By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (149)

April 10, 2023

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 10: Is this all the anxiety from last week landing like a lump of clay in my chest? Maybe. Or maybe it’s fresh anxiety for the week. Who knows?

The past three days, I’ve been randomly dizzy through the day and night. Standing, sitting, laying down, nothing stops the dizzy. It’s not enough to make me fall over, it is enough to make the world spin badly and requires a few moments to try to steady up. That’s a known side effect of the naltrexone they prescribed for off label pain control, but I’m taking such a low dose it seems implausible for it to be the problem. My fingers have also been sausages for a week, that might just be a flare-up situation.

I skipped my dose this morning anyway but it doesn’t seem to have reduced the dizziness, lightheadedness, and now nausea. Not a fan!

~~~~~

I applied for the Wells Fargo credit card for PiC three weeks ago to get the $200 bonus on $1000 spend. They said it would take a little time to approve and approved it a few hours later. The card arrived soon after and I’ve already met the minimum spend.

I applied for myself last week and they again said it would take a little time to approve, but I still haven’t heard back. EXCUSE me. My credit is excellent, what’s the hold up!?

It’ll be some kind of irony if they approve PiC’s but not mine.

~~~~~

PiC and JB cooked dinner tonight. We had rice, orange chicken (not the deep fried kind), and stir fried asparagus. Smol was very skeptical about the asparagus but I asked them to try just one bite. “Crunchy like a pear”, I urged. With a funny face, they tried a couple times, squinted at it again, and tried one more time with encouragement. It was a tiny bite but they set down the remaining inch of asparagus, chewed thoughtfully, and slowly nodded at me. Good?

“Duud..!” (Translation: Good.) They were just as surprised as I was. Not only did I not have to make dinner, I didn’t have to fight with Smol to get them to eat enough to get them through the night. Win!!

Year 3, Day 11: I’ve got my eye on very cute earrings for a friend’s Christmas present. I’ve also got my eye on a couple pairs I like for myself but have told PiC I shouldn’t buy anymore earrings. That is my sideways way of telling myself I can’t have anymore without actually doing so. This backfired, as usual, because he says I don’t have that many pairs.

After purging the 1.5 pairs of rusty broken costume earrings, I have 22 good pairs of earrings. Five pairs were inherited from Dear Friend and two pairs were purchased gifts from Dear Friend. One pair was a bridesmaid gift from an old friend, another pair was a wedding gift for our tiny wedding. One pair I picked on our honeymoon. Three pairs were the only earrings I could wear when my ears were particularly sensitive to certain metals. Nine pairs I picked for myself over the past 20 years. Of those 9, two were cheap costume jewelry from Forever 21 that have held up remarkably well because they’re a heavy metal design.

Is that too many? I don’t know! It feels like 22 pairs is enough.

But I really like the Studio Ghibli designs that Aimee made.

~~~~~

I blew my last $12 of cash on two packages of Girl Scout Cookies (Lemon-ups). I regret nothing!

Year 3, Day 12: PiC surprised me with donuts this morning and I uncharacteristically (for current me) devoured one so fast, I’m not sure I chewed.

~~~~~

What deal sites are people frequenting these days? I use Slickdeals since the Fatwallet forums shut down but it feels like a poor second choice. I’m looking for a balance between investing opportunities and deals to search and match to my interests.

Come to think, this reminds me of how I felt back in 2005-2006 when I started blogging. I’ve been yearning to read people’s money stories lately but the blogosphere has a lot less of that now.

Tell me a money story?

~~~~~

The 529 / savings debate: when we had one child, and not particularly expensive aspirations for college, we had what I considered plenty in the 529.

I’d been holding cash gifts for the kids in cash instead of sending it directly into the 529. I figured cash would be welcome for living expenses or down payments or something that isn’t 529-redeemable.

Now that the lump sump will be split between two kids it’s a solid, but not, ridiculous amount. We’re also not plowing in as much as we possibly can because we need to save for our retirement.

College costs seem to range wildly from (very roughly) $30,000 a year for books and tuition to $60,000 and up. What would you consider a reasonable target amount to save between 529/cash?

Year 3, Day 13: I skipped my naltrexone most of this week and most of the dizzy spells have faded. Causation or correlation? I can’t tell if there has been an appreciable increase or decrease in pain over the course of this trial.

~~~~~

Dragging ourselves slowly and painfully closer to a finish line that doesn’t feel like a finish, though it is the end of a week.

Work has been exceptionally busy because clients are full of shenanigans, I’m making up for last week’s absence, and I’m covering for folks out of the office. All that is annoying but my inability to work at more than a sloth’s pace results in a certain feeling “oh I’ll never catch up, why kill myself trying?”

It’s actually good that I stopped working when I did, the stress of forcing myself to produce was sending my shoulders right up to my ears and it was taking more than twice as long to process each task. What a waste of time!

~~~~~

Oh! But it did occur to me to call Wells Fargo to find out what the hold up on my credit card application is. They just needed to verify my identity. That could have been an email. That’s fine, card is approved, and should be here in a week. That’ll be another $200 cash back on an insurance bill we have to pay anyway.

Maybe it’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things but the $400 generated from two credit cards (timed for the time of year we have large ticket bills anyway), will be solid cash.

I’m maximizing my income, PiC’s income, and aggressively saving, but I like to take a few minutes now and again to drum up extra income. The more we have, the more we can help others! And we have quite a few friends in need right now, so every little bit counts.

~~~~~

Ironically, as badly as I wanted to go to bed, my focus clicked back in at 9 pm and in one hour, I got more work done than I’d accomplished in half my day.

Year 3, Day 14: In keeping with this week’s carby-treat theme, we picked up a box of frozen SuperPretzels for those big chewy pretzel cravings, when crunchy ones just won’t do. I’m looking forward to trying them.

~~~~~

I had to put in a very full work day, even after last night’s surprise productivity, to clear enough off my plate to walk away for the weekend. Then I remembered that JB is off school on Monday. That means I still have to work this weekend if I want to be able to go hang out with them and PiC. Or I could just not.  I could just enjoy being home alone. I like that a lot, too.

~~~~~

I’ve been thinking of my day / motivations in terms of dopamine, lately. The ADHD discourse has given me a lot of food for thought over the past many weeks. I am noticing that there are patterns to when I “feel like” doing some things and not other things. I prefer rote or almost mindless tasks when I’m starting my day. That lets me check off a whole lot of small but concrete boxes which feeds my dopamine engine, which gives me the motivation to tackle – or make myself tackle – the high energy, deep thinking tasks. Rote tasks include racking up rewards points, processing payments, paying bills, anything where I already know what needs to be done and it just needs a few clicks of the mouse.

My least liked tasks happen later in the day. I assumed it was procrastination (and it is!) but it’s not ONLY procrastination. That’s ALSO when my brain is most ready to expend more executive function. If I do things when I feel like them, I get the best results overall. If I force myself to go outside of that “feels like it” path, my mood and the quality of my work shows that very clearly.

I’ve never thought about it much but it’s sort of nice to have a bit more insight into the why of things. It might not change how I do things, but it changes how I feel about myself when I do them. It’s not just laziness, or maybe not laziness at all. It’s ok for me to do things in the way that works best for my brain.

It also gives me insight into those moments in my life when I bite off more than I can chew. That’s very much motivated by a need to drum up dopamine. Knowing why and how my brain is working gives me a better sense of how to pace myself strategically, instead of immediately overcommitting to my latest whim and then drowning in it later.

My latest: While in the thick of helping kids in the latest Lakota family we selected, I wanted to pursue sponsorship. But instead of picking one person and seeing how that works, I wanted to pick two kids and a pair of elders. “Am I biting off more than I can chew?” I ask a couple friends who know me well.

“Yes but that’s never stopped you before” says one. “Maybe start with just one?” says the other. They both know me well.

Mind you, I am currently shopping for NINE kids in a household with sixteen grandchildren and great grandchildren. They need more than I can possibly help with in one go, if it weren’t for the wonderful support from the community that still comes in now and again. It’s not just dopamine-seeking, I want to help as many people as I can. But the dopamine-thirst pushes what “can” means out a lot further than is sensible which leads to burnout. That’s the part where self-awareness matters so much. I find that organizing all my needs into a list to remind myself that I am one person helps with learning to pace myself a little better.

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