Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (77)
November 22, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 246: Smol slept in! Which was both nice for us and also disruptive because when they get up early, their first nap works well with the school dropoff and work start routine. Ah well. After dropoff, I took the prenap hour with them: a bottle, some time to wreak havoc and pull everything out of baskets several times, then a game of chase around the playmat. Cackles galore!
We got almost two hours of work in, during which I tested out an anti-anxiety exercise of writing out all the things plaguing my brain right now and separating the stuff I cannot control from the list of things I can control. The latter list is so short. The former list, so long.
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I hate hiring.
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I came pretty close to finishing my day’s work by 8 pm at which point I just needed to take another break (having taken one for dinner). Unfortunately almost wasn’t good enough and since PiC has a massive day of meetings tomorrow, I went back to finish up and try to make some headway into tomorrow’s work since I’ll be primary caretaker for half the day. Upon crawling into bed, I contemplated how profound a difference it is between being in pain and not being in pain. Pain meds rarely work well for me but on the rare occasions that they do, I feel that absence of pain so intensely. My doctor refers to me as “not a drugs person” but if pain meds were that effective every time? I’d be on them in a heartbeat. It also makes me marvel about how people who don’t live in pain every waking and most sleeping moments must take that for granted.
Year 2, Day 247: I’d forgotten how terrible it feels when my pain meds work on the physical pain and simultaneously block my brain from falling asleep. I got three hours of sleep last night. 😠By 10 am, my muscles were on fire and my brain had gone all spinny. I took a short “break”, set myself up on the bed with a huge stack of pillows for about 5 minutes before Smol woke up and thank goodness for that reset. I wish I’d thought to do that sooner. I was forcing myself to power through because there’s too much to do in too little time, of course.
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I’ve been cleaning the guest room for weeks, a small bit at a time, and got to about 80% done with the decluttering part of the tidying and organizing.
My favorite relative will be coming to stay with us and help with the kids for a glorious week soon and I cannot WAIT. My brain can’t even begin to process what that’s going to be like, it’s been a whole year since we’ve had anyone but ourselves to mind the kids.
The remaining 20% can be temporarily relocated (leftover breastfeeding gear, clothes that Smol has outgrown but is too small for the next in line baby cousin). I’ll tackle it again later once I have an idea of what to do with it. Perhaps donate the outgrown baby clothes to the Lakota Families since they are still perfectly useable, if I can get enough to fit in a flat rate box to make it worth the shipping fee.
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I had to call it quits with only half my day’s work done. Far too tired.
Year 2, Day 248: Smol woke up screeching their heart out a few times last night so that really piled on top of the tired from yesterday.
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I have been fighting a losing battle with Treasury Direct to get access to my old account for weeks. I haven’t accessed it in nearly a decade so I didn’t have any of the information that I needed. They require the completion of Form 5444 which requires a guaranteed signature or stamp from a bank, or a stamp from a federal court, or a Medallion stamp from a brokerage. My bank claims they don’t have any of the official stamps/signatures that are valid, they insist that they can ONLY do Medallion stamps but that they won’t do it for this form, and they absolutely will not take a notary. I’ve gone in circles with my bank, at two different branches, to no avail. Vanguard and Ally Bank are no help even though we hold securities with both of them.
Treasury Direct is no help at all.
I wish I knew if it had any assets in there at all, I have only the evidence of a transaction happening several years ago but not what it was or whether there is money in there. If there isn’t, I wish I could just abandon the damn thing. I’m going to be really annoyed if I finally go to flipping federal court to get this authorized, which is a huge time sink, only to find there is no money in there.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect that the one transaction was my selling the one bond that I had from many years back and not a purchase.
I started on this hopeless quest to buy iBonds because the interest rate is really high right now and I want to take advantage of that even if only for 6 months for part of our emergency fund. I was able to buy some in PiC’s name, anyway.
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Speaking of weeks-long trials and tribulations, I’ve been fighting with my File Explorer for ages. At first just restarting it in Task Manager did the job, then restarting the computer did, but today – nothing. I had to go down the official list of ways to “Fix File Explorer if it won’t open or start” and leaving this here for when it inevitably comes back to fail again and I have to do MORE troubleshooting. I feel plagued by small computer issues, my mouse is still unreliable, but I’m trying to be glad that they’re relatively small.
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I have all the topsy-turvy feelings today.
- We’ll have help for a few days for the first time in a year. OMG. And I don’t know how Smol will react because they’re going through some stranger danger right now.
- We have holidays coming up which is always a big stressor even though we are very deliberate about who we choose to spend time with.
- I miss my family dearly but I also feel a great divide between myself and parts of even my chosen family as a result of the pandemic. It’s so hard not to feel as though our different perspectives aren’t the cause for some distance that’s grown in the past several months.
- I’m trying to make plans with a hole in my heart for a dear friend who is unwell and out of touch. They should be part of all of this and I miss them deeply and I feel helpless because there’s nothing more I can do to help them through their ordeal than what little I do now while respecting the space they need.
- There’s been so much permanent loss this year and I feel like there’s so much additional (I hope desperately temporary) loss. This year sucks.
Year 2, Day 249: It’s been a week. The holiday period is coming up fast. There are family visits to negotiate, holiday meal menus to plan, lots to do even before I actually buckle down to work. And right now I kinda hate most of my work so I just don’t want to. I do it but with a spirit most unwilling and unsatisfied. I try to at least maintain a neutral attitude about it but here I get to be honest about my feelings.
I told a friend that these days I just care about the income and what I can do with it (save and help people) and the ability to connect people to jobs because I’m plugged into networks right now. That’s it. I don’t have a passion for the work itself anymore. I suppose it might make it easier but honestly I can’t be sure of it. It might just mean I’m too emotionally invested in something I can’t ultimately control and be more of a letdown.
Year 2, Day 250: I had a moment after their shower where I’d normally bundle Smol off to get dressed and finish up their nighttime routine to get them in bed before they turn into a pumpkin. Instead, I held them up, wrapped tightly in their little towel burrito bundle, and stared at them in the mirror.
They stared at me, blank expression, in the mirror.
I wondered how much longer I’ll be able to hold them all rolled up in my arms like this. Not much, likely. This is all going to disappear fast.
The edges of their mouth curved up in a little smile. I smiled too. Then they burst into cackles. We laughed together for five minutes as I alternated between laughing with them, composing myself, and then bursting into laughter again when my “composed” face set them off.
These moments are going to melt away and I have to remember them.
This is the most labor intensive time but it’s also one of my favorite times of a child’s life. They’re starting to become a person but it’s still so nascent and the silliest things are fun and funny. The silliest things are also heartbreaking and terrible too, they are babies and it comes with the territory but it’s all so much easier to navigate for me. The later years get much tougher.
:: I hope you had a good weekend.
