Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (155)
May 22, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 52: There are days I’m tired of being the only working set of eyes around here. This isn’t one of those stereotypical overworked wives things. PiC sees all the clutter and cleaning that needs to be done, and maintenance and does his share. This isn’t a household fairness thing. It’s literally about eyesight. The two of them cannot find things!
JB let their backup set of glasses go missing, the pair that’s supposed to live in their backpack, and I was annoyed that PiC had to find this out when their primary pair broke. I was grouchy that I hadn’t remembered to follow up about whether they were wearing their glasses at school MONTHS ago like I’d intended. Anyway, he did the disgruntled first parent on the scene talk with them, then I followed up with the slightly calmer but still irritated orders that they were to spend the entire afternoon today searching for the glasses and doing nothing else until they succeeded.
6 pm rolls around, PiC had gotten dinner on the table, and JB still hasn’t found them.
Still irritated, I went through their desk area, knocking over the apparently never been emptied pencil sharpener in the process, vacuumed that mess up, and then checked their room. I found those damn glasses in 15 minutes without zero idea of where they had last been sighted.
Smol Acrobat had better have my finding ability, I refuse to be the only one that can find lost items in this family!
Year 3, Day 53: Smol and JB were sick all weekend and Smol spiked a really scary fever overnight so I was up all night with them making sure that the fever responded to meds. It did but it was a trudge along, trying to just get the bare minimum done, no-rest sort of day for me.
~~~~~
Bless my GP, she doesn’t know whatall is wrong with me but she’s always willing to explore and test to cross things off the list if there’s even a semi plausible reason to consider it. While I don’t present with classic Cushing’s and she’s mildly skeptical that it is the (or a) cause for some of my issues, we’re doing a screening for it anyway just to be sure since I don’t object to it.
Year 3, Day 54: Squeaky and hoarse, Smol started talking at about 630 this morning. They made it through the night, thank goodness, without waking and crying like they’d done six times Friday night. They were even in a GOOD mood, thank more goodness. PiC was up too late working, and small miracle I wasn’t feeling as bad as usual, so Smol and I had an unusual early morning together. And it was ok! They were opinionated but not overly difficult.
Random food thoughts: Cilantro suddenly tastes like soap to me this week. Liquid Dawn, in fact. It’s never tasted like soap before. It’s always tasted like green stuff. Not great, not terrible, and I didn’t love or hate it before. But suddenly, it’s a mouthful of soap. Weirdly, that wasn’t terrible like a real mouthful of soap would me. Surprising but I didn’t hate it.
That was related to the cilantro that I stopped adding to the leftover pozole I had for lunch – absolutely wonderful. I love fresh squeezed limes. Also apple fritters. I love those unexpectedly crunchy little bits scattered along the edges.
Year 3, Day 55: FINALLY! I remembered to follow up on the form I need to volunteer at JB’s school. Now, to be fair, I only just got my required physical done recently so it wasn’t that I was dragging my feet. I just forgot all this week that I could ask them to get the form filled out now.
I’m not particularly in love with the idea of more socializing but I do want to have the option of going on field trips with them or helping out at the library or in the garden if I can make time, someday. Here’s hoping I’ll have enough time to get those forms into the school office before the end of the year.
~~~~~
It’s pitiful that it’s taken me months to get around to the dog bedding laundry but it has. Today, today was the day! Sera’s š¶ bed cover was swapped out for the clean spare, and washed with her blankets and sweaters. The washing bit isn’t hard, though timing things so I wash and dry everything before 4 pm is tricky when squeezed in between working, doing school pickup, and walking and feeding Sera. The part I’ve not had the energy to cover is, when the washer dries out, needing to vacuum the whole thing or else the lingering fur gets all over the next load of laundry. But today, I did it all. I was tireder than a sloth but fit into today’s rounds and now Sera š¶ is snuggling happily with a fresh blanket and we are both happy. No wonder I live a small life. The simplest things are satisfying.
Year 3, Day 56: The mass exodus from Twitter (and maybe also the economy? I’m less sure about that part) has made fundraising for the Lakota families
REALLY slow this year. I confirmed there will be a post-school giveaway of lost and found clothes where I’ll gather many armloads of kid sized coats to ship to the Allen Youth Center this month, I confirmed that’s still on. My fingers are crossed we’ll gather enough funds to help out another family in June but it’s hard to say if we’ll be able to hit that goal.
I’ll continue throwing notes out into Twitter in hopes enough folks are still around who want to contribute. I’d surely appreciate y’all sharing too if you can.
Some unasked-for advice? If you can volunteer in any non-kid chasing way, go for that. I think if your school runs parent-chaperoning like mine does, you could need an extended recovery period afterwards if you did a field trip. My kid’s elementary school assigns parent-chaperones a group of 4-6 kids, tells them when/where to be back at the end, and then sets everyone loose to the four winds in zoos, museums, etc. I’ve done it twice. Each time for me, it’s been 3-4 hours of walking and constantly trying to keep my group semi-together. Some kids tend to range ahead and have to be called back, others tend to lag behind and have to be called forward. There are inevitable kid-unhappiness issues to navigate within the group, too. It sucks for me, and I suspect it would be worse for you.
The only reason I do it is because I feel I should volunteer in some way, and most of my kid’s school volunteer stuff is very firmly committee-driven and run by stay-at-home parents. Parent-chaperoning a field trip, I can at least know is happening and say yes to. The other stuff… if you can’t attend regular 3+ hour meetings in the middle of the workday, you don’t even know what’s happening or what needs exist. It’s impossible to volunteer. I don’t think the committees even know what they miss out on, by being so committed to their processes that they shut out working parents to the degree that they do.
I realized recently that I’ve never volunteered at my kids’ schools ever. I do give money though!
It’s weird because before I was a parent I did a bunch of volunteering in public schools and summer programs. I guess as a working parent I don’t really have time, and the need in my kids’ school system is not really that big compared to the high poverty districts I used to volunteer in.
Did you ever want to volunteer? We give money but probably not nearly as much as the wealthy parents. Feels like an ok balance if we volunteer occasionally plus give some money. Truthfully, though, it’s a little less about need (although the recent unfairness about the field trips incensed me) and more about feeling like we need to make some connections to the locals because we need better information sources than the school.
Not really? I guess we get enough information from the school and from DC2 and I’m not sure field-trips would help at all.
For DC1, one of my colleagues has a kid a grade higher and is strongly hooked up with a lot of the other immigrant parents via wechat so she was a great source once DC1 started high school.
A little more knowledge in middle school might have been helpful. But I don’t know what we could have done with said knowledge if we had it. I guess put DC1 into advanced language arts instead of regular?
I’m wary of making connections around here because there’s so many Trump-loving insurance-selling etc. parents. Of course, some of the high school teachers are also Fascist and racist (DC1 pointed out the other day that his racist world history teacher is the faculty advisor for their high school chapter of Turning Points USA), so…
I dunno.
Oh sorry, I meant that FOR US it’s about making connections / getting information that we wouldn’t get otherwise, like which teacher is an anti-vaxxer, etc.
In your shoes, yeah it totally makes sense you’re not looking for those connections. We have fascists and Trump supporters here too, but they can be a little harder to suss out, so the connections help us figure out who those are and who to avoid.
Not really much we can do with the knowledge either– We were able to avoid the racist human geography teacher by realizing that was an elective and swapping in AP Psychology in its place, but AP World History was required and there were no other teachers.
I think you’re absolutely right about the non kid chasing choices. I love the library so things like book wrapping, or assisting with the garden if it doesn’t involve child minding (less likely though I suspect) are the only things I actually want to volunteer for. PiC actually enjoys the hands on kid-involved stuff so he can do all of that. š
I hate how so many schools function on the assumption that one or both parents are available at any time. We get a lot of last minute notices that are really frustrating for being last minute. I hate spirit week, they never give us adequate warning so we never do it. Not that I actually care to but if the kids did, it sucks not being able to even make a choice for lack of notice.
My dear spouse is very deficient in finding things. He once opened a drawer and told me he couldn’t find the nail set. I opened it and there were TWO right on top. My oldest also insists he has returned books to the library until I find them and chase him around yelling “THIS BOOK? YOU RETURNED IT??” (Usually we are laughing.)
This week I started filling out a thing to volunteer at the school but then I came to my senses. If you really want to go for it but you do not have to do all the things!
LOL I definitely rub it in when I find stuff like that too!
Yeah I am probably doing it a little out of guilt because PiC signed up enthusiastically and I don’t feel that BUT I do love the library and want to help out there sometime.