Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (112)
July 25, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 122: 6 am. BLERGH.
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Massively overdid it over the weekend and paying a steep price for it today. Absolutely everything aches and my fingers were swollen sausages all day.
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I’m finding it deeply conflicting having a relationship with the conservatives in my family. Hell, it’s difficult just talking to them without holding them personally responsible for their political views that shore up the horrors of gun violence, the horrors of SCOTUS wiping our rights away, the horrors of violence against LGBTQA people, children and adults. Every time we have a conversation, I’m fighting with myself not to lose my head and start screaming. It’s complicated. It’s not how I want to torch our relationship. I only have so much family that’s cared about me and mine. But I’m not wrong about their politics and how harmful they are, either.
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Another family of my Very Cautious circle are COVID positive/exposed and it’s infuriating all over again that despite all our precautions, it’s gotten more of us. I hate how society and our government have failed us. I hate that we have to rapid test constantly if we want to see people and still can’t feel relaxed about being vaxxed and masked and air purified and outdoors.
Year 3, Day 123: 630 am. PiC is my morning parent saint, he let me get a solid extra hour and that made such a difference in my physical functioning. I still couldn’t make it to 8 pm without intense pain and fatigue but I did have a few decent hours.
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This Kyoto band made me wonder how widespread swing dancing was back in the day. Was it an international thing or primarily the US? I should look that up when I have time. Someday.
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I am facing a hard truth: I am an avaricious bag hoarder and it might be a problem. I love functional totes, crossbody, messenger bags of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes backpacks too. We were at Sports Basement the other day and I found myself examining the Fjallraven bags. I thought they were hip packs at first, and my conscious thought was: maybe that’s better for dog walking than my current little crossbody that gets tangled in my coat sometimes. But my subconscious was just: bag! bag! bag! How do I curb my inner bag monster?
One minor consolation, pondering “maybe I can make one?” gave me a quick jolt to the creative brain area at least.
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Everything IS terrible.
everything in the news is terrible, pls look at this gleeful baby Large Frogmouth peeking out of its mother’s feathers pic.twitter.com/3jDpF3Seyy
— Effie Seiberg (@effies) June 30, 2022
Year 3, Day 124: 6:50 am.
Smol Acrobat is really full of themselves right now. They are running at a higher gear of mischief and “talking” more. They’re forming audible yeses and nos, and mixing up all their baby signs. It feels like a (temporary) net loss in total communication success as they test a shift to more verbal communication.
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I watched a Love it or List it episode, which I usually don’t do because the whole fakery of reality TV is unappealing, and it was actually an interesting one because it addressed accessibility issues. One of the couple is in a wheelchair and they need their current or future home to be more accessible. They kept mentioning “universal design” which I need to look up, but it was striking how many homes are so deeply inaccessible. I see this a lot in the Bay Area as well. What would it be like to have homes designed to be accessible or accessible ready from the start?
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Some days I feel like doing nothing but staring into the void. Surely my expression matches that of these owls.
Wildlife conservationist placing baby burrowing owls 🦉 back in their burrow. pic.twitter.com/lkg8tOpFPC
— Domenico (@AvatarDomy2) July 7, 2022
Year 3, Day 125: 7 am.
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My aunt called me to ask about the kids and then asked me about whether I’d speak to my bio-dad if I saw him. Um. Why would I see him? It was a very weird conversation. I wonder if she knows something is going on or if she was just testing the waters of our relationship. Even that’s a weird reason. It wouldn’t be out of character coming from anyone else but she’s not generally nosy that way. She’s usually pretty respectful of my boundaries and that’s why we stay in touch. It was a very unsettling conversation and I didn’t like it. Not so coincidentally, with that on my mind, naturally when I read this tweet I thought: BIODAD.
anyway. pic.twitter.com/vt21luwVTG
— 🎀 💒 🎀 @ dark road waiting room (@princessxemnas) July 8, 2022
Also, I always feel like there’s another shoe waiting to drop, with him (and my brother who lives with him). The first shoe was my cutting him off and some of his halfhearted attempts to manipulate me through other people. The second is, I’m assuming, what happens when he finally gets sick and needs care. For damn sure my brother won’t provide it. So at that point, I’m going to have to deal with something to do with them and not knowing what I’ll be facing bothers me. It’s absolutely not an option to take him/them in. We don’t have the room but even if we did, I refuse to let him/them into my home near my children. They cannot be trusted. I tell myself not to borrow tomorrow’s troubles, it’s just hard not to want to prepare myself for whatever bad stuff will come down the pike.
Year 3, Day 126: 8 am. They are so unpredictable. Earlier in the week they had a late bedtime and were tired, still woke up in the 6 o’clock range. Same conditions last night? Late sleep in. Weird.
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My throat has been hurting all week and I’ve had a persistent dry cough. I’ve tested myself, all of us actually, every day this week and keep concluding it’s not COVID or a cold, because everyone else remains well (thank goodness). This must be my CFS acting up and that may be because I’m staying up entirely too late. This needs to stop. Ouch.
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This is mesmerizing. I wonder what AOL did wrong starting in the year 2000 to lose their foothold as an early tech company with massive loads of users. We used them starting around 1996, roughly, and I can’t remember when we stopped using them for dial up. (Remember that eeee eeee eeee eeee squeal of the modem?)
It is incredible to observe how fast the tech world changes.
Companies which seem unassailable suddenly disappear into footnotes of history. pic.twitter.com/Av8cZywWCH— Vitaliy Katsenelson 🇺🇦 (@vitaliyk) July 12, 2022
Bags! bags! Bags! I hear the call. I don’t give a halfway hoot about purses, but carry bags have a deep allure. Glad that you get the creativity dopamine hit from seeing a new design; I do think it’s fun to try to play with fabric/snaps/zippers.
I’ve thought about channeling my own urges into making a busy-blanket, which apparently is helpful not only to little kids, but also to people with dementia.
YES BAGS!
I love tote bags and variations on that theme too too much. Also backpacks and variants thereof.
Ooh, busy blankets look like they could be fun, I hope you do and share!
That is unsettling that your aunt brought that up. If you’re going to have that low-level thought about future what-ifs running in your head, maybe your therapist can help you script a response? I imagine you’ve thought of this.
BAGS. They’re so fun but also so much clutter. I have a friend who rotates through her handbag collection deliberately, and anything she chooses not to use gets jettisoned. She’s pretty fiercely organized though. I have a box in a hall closet that I rummage through sometimes, yet I frequently still pull out a typical backpack from the 90s!
I had a LOT of time to think about that question after! I discussed it in therapy but I think ultimately I go back and forth between wanting to quietly tell him off and wanting to just walk away and cut off any communication at all.
As far as the future what ifs, I laid some groundwork with a relative stating that he’s taken all that I have to give, and destroyed my health with full knowledge that that’s what was happening. Future needs? I don’t have anything left for them. I have to take care of my kids now.
I have my bags (totes more than anything) on a wall and rotate through them too! I haven’t gotten to the point of getting rid of much but I will occasionally allow a tote go off bearing gifts and not come back. There ARE some totes I’m protecting out of sentimental value but not a ton.
“The second is, I’m assuming, what happens when he finally gets sick and needs care. For damn sure my brother won’t provide it. So at that point, I’m going to have to deal with something to do with them and not knowing what I’ll be facing bothers me.”
Stop right there. You do not in fact have to take care of your abuser. And you should not. You owe yourself and your own kids that peace.
I truly appreciate seeing this in writing, TBH. I have returned to this a few times since.