By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (79)

December 6, 2021

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 260: Shifting back to normal school and work mode after a long holiday weekend and having a helpful person around is, in my professional opinion, YUCK.

*****

I’ve been rotating through four pairs of sweatpants for a solid year, day and night, because they’re so warm and comfy why would I wear anything else? I only put on real pants to take JB to school. Sometimes. Sweats are real.

We’re going to see people for the holidays and I’m not looking forward to the need to look like I give two hoots about how I look but I should probably get a pair of jeans that aren’t ripped clear across the leg? The last pair I bought was seven years ago and they’re in a pretty shabby state. I do have a smart looking pair of grey corduroy pants that I’d just get a duplicate of in another color but these dandy things are even older than my jeans and aren’t available anymore. Alas. (PiC thinks my pants being older than JB makes them OLD. I say they’re still young until we hit the 20s.)

I spent all day with a vague sense of missing sales but the few things we need weren’t available (pants for me, though I didn’t bother searching more than two stores) or aren’t on sale (the Le Crueset enameled cast iron frying pan because we’re sick of the waste of nonstick pans that don’t last) anyway.

On principle, I was tempted to shop more small businesses but that would be gratuitous right now. We just spent a small fortune at a small business for our anniversary gift.

I’ve been working on gifting and visiting logistics for the upcoming holidays and have a three page checklist in play now. Before any of that socializing can happen, though, JB has to get their second vaccine, PiC and I will need to get our boosters, and even Sera will need a flu booster since there’s dog flu outbreak going on. Only Smol Acrobat may dodge the needles this month, though I can’t be certain whether they’re due for anything routine soon.

I’m crossing my entire body like a pretzel hoping large vaccine trials for the under 5 and under 2 sets (they’re being tested separately) yield solid data SOON.

Year 2, Day 261: Smol miraculously slept 11 hours! But my brain fog, oohhh my brain fog today, so thick, it felt impossible to think around.

My first sign it wasn’t going to be a great day was when I started making breakfast and stopped a split second before I cracked all the eggs into the compost bin. At least it was before. I’ve done this before and only caught myself after a few eggs.

I’ve been holding on to a prescription of meds to take as needed, intermittently, for fatigue. Through the fog, I reasoned that this inability to think, this feeling like my brain is stuffed full of cotton, MAY be related to fatigue? Hell, it’s worth a shot. I tried my first, very low, dose. I didn’t notice much change in the first half hour but it seemed to lift a bit of the fog enough so I could clear a few things off my desk.

Smol and I took Sera for a long midday walk, and that felt like a small miracle, though my brain was still out to lunch.

Year 2, Day 262: I tried to follow the SCOTUS arguments today as the Christian right attempts to kill Roe v Wade.

A white Christian friend observed, we are witnessing the attempts to make America over officially as a white supremacist Christian nation, and I feel that in my very soul. This was supposed to be a country where we were free from religious persecution and have separation between church and state, but that’s only on paper. In practice, being Christian (and the right kind, at that), is the expected default state. You see it in making Christian “values” (in quotes because they don’t actually observe the value they preach) the national goalposts. Guess what? Not all of us are Christian and not all of us want to be.

I hate that and I hate where those people are pushing us.

*****

Going into the holidays even more short-staffed at work than usual, trying to take some time off to spend with family, with a baby who can’t be vaccinated yet, amidst the firpteenth variant / wave / COVID development, what’s to be stressed about?

Seriously, I’m doing my best to try to push my overwhelming anxieties out of the pores, putting them down on paper to stick somewhere, and manage my days with the right priorities in mind.

Work can always replace me, my family can’t.

Yes this slog sucks and yes I have to keep doing it for a while because we don’t have enough assets piled up to make a different choice yet but we will, in the longer run. Typically that “long run” part always gets my goat. I revert to workaholic type, minus the satisfaction, trying to cram more work in as if it’ll get me to the goal faster. It might, marginally, but I’ll almost certainly be a lot more broken and a lot less happy.

So I’m focusing on, or at least diverting my attention, to the small things like Smol GoofyBeans Acrobat not realizing they’re standing on their own for a few seconds while throwing my laundry on the ground. To JB doing great art and making up terrific weird sentences and learning about the ills of colonialism. To PiC planning and making a pasta dinner complete with broccoli (I almost always forget the veggie). To Sera being superdog patient with Smol whose loving hands are very grab and twist hands. To my brain fog being light and manageable today and connecting with good friends.

I finally ordered the home laptop we’ve needed to replace my dying laptop. Not a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale but a price I considered reasonable for the type of model I was willing to commit to. I’ve only been pondering that for about 16 months. JB used my slowly dying machine for kindergarten last year and it was touch and go sometimes but now it’s adding new funny sounds to the original not so funny sounds that made me retire it from full service.

Costco had a middle of the road model that wasn’t so much that I couldn’t let JB touch it and not so low end that it’ll be useless in a couple years. We’ll try that out and hopefully won’t need to make use of their good return policy or their warranty. Fingers crossed!

Year 2, Day 263: Everyone’s bluer than Blue’s Clues now that my person has departed.

*****

JB is feeling really left out right now because a classmate was handing out invitations for a birthday party and apparently was only inviting the boys. I’m not sure if that’s exactly what’s going on but so far, they’re really upset because “if *I* was having a party, *I* would invite everyone!”

We empathized with their feeling left out but we had to point out that actually, they aren’t going to be able to invite everyone for a birthday anymore. For one thing, I don’t know most of those kids or parents. We never see them ourselves the way school is set up now. Also those big parties that their daycare classmates threw where all the kids, siblings, and parents were invited for a big activity and pizza and cake? That’s A LOT of money. And a lot of time and a lot of energy. I know some of those parents were paying $200-600 for the venue alone, and that’s before food and drink and service staff and all that. We explained that in looking at some of the cool places I thought would be fun, museums and the like, it costs a lot for just ten guests. You better believe it costs even more for more than ten guests. We can’t tell what constraints this specific classmate is under but personally I have absolutely no intention of spending $600-$1000 for a kid birthday party.

We could maybe host at the house but I don’t want strangers in my house at the best of times and COVID times are NOT the best of times. I wonder how everyone is going to handle birthdays…. In any case, we talked about brainstorming ideas but that we weren’t committing to anything until PiC and I discussed and agreed on what we’re willing to do.

Year 2, Day 264: Rush rush rush. We struggled to get up early enough this morning and it felt like the whole morning was compressed. It was, come to think of it. We forgot to run the dishwasher last night 🤦🏻‍♀️ so that was started while I took over the baby feeding from PiC so he could go to an inhumanely early meeting. JB was rousted from bed, vacation really screwed up their “get up five minutes after the alarm” adherence, and I got the rest of JB’s lunch together. I mused for a moment on how I used to bring the exact same packed lunch daily and I’d be fine with doing the same for JB but PiC insists on having something different every day for JB. We’re very different parents / people. He makes the lunch normally, of course, so dealer’s choice!

I remembered that the fleece I cut up last night for my sewing projects was still in the wash, so tossed that in the dryer while the kids were eating, and got myself dressed. After a rush to school and back, Smol proceeded to take the worst nap since they were 6 months old: sub one hour. No good! PiC took first crack with cranky baby, and I was being a cranky baby myself about how hard I was working and feeling like I was getting absolutely nowhere.

Because I was annoyed with everyone and everything at work, and PiC needed a solid chunk of work time, I decided to take over with Smol for the next two hours. The idea was to get away from the work that was annoying me, and then when I am tired and don’t want to move anymore, I get my solid chunk of work time. Doing it the other way around doesn’t work as well for me. Naturally, I proceeded to completely overdo it to keep myself too busy to dwell on all the work that I still hadn’t gotten done at work.

I got all kinds of things done. Smol and Sera got out for a walk. Sera liked it, Smol did not. Did two loads of human laundry, one of which was my project fleece, and dragged out all the dog bedding to shake out the fur, then started washing all of those blankets and covers. Fed Smol through many many protests, made PiC lunch, cleaned the kitchen and scarfed down a sort of lunch myself. I sent the robot vacuum through the house a few times, and washed up some bottles. Emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it.

It was time to go back to work after I put Smol down for their nap but I really just wanted to sew up my project fleece. I’m making JB a surprise blanket and a couple other blankets. But no, back to the salt mines for me.

One of the things I’m working on is caring less about work. Not not-caring about the quality of the work but caring less about issues that crop up, and not taking it personally when people are crappy, demanding, and refuse to follow the rules that they agreed to. I have to leave that irritation at work and deal with it without letting them get under my skin. Historically, I have not been good at not caring about things. It’s like how I can’t NOT care that characters I like are being killed off in books and films. It gets to me! But. This is a work in progress: letting things that ultimately do not matter roll off my back.

:: IT’S DECEMBER. How did that come up so fast??? Is anyone else anxious / stressed / worried about the upcoming holiday? Do you have plans?

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