Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (152)
May 1, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 31: Ok. I SAID I would take the year’s finances as it comes instead of reprojecting our spending and saving but someone could have called me on the blatant lie. That’s most certainly not how I work.
As much as I hated doing it, a week of not doing it reminded me that I hate not having a balanced financial roadmap much more.
I’ve subtracted the cost of daycare from our planned monthly savings and reprojected a lower savings rate for the rest of the year. If we end any month with more than expected due to lower spending, I’ll push that to savings too.
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I don’t have the patience for more than a 2-3 minute meditation so I’m sticking with the Body and Sound Meditation (3 mins) in my attempts to recenter my brain and my body.
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After yet another high pain weekend, this being my third week of flare-up, I had no appetite for eating or cooking. PiC’s been handling our food for the past few weeks and was drawing a blank on dinner ideas.
We got Thai takeout but once again my generic Asianness worked against me. I ordered the pad see ew with mild spice, everything else non spicy, to keep the kids from inhaling my favorite dish. I am not Thai but alas, being mistaken for a native is common and means that “mild” for me is the equivalent of a firebomb. One of these days I’ll learn to order under a pseudonym.
Year 3, Day 32: I scan through our Chase and AmEx offers regularly in case they have anything useful to us. It’s not often but I found an offer we can use: Get a $5 statement credit by using your enrolled eligible Card to spend a minimum of $50 in one or more purchases to pay US bill payments for cable and/or internet services made directly with the provider by 7/13/2023. Limit of 4 statement credits (total of $20).
We don’t have cable but we definitely have internet bills. I did just negotiate our monthly bill down to $55 so we still qualify for these credits. Course, if we didn’t, I could have just made $50 payments anyway.
Year 3, Day 33: What a gift: A warmish sunny day! My bones appreciated it. I still feel about 20-30 lbs denser than usual, probably from fatigue and Smol’s overnight screamies don’t help, but that’s still an improvement. I remembered to add Vitamin D to my daily regimen last week and I’m not positive but I think it’s helping?
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JB’s room is a Disaster Area TM. I hate even walking in there so it’s time for a Big Clean. But I hate this cycle of clean/messmessmessmessmess ARGH/clean.
Per their request, I’ve printed up a chore chart for them where they can earn a prize for filling in all the squares. This time, I assigned triple points to keeping their room tidy, single points for all their normal chores. I don’t know when kids make the switch from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation but I hope we’re not messing that up by giving them external motivation. I should look that up unless y’all already know the answer and want to share! Anyway, the chore chart has cut the whining to zero, so I’m happy with that.
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In my life, I will never understand how and why people can stand in a blatant lie like this when there is PROOF that they are lying. I know they do it, I just can’t understand it.
Y’all wanna see a dead body? pic.twitter.com/nPXuaNiZKW
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) April 23, 2023
(Video is a clip from Judge Judy where the defendant claims that the trade in value for a car is $2500. The … sorry, brain has stopped working … other guy, says that the sale price they agreed on was $5000. Asked for proof, he hands over his phone with a video clip showing him reading the contract terms including the date, signing the contract, AND showing the face of the defendant sitting in the car with him and she signs it.)
Year 3, Day 34: We had a hell of a scare this morning when JB asked to do something dangerous (which they would have realized if they’d been thinking but they are an 8 year old who isn’t always thinking critically) and they were permitted to by another adult. We were furious. There was a lot of stern talking to afterwards. Thankfully they were ok and the worst harm was to our blood pressure. Also thankfully I had my first massage of the year scheduled right after so my body had a major assist in relaxing a bit. The effects of the adrenaline post-scare lasted all day despite that.
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I’m not keeping up well with current events between the implosion of Twitter’s reliability (insasmuch as it was reliable for disaster and news reporting) but it does seem sort of like the terrible people are at odds with each other and I can’t help but hope they decimate each other. Fox firing Carlson, Disney suing DeSantis, more stuff that I’m sure I’ve missed. I am not a fan of Fox nor Disney’s corporate strongarming but I hope they obliterate both Fox and DeSantis.
Year 3, Day 35: There is something cursed about this week. Difficult people everywhere. At work. In my home. On the street.
This morning, Smol Acrobat was carrying a stool around the kitchen and the top separated from the bottom. That’s happened before, so it was a surprise that they started wailing. The bottom was a foot away from their feet so it didn’t land on their feet. I was confused but they have been having some very 2 year old irrational moments so I just hugged them for a while to wait it out. I started to offer a tissue for their dripping nose but they beat me to it with their sleeve.
THEN I saw the streak of blood across their sleeve. THEN I saw their nose had started to bleed. The top of the stool had to have ricocheted and hit them in the face. Oh. After a few more tears and a lot of nose dabbing, they were right as rain again. Thank goodness.
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An offhand comment from a colleague made me think: my job is 75-85% tedium but I still don’t want change. I’m fine with this level of routine and relative disengagement. I’m still getting things done, advocating for my team, problem-solving, answering questions and all that. My heart’s not in it and that doesn’t feel like a bad thing. Maybe this emotional distance is healthier. Entirely aside from that, a lot of my coworkers are really funny. That makes up for any apathy, along with the near complete autonomy I have to run my department.
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It’s been a hell of a week and I’m so grateful it’s over. And a random tiny Poshmark sale came in late tonight to end the week on a slightly less sour note. I hope that’s setting the stage for a better Monday.
I’m purposefully not going to tell you about the research on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, other than to say that most of it is about short-term research so you can probably ignore it.
Pragmatically– if the chore chart is working, then just keep doing it. Don’t worry about intrinsic motivation. We didn’t do anything like chore charts (and, in fact, sort of followed crazy LA guidelines that are supposed to increase intrinsic motivation) and DC1, almost about to go to college, still needs to be nagged to do anything. We’ve been trying to triage empathy and noticing things in anticipation of hir having a roommate next year.
I honestly think the only way kids intrinsically do chores is if they’re living in situations where everyone has to chip in to survive. Once you’re middle-class and not in an abusive family situation, most kids are going to be lazy and maybe a little selfish. (Though DC1 did take hir larabar wrapper off my carseat today when zie left today without being asked instead of stuffing it in the door handle as had been hir previous practice, so maybe something is working.)
I accept your conclusion as it dovetails neatly with my preference to just use the method that works right now and NOT to create more work for myself!
Plus this teaches us both (JB and me) to create incentives if they ARE generally extrinsically motivated. You’re making me wonder how our general levels of neatness preference get set. They are clearly impervious to the gross slobbiness in their room or the living room. I think I was growing up too but as I entered adulthood, I hated having a dirty kitchen or room. Maybe that is really linked to needing to have control over my environment though because of course at that time I was working all the time for survival.
Fingers crossed for DC1!
So much of everything I do/need/feel is motivated by my need to have some locus of control.
I feel this deeply!
Poor Smol! Preverbal injuries can be so tricky to suss out. 🙁
I think it was Harrison Ford who was asked once about what he enjoyed most about being in _____ movie, and he just deadpan replied, “The paycheck.” 😆
I know, they can tell me all about PAST injuries (DOOR! owieeee *point to 6 month old cut*) but in the moment, they don’t tell me what’s wrong. Until the blood comes.
HAH, I’m with Ford. I never ask why someone wants the job in an interview, I always say obviously we’re all here for a paycheck! Duh.
I think of extrinsic motivation as teaching kids to work toward a goal. And when I think about it, I work on basically the same system: I only do my job because I get paid for it. I sometimes give myself a treat for doing something I don’t want to do.
I think that makes sense. A friend often reminds me to think of it how an adult might handle things and we certainly build habits and systems to create extrinsic motivations for ourselves too. So this isn’t the worst approach, I think we’re teaching them to set up a system that works with their own behavior / motivations.