Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (89)
February 14, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 326: Third terrible night of sleep in a row as I wait out this latest flare up that feels like my bones are on fire. Tossed and turned for hours last night. PiC took Smol as soon as they were up so I could rest as much as possible before we absolutely had to get out the door but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Monday workloads suck to begin with. It’s extra weighted down with fatigue and underlying pain that won’t go away so it’s Molasses Monday. The kind of extra Molasses Monday that destroys even your muscle memory so that you try to crack the eggs into the compost and throw the shells into your bowl, and you turn off the lights as you go into the room instead of turning them on.
It’s going to have to be the little things today.
Smol, having gotten a later start than usual, this morning, got to spend the hour after we dropped JB off at school with me indulging in their current favorite pastimes: throwing all the socks out of their bin, throwing all the shoes out of their bin, unmatching socks, and carrying diapers around like a football. It’s good to have interests.
PiC pulled together a magnificent simple pantry dinner of steak, risotto (frozen from Trader Joe’s) and roasted broccoli. We enjoyed that after a short family walk through the neighborhood to let Sera do her business, JB run some laps and Smol stretch their legs a little.
I came back to my desk to put in some work on our Lakota family orders. For the orders already shipped, those tracking numbers needed to be shared. FedEx needed more information for a shipment. Diapers have been going in and out of stock since the weekend so I needed to grab what I could when it was back in. I’m juggling three families at once which may have been a bit daft for my energy levels but it’s mostly working out.
That done, I dragged myself off to bed for an “early” night in hopes of sleeping off my pain hangover.
Year 2, Day 327: The good news is that I got some sleep. The less good news is that only improved from the deep pain deficit to “feel completely empty and devoid of energy”. The sad thing is that IS an improvement! But I will work with what I’ve got. Not because I’m noble or strong, there’s no other choice. If I have a choice, I’m absolutely crashing.
PiC packed lunch, everyone was fed breakfast at different times, we got JB off to school at a reasonable time, and I hung out with Smol after feeding them a late breakfast and playing “there’s a spider on your arm.” They love that game. We also played “push a piece of paper across the floor”. My version was using a wet cloth to scrub my part of the floor since I was there anyway and boy howdy could it use the cleaning. My hands weren’t pleased with this, though, so I had to settle for just cleaning a couple square feet.
I mostly finished my critical work by 5 pm but still felt totally out of sorts. PiC had done a grocery run and found my car battery dead so that required a jump from AAA which he took care of thankfully but also required an unplanned outing to drive the car and let it charge up. I let out a massive sigh of exasperation as I walked into the house to get a bag of supplies for this.
He asked: what’s wrong?
I dunno, everything!
Work? Kids? Dog? … Husband?
… No, you’re safe.
We needed gas anyway so we headed out to drop off a check in the mail and get gas at Costco. We simultaneously had the same stroke of genius: Costco dogs for dinner! We enjoy our Costco hot dogs. Cheapest dinner ever. Possibly a big mistake digestively but it was a bit of a treat.
*****
Smol’s first: they brought me stacks of paper when I asked for them!
Year 2, Day 328: Having a real “UGH” mood today.
I tossed and turned much of the night, catching naps but waking at the drop of a hat every hour or so.
Sera nearly ate another dog because their idjit owner, who cannot possibly NOT KNOW that their little dog is a yappy aggressive thing, didn’t give us ANY space when they walked by. So the little yapper did what it does, VERY close to us despite our blocking her with our bodies and the stroller, and aggressively yapped and snapped at Sera. Sera thought she was under attack, and she went for the dog. We had restrained her appropriately but she still accidentally scratched JB in her terror, and I have rope burn on the palm of my hand. If she’d broken the leash or ripped it out of our hands, she could have killed that dog. If she’d hurt another dog that badly, I don’t know what I’d have had to do with her. That was a jerk move on the part of that other owner and I hope she falls off a curb and twists both her ankles.
PiC had a work fire that took hours to put out so he wasn’t able to help with Smol at all for the 3 hour midday period, instead of going for the run we’d planned on him having.
I hate how my body looks and feels right now. The part that is related to weight and how I carry it can probably be changed if I go carb free for a number of weeks, possibly, but I haven’t been motivated to. Maybe now I’m irritated enough to deal with it.
I could really use some fun money thing to distract me today but all I have are boring old bills. I paid them but had absolutely no emotional payoff. Harumph.
*****
After pondering my emotions and how tired I am, how I’m five days into no good sleep and coming off a fibro flare, it’s very possible I’m having a pain hangover that is letting some (lowercase to indicate it’s not a Big Bad) depression creep in.
I’m mad at everyone before they even open their mouths, memory banks are thoroughly borked, annnnnd I feel like MurderBot. I hate all humans and want to be left alone forever with my books.
Today’s making a little more sense. Not sure what the cure is but another almost early to bed night and a heating pad for some of the physical discomfort to try and release some of the pent up tension might help.
Also finally ordering our first trial of Bentocart for next week’s meals might help. I received our second order from Weee! today and while I don’t love their shopping interface, so far, it’s helpful to get a few things we need delivered. Prices are so so. Some are in between the Costco and Trader Joe’s price points, some are a little higher. Some don’t have anchor price points because I haven’t been about to find the Japanese curry base anywhere else. I’m hoping they’ll have more staples but I realize now it won’t replace our more American groceries, and that shouldn’t be a surprise.
*****
Smol’s first!: Packing things in. Up until now, they’ve only grabbed things and threw them out of bins, baskets, stacks. Anything semi organized was destroyed. Today, they started putting toys IN a bucket!
Year 2, Day 329: What a bizarrely beautiful day. Our wind still blew but it carried a tinge of warmth, not the normal icy chill. It was nearly tropical!
The irony of this gorgeous day being the one where Smol Acrobat only managed to nap, respectively, 30 mins and 1.5 hours, which is no time at all to work when I also had to spend an hour on hold for EDD to confirm the status of my missing tax forms.
We have been trying to share our Smol minding time lately but I insisted that we divide and conquer today. There was just too much time to fill for us both to be out of work.
Smol, Sera and I spent an hour outside having a baby picnic. I sat them on a seat they couldn’t fall off of or get out of, fed them until they were bored. Sera sunned herself.
They spent some time throwing rocks around and petting Sera’s tongue. I don’t know why Sera allows this but she didn’t mind.
*****
I am kicking myself for forgetting to ask SP for a referral code for Bentocart. It took me three tries this week to put in our first order for next week and the referral slipped my mind. Drat. A missed $15 for both of us.
*****
Smol’s first!: Empathy! They hit me in the eye with a block accidentally, and when I sat back holding my eye, they looked at me with concern. They then came over and hugged me.
Then they tried to sign “thank you”, AND later in the evening, blew kisses. It was a lot of cute. It didn’t quite make up for the lack of sleep but it was awfully cute. And may be why they didn’t sleep today, the neurons are firing too much.
Year 2, Day 330: If we were second guessing our decision to delay daycare entry for a few more months half a year, we got a message from a friend in the know who said that recently about 19 classrooms were out of commission. If they meant at one of the two centers, that is more than half the center. Our friend who works at the daycare said that things are in constant upheaval for the littler ones too. Her classroom is stable but every single day, they’ll see a kid being escorted out and the kids say, “Oh, I guess that kid has omicron / COVID.”
*****
What a day and it’s only mid-morning. My 25 year old favorite nail clippers had been missing for weeks and I found them this morning. I woke up about as refreshed as I’m going to be physically after two nights of almost enough only semi broken sleep. That almost having energy thing means I am antsy as all get out and I don’t want to have to spend this time working as fast as I can before Smol wakes up! But I must. I do my best and it’s still not enough but when they take their second nap of the day, it was a LONG one and I got so much work done that I was well caught up to a reasonable stopping point. That was such a load off my mind.
*****
My brain therapist and I have a fundamental difference of opinion. She thinks that my biodad does somewhere in there love me, but he’s just too significantly limited by his issues to show it in any healthy way. I think his actions show that it doesn’t matter if he loves me because he treated me as a mark my whole life but I also don’t think he loves me because it’s not possible for me to accept that there is love in existence from a person incapable of caring for anyone but themselves and their chosen. He cares enough about my brother to stand by him all these years at my expense (which is a thing I forgot to bring up). But he couldn’t refrain from manipulating and abusing me financially. So how could it possibly be that he has any love for me? I don’t think it matters which of us is right but it does bother me a bit to hear that. I think from anyone else, it’d feel like a manipulation. An obligation pushed back onto me. Maybe it’s because I did trust that he loved me all my life and I no longer want that belief to be part of my reality. Maybe it’s equal parts “if you loved me, you would NOT hurt me when you’ve been told repeatedly to stop doing X because it’s hurtful” and “if you loved me, you would prioritize not harming me over benefiting yourself.” Unreasonable expectations, I know.
Vitacost.com ships groceries (nothing refrigerated or frozen) and their shipping time is fast. Lots of kinds of curry but not Japanese.
Hadn’t heard of them, thanks!
I respect your story about your dad. The brother thing does illuminate a lot.
I think you will have to update the frequency of your My Kids and Notes Year 7 to accommodate all the cute stuff Smol is doing!
On the brother thing: he’s practically a carbon copy of my dad so that’s another thing ….
Smol’s just going to get a lot of daily mentions for a bit 😉
IMO humans are contradictory bundles of complicated emotions, and a person’s actions & feelings don’t always match up neatly. Some of the saddest CPS cases are the ones where a parent really does love the child/ren, but their own actions (or inactions) prevent them from being a safe caregiver. It’s tempting to write them off because, “well if they REALLY cared then obviously they would…(stop alcohol cold turkey, break up with the abusive boyfriend, take their bipolar meds, etc)” – but despite what Hollywood tells us, the power of human love can’t magically heal faulty neurochemical balances, years of repressed trauma, or extreme character flaws. Many wives deeply love their kids yet stay with an abusive husband because they are also deeply terrified of homelessness. A dad can care for his baby but also keep binge drinking. A selfish person might truly & deeply love a child… for a time. But they simply don’t have the emotional depth to be able to put anyone else first for very long. They might be able to coast for a while longer because supplying loving actions to the child also satisfies their own desire to feel like a good person. But eventually the child’s needs will conflict with the parent’s – and the love tank runs dry.
(Have you seen Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings yet? It might be triggering for you, but it does a painfully good job of grappling with that kind of parent figure.)
A thought exercise that I’ve seen online: If I somehow knew for a fact that X did feel _____ what would that mean for me? If I somehow knew for a fact that X did NOT feel ______ what would that mean for me? Given that I can actually never know how they really did/do feel, what is reasonable for me to do with this situation?
You know, your explanation makes a lot more sense to me than anything my therapist said. But maybe it’s because it’s considering the problem in the abstract, and gets a lot harder to process when it’s applied to personal real life.
Shang Chi: I did see it and I had a VERY hard time with that aspect of the movie. So many parallels of selfishness and willfully ignoring what your child needs or asks you to hear!
I think my current position, with regard to that exercise, is that that if I knew that he loved me, it would hurt more. I would be more angry, more resentful, and more hurt.
So I think I don’t want to “know”, either way, because it doesn’t help me to care about something I cannot affect or know. Maybe that’s trying to avoid having emotions about it? I don’t know yet. Pondering!
PS – We ordered Glico brand Japanese curry (medium) from Amazon and found it disappointing – very mild and not flavourful.
I haven’t tried Glico, but we got the S&B Golden Curry brand and we liked it well enough. We were looking for mild spicing so the kids could handle it but the adults were satisfied too.