Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (154)
May 15, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 45: Experiencing mild jealousy. JB’s friend is the 3rd of 4 kids and all the kids have been looked after by their grandparents. The older kids who are in school are dropped off and picked up by grandparents if the parents aren’t available, they also chauffeur the kids to all their afterschool activities. Entirely leaving aside the reality of the parents we have, I can only imagine how much we could give and save if we didn’t have to spend over $2000 a month on childcare ever over the course of JB and Smol Acrobat’s pre-school lives. Anyway, I don’t envy their lives. Four kids is just too many for me to wrap my head around. I just sigh over the imagined savings for a minute because I’m feeling our inability to do ALL the things. I need to save, and invest, and really want to be able to help a whole lot of people going through rough times right now. But with the huge $2300 monthly bite out of our budget, I’ve had to pull back. That is going to annoy me for a bit. I’d gotten used to being able to help folks more.
To go with that, I am mildly annoyed at myself. We/I somehow failed to increase our FSA contributions this year to the maximum $3050. How did I mess that up?! Ugh. Next year we’ll get it right.
Year 3, Day 46: Ant update: they still haven’t returned to the kitchen and might be gone from one bathroom. Several were spotted in the other bathroom today, though. Where to bait them…? They were inside the shower which gets wet daily. Outside the shower is too accessible to kids and Sera 🐶.
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Gripe: people like @trappercap on accessibility are the worst. American society is hugely inaccessible. This is related to games development but it’s so common to hear this kind of tripe with regard to accessibility in anything. It’s so frustrating as someone who could really use a lot of accommodations but constantly makes do, at my own personal health expense, without. Making things more accessible is often good for so many more people than you’d think at first. It’s not just for people who are disabled. Often it’s also good for the very young, or elderly, or new parents who have babies in strollers, or any number of other life circumstances that may be temporary but still difficult.
Year 3, Day 47: I’ve been working on a side project for JB bit by bit. They asked me to help them set up a business to sell things a few months ago. Their original idea was something I didn’t think would sell, aside from a few pity sales from aunts and uncles MAYBE, and definitely nothing I wanted to have to store when they didn’t sell. Webrainstormed to come up with something more likely to sell and, if they don’t, I won’t mind using it myself. After talking to friends who know more about this than I do, I experimented with mounting some of their art on greeting cards, and set up a site. There’s a lot more work to this than I had anticipated. I’d set up an email address, the site, and picked the design template. Now I have to pick up more papercraft supplies because they need enough stock to post online and to have ready to ship if anything sells, figure out setting up payment options, shipping costs, and then figure out how we’d pack and ship if they do have sales. They’ll learn something from this whole deal but I’m going to learn a lot more.
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Brain update: the depression and anxiety are noticeably less heavy. Adding the Vitamin D (2000 units) seems to help the antidepressants do their job. My RSD is still very strong but having identified it and talked it through with a friend, I’m better equipped to see when it’s taking over my brain. It gives me a fighting chance to staying stable when it tries to take me into the quicksand. I could use a bit more help holding that off but can truly appreciate that this is a massive improvement over before.
Year 3, Day 48: Ants: I jinxed myself! I found two scouts in the kitchen after over a week clear of ants. I put down a small dab of bait. 🤞
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Heck of a day. I had to talk to people going to school, coming home from school, for over an hour at work (this is unusual), and at JB’s after school activities. That’s four times more instances of talking than I’m budgeted for.
Year 3, Day 49: Drumroll, please!
I’ve figured out all the critical ins and outs of the site. JB’s inked some of their art that needed touch-ups. We’ve experimented with our custom homemade envelopes. I’ve designed a little logo to play with, it probably needs to be redesigned a couple more times before it’ll be just right but we have time, and we’ve printed up the art on nice cardstock. Things look good, nice photos have been snapped, and voila! May I unveil JB’s first business venture: LilArtDesigns!
We picked some of their most appealing or whimsical art and mounted them on nice cards for those of us who like sending cards to people just because. I hope that’s more than just the two of us. They’re very excited about this. I hope y’all like it too!
Bait on a little piece of masking tape above the shower maybe? If the ants go up there. They’re irritating little things indoors!
We upended our entire lives to come live near my parents and it is a real gift to have living parents who are decent humans and who also help out. It’s mostly been logistical rather than financial support, and there were many years where we had NO support, and yeah, it’s just so hard. (Also even 3 kids is a lot of kids. I planned for two!)
You are such a good mom and your kid will look back fondly on this one day!
Ooh maybe! They seem to be coming from lower corners but I don’t want to put the bait in that down low easy to reach place.
Honestly there are days that two kids feels like too much (for us). I hope it’s just how much they need us the ages they’re at right now, I hope it starts to get a little easier, and little less needy.
re: Parents – kind AND helpful / supportive parents is the dream. Logistical support would be priceless. I sigh about the money because that’s a concrete thing I can imagine right now whereas having someone outside of the two of us lifting the heavy load feels almost impossible to picture.
I like my in-laws and love my mom, but even if my mom was healthy, I wouldn’t want my kid spending a lot of unsupervised time with any of her grandparents. It’s not that they’re bad people, but I don’t want my kid adopting some of their attitudes and beliefs. I don’t want her around people she loves whose conversations are dominated by conservative values, 80s-90s diet thinking, and “I’m too old to [insert doable thing the person doesn’t want to do].”
I do like the idea of grandparents who help out a lot and know some families where the grandparents are extremely involved and engaged. My kid is actively planning for me to be that sort of grandma, which is sweet. (We’ll see if she still feels that way when she’s old enough for it to be relevant!)
I hear that. I have a set of parents whose views are just .. sigh. Nope, can’t do it.
I would love that for you, your kid, and their future kid(s), if that’s what you all wanted! It’s so lovely when it works out.
Ugh wtf (accessibility thread).
I felt somewhat similar when I saw a tweet about how with positive/conscious parenting we wouldn’t have had michael Jackson/beyonce…
Peeps, even the best parents are still gonna screw up their kids a little some way some how.
And there will always be terrible abusive parents.
We do not need to worry about not traumatising kids so we can have artists!!!
I feel similar… people whose grandparents take the kids overnight, who can drive the kids around, etc… But agree with commenter upthread about the pitfalls of too much time around certain worldviews, too. Sigh.
Ugh yeah the people who insist that people have to suffer to make great art… A) as if that’s a good enough reason to traumatize kids unnecessarily and B) how do you know they wouldn’t have made even better art without the trauma?!