Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (76)
November 15, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 239: This morning was SUCH a struggle to get my brain working. Anxiety driven? Maybe. Case of the Mondays? Probably more that. My anxiebees were quiet for a lot of the day.
We got the news that there will be a daycare slot opening for Smol to attend part time next year. I don’t think the under-5 group will have a vaccine by then which of course sends my worries up again.
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The Dino Dash: When they are in the mood for it, we toss Smol on the bed and they turn into a little triceratops on the attack. They crawl madly cackling at you or towards the edge of the bed and we have to intercept them before they go flying off the edge. They clash into our bodies and get flipped on their back or proactively turn around and race the other way and you have to dash wildly around the bed to get to the other side before they do. It’s good cardio!
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We snagged a vaccine appointment for JB later this month. I will be stalking the site for any earlier vaccinations. I’m also wondering where the under-5 group trials are. Best I can find is that Pfizer’s trials are in process (Sept 28 article) and Moderna just started their trials. I suppose it’ll be too much to hope for approval of an under-5 vaccine before the new year.
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4:30 looked like 8:30 outside, gloomy and dark, with the light rains passing through.
The storm inside was much worse than the drizzle outside: JB was all kinds of frustration and acting out for a while after school. They were sent to their room for a good long while, surprisingly they started their homework without being told, and emerged for their Spanish lesson.
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I had cooked dinner at 1 pm because I had ingredients on hand, it was my turn to mind Smol so I couldn’t work anyway, and it was really nice to have dinner already made by the late afternoon.
We were able to work as late as 530 and just get the warmed up dinner on the table in a matter of minutes. I would really like to have more dinners just ready to go.
Year 2, Day 240: My fatigue was notably odd yesterday. Less “someone siphoned my tank again” and more “I could use several breaks”. I wonder if it’s because I forced myself to take a long midday walk? Today it’s back closer to the normal: anchors attached to every limb and heaved overboard. Not great. I took a walk this morning. It’s weird.
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Speaking of weird, our reverse water thingamadoo has been putting out a steadily decreasing amount of water for a week. What’s going on?? We have been staring at the slowing trickle thinking “we gotta fix this!” but today’s the first day I’ve actually managed to Google some troubleshooting tips. Time, energy, where do we get some extra??
I tried sugar, that didn’t go so well.
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JB got themselves up and ready on time this morning. I got very tired of chivvying them along every morning for the past few weeks so I told them clearly:not to lay abed more than 5 minutes after their alarm on weekdays. I think about how incredibly lucky we are with this.
A, they like (playing at) school. B, after the clear instruction they’ve gotten up on time every day since. It’s taken a few days to get the rest of the routine back in track but that was a huge help to getting us started in the first place. I never had an alarm when I was younger, I was just expected to get up on time and not surprisingly, I never could. I was also plagued by nightmares every night which helped nothing of course. But I’m glad our mornings have shifted in the right direction again.
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JB told us they didn’t want to enter an art contest because they might not win. Then they said that if they did enter and didn’t win, they’d never enter again.
Now, I don’t think contests are important but I’m appalled at the developing underlying all or nothing notion: that if you can’t win, you might as well not try. I shared my “don’t reject yourself” philosophy while withholding a screech of WHAT ON EARTH, explaining that even if you don’t always win, you definitely won’t if you won’t even participate and also you’ll miss out on a lot of fun and learning in life with an all or nothing mentality so we’re going to practice something different.
They went on to whine about other things so I have no idea if they actually heard me, if it made any difference, or if they were just being a contrary cuss for attention.
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I took all the kids out for an unexpectedly long (in time, not in distance) walk in the evening so that PiC could get some uninterrupted work done. I’d intended only to go for about 20 minutes but we were out for an hour because we kept running into people. JB ran into a past schoolmate and had to stop to say hi. I never had the experience of going to the school in my neighborhood and seeing my friends at school around my home. It’s a bizarre feeling and sometimes I don’t like it because I feel hemmed in and vulnerable. Not sure what the vulnerability is about specifically, just that sometimes I want the shield of anonymity up. There’s an impulse/reaction to interrogate at a later date.
Year 2, Day 241: Our reverse osmosis system is totally down today, boooo! PiC has been trying to troubleshoot it, but no joy, alas. We’re calling in professional help.
He did fix the temperature issue in our shower so that’s a huge help. We still need to deal with our broken eaves and gutters and replace our hot water heater but that’s going to have to wait for …. either desperate times or energy, whichever comes first. I think we all know which it’ll be. Actually that leads me to….
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Happy(?) news: My doc came up with a medication recommendation for me to try out and see if it helps at all with the overwhelming fatigue on a couple days a week. I’m briefed on the side effects so I’m crossing my fingers that on very low dose and an as-needed basis only, the side effects will be minimal. I also have a full battery of bloodwork on order to see if there are any medical issues we can address. Obviously I have medical issues, I just got the package of ailments without solutions or treatments.
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Smol’s naps were pretty terrible today. That by itself isn’t so bad but after yesterday’s prolonged outing, my body was on fire with fatigue by 1:30 because I needed a lot more sitting down time before baby chasing time. PiC took over and I slumped at my desk for a few hours while muscles went back to some semblance of baseline tolerable pain. Not awesome.
Year 2, Day 242: I’m on my second to last set of Invisalign aligners. I’m a month away from having to make the decision about whether I am happy with the new alignment. At my recent check up, I was uncomfortable with being so close because while the alignment of my teeth has been corrected, my bite is uncomfortable in this configuration. Well it feels like this set of aligners is tackling that but OMG OWCHHHH. It feels like every tooth is screaming.
Also I was told that I’d have to wear my retainers full time for 12 months (preferable 18 months) to ensure they don’t move again *cries*
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We had a last minute lunch guest. A dear friend we don’t see often enough retired recently and has been traveling the world having adventures. She realized that she has been very responsible with her money, enough so she has enough for years and years, and very few needs and responsibilities so she can afford to go live her life and enjoy it instead of working.
I’m so happy for her and am so eager to join her in the post-work life stage. We joked that even if I didn’t have a dozen things I wanted to do, I’d be happy to retire to enjoy a time of good food, good rest and good dogs, without work.
PiC and I both grumbled that we don’t want to work tomorrow and / or anymore and he asked me if we could retire now.
Sure but it’ll be a short retirement! I wish I (and my job) were the sabbatical type but I’m more of a push hard for the final goal and don’t look back type. Since sabbaticals aren’t possible in my line of work anyway, I have to embrace the means that are available to me.
Seeing my friend was a boost to the soul. I missed her and miss my other dear friends so much.
Year 2, Day 243: I didn’t have the day off work for Veterans Day but the day after a school day off is still disorienting.
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Every time I think about the climate and how we have all kinds of possible solutions and it feels like there is zero effective political will to do anything about this before our time runs out, I catch myself holding my breath. Symbolic unconscious reaction, I suppose, for a world that may all too soon be uninhabitable for humans of today. I don’t know how to fight the existential dread that all of this is for naught because we cannot, as a planet of people, get our acts together on a global and nation-sized scale. This can’t be about individual action anymore, and that realization that we’re depending on people leading countries to do something while it seems like the world is being taken over by right wing fascists… I don’t know how anyone functions like we’ll have a tomorrow.
It’s getting harder for me not to feel like hiding under the bed. For a multitude of reasons, certainly, but this one’s a biggie.
We haven’t done any contests, but I’ve been working on the idea of people having “turns” to win and that if my kid won all the time, it would mean that everyone else would lose all the time, and that wouldn’t be fun for other people. This has been how I talked about it when playing games for more than a year at this point, and we’re to where she’s starting to be okay with losing. I do make sure that we play multiple rounds of games when we play and I make sure she wins some and loses some each session. I don’t know how this is going to extend to competition outside of the living room… but it’s a start.
The last month has been an unfolding series of situations on the personal front. Not in my own house, thank God, but there’s a lot going on in the extended families that are emotional and are also requiring help and decisions from us. I’m looking forward to 3 months from now when things may not be better, but at least some of the current issues will have either evolved or been settled.
Oh yes, that aspect has been a tough slog for us! They are still a very sore/grumpy loser even though we do the same thing that you do. It is a foundation though, and we keep working at it.
I’m sorry to hear that there have been *situations*, may they resolve in preferred ways sooner than later.
Is there any chance there will be an art show of all the entries? Winning is pretty awesome, let’s be real, but there can be fun in participation as well. Good thing JB is so articulate (or.. unfiltered?) so you picked up on their ideas about competition early!
Re the climate: sometimes I just say, matter of factly, everything is terrible. It feels better to acknowledge it, even if that’s not a fix and it doesn’t mean anything is changing. But just admitting it helps a little.
Unfiltered š
I don’t know if there will be an art show, actually, they didn’t say. But that’s a neat idea. I don’t quite know how to strike that balance between “winning is great we should try hard!” and “participation is fun and enough in and of itself!”
I agree that at least facing the fact can be a little helpful but also .. so .. stressful to know there’s no fix we can do on our own… It’s going on the anxiety list!