag using that list every day. Sometimes they pack the night before. It’s nice. They still forget to do sensible things but at least this is something. At least in this one little thing I can feel like not a failure. That and the fact that even though JB has forgotten to do their homework twice, they remembered in the morning and did it after breakfast so technically they have always turned their homework in on time. I think homework is ridiculous but I do feel that building the habit of doing what you need to do and being responsible for it is an important one. Whether homework itself is any use, I’ve heard teachers saying it’s not, is a whole other story.

Year 2, Day 166: I tried layering pain meds in two stages and a late dose of melatonin to see if it would help me sleep better (or AT ALL). I did manage to string together more sleep than usual (almost 5 hours??) and the lingering pain was  a little less than earlier this week so maybe that did help? I’ll try again and see.

*****

I love fables and fairy tales, so Iron Spike’s Kickstarter for Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales: North America, with the ability to get all five together in digital format was an exciting find. Plus I love supporting creators like this.

*****

“If you focus on your fears, you run into them. If you focus on your goals, you manifest them.” This line from the Charmed reboot resonated with me. I don’t really go for the word manifest, as if we live with magic at our fingertips (though how cool would that be if we did), but I think there’s a good point here. I’ve noticed that when I feed my fear thoughts with attention, they just get bigger. If I recognize them and step away, and do my best to focus on actions that are healthier, I can move myself away from the well worn paths of shame spirals which fuel pain and stress.

The recent work issues were an example of that. I was very tempted to focus on the bad aspect of the upheavals, and to blame myself for somehow not doing MORE to prevent these changes from happening. More, in a pandemic. More, when I’m already stretched beyond thin. More, when I’ve kept my department running as smoothly as possible which includes making sure that people were able to take the time they needed to tend to their families and their own needs as much as we could. Right. More. As if that was remotely humanly possible!!

I have been focusing on smoothing the way to fixing the problems instead. I took this opportunity to advocate for more for my team, and to set up a structure that will reduce these kinds of disruptions in the future because they are normal, an inevitable part of business, and I needed to do this anyway. The next several months will be miserable but at least I will be putting changes in place that will ease this pain the next time this happens.

:: How was your week and weekend?

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