By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (206)

May 13, 2024

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 40: Infuriating. This is the second time I’ve filed a Dependent Care claim for FSA redemption on our daycare expenses and, once again, their website has pulled an “What are you talking about no claim was filed”. It’s disappeared entirely from their site. WTF United Healthcare?? They were reliably reimbursing us last year but they changed their site two months ago and now nothing works. Actually, from January, they were automatically denying claims first with incorrect codes (claiming we were out of the grace period, for all new 2024 expenses 😒) before backtracking and approving them. None of my claims for which I have saved confirmations since mid-March are appearing on the site at all. It’s ridiculous.

I’m still symptomatic from the virus that Smol Acrobat gifted me last week. After pushing too hard on Friday and feeling worse than ever, I forced myself to rest as much as possible on the weekend. I did NOT hill my potatoes. I did NOT pull weeds. I did NOT hack at the encroaching branches from the neighbors’ yards. Today, I chastised myself to do the bare minimum until I’ve shaken the hacking cough and all: no appointments, no running errands (I have 3), no doing the laundry, no extra anything until I can actually recover. It’s been 8 days, I’m thoroughly tired of this. And Smol Acrobat keeps asking me every 3 hours: are you fewwing better? And I have to keep saying no, not yet.

It should not be so hard to just not do things!

I did hill SOME potatoes today, just the one batch that was tall enough, and of course that wore me out. But I needed the satisfaction, along with accosting cute neighborhood dogs to pet them. We met a delightfully regal retriever today who was doing her best imitation of a statue as she enjoyed our pets. I asked her dogwalker to come by this way more often.

Year 5, Day 41: I found our neighborhood off-leash dog! We were excited to see each other. She did tricks for me in exchange for treats and then hunted down a tiny stick for me to throw for her several times. That was good for my heart. No dog will ever replace Sera, Seamus, or Doggle, but petting a dog is vastly superior to NOT petting a dog, any day of the week.

Checked on the plants, gave them a light watering, whispered “germinate germinate germinate” to the seeds.

I still have a racking hacking cough but I feel less horrible today, even though I wasn’t able to sleep until well into the wee hours. I could walk up a hill almost without stopping, almost without stopping for a long cough.

Got our CPA to find the check that I sent her weeks ago. She thought it’d never arrived and just didn’t say anything. All this time, I was waiting for her to cash it already so I can balance our cashflow. Glad I followed up and got her to look at her mail.

Year 5, Day 42: Everything’s coming up Milhouse this morning (in a limited fashion). Physically felt much less terrible today. I’m still pretty sick but the least sick I’ve felt for several days. I got to pet a neighbor’s fluffy dog. I had to drop off Smol Acrobat instead of JB and they were pretty cooperative. Traffic was ok going and returning, there was no line at Costco gas, there was easy parking at the notoriously awful parking lot by the place I had to return to (again) for fingerprinting, picking up my packages was super easy. No awful drivers on the road this morning. That was all a welcome respite from the stuff and nonsense waiting for me at my work desk.

For the first time in a long time, in thinking about this post where Nicole and Maggie’s touching on a topic that’s on my mind a lot (Do I really have it together? Have I been hiding things?) I felt not terrible about things. Also, I’m realizing I don’t have any idea what I mean by “together” anyway! Best I can say is I’ve kept most things on the conveyor belt moving most of the time, much like those moments in the chocolate factory about 14 seconds before it all goes horribly wrong in that I Love Lucy episode. Does anyone remember that? But feeling impending catastrophe is not the same thing as actual catastrophe. I’ve always tried to do the best I could, for highly variable values of “best”.

There are many things I wish I could do but can’t right now (in this very moment or this year or further out): supporting a grieving acquaintance, making plans with friends we want to see and haven’t in too long, horseback riding. I don’t have riding time (or money or energy) right now but it doesn’t sting to realize that as much as it once did. I can look at all those wants now as a “later / maybe in a few years” thing rather than an acute failure for not doing it now. Maybe it’s because I’ve made myself rest more during this grieving and illness period, my body and mind are finally getting a moment to heal a little bit. It’s not nearly enough rest but, for the first time in a while, I’m not using this time to kick myself when I’m already down. Therapy!

Though in this same vein, the place where JB does self defense keeps running special event! after special event! Social get togethers, competitions, seminars OH MY. I’m getting exasperated. They get 90 minutes of my time (or PiC’s) up to three times a week, who has time for all this extra stuff? If and when I add more stuff, it’s gotta be something that brings me some joy.

Year 5, Day 43: Warm day ahead and the birds know it. They’re singing their little hearts out this morning. I’m so grateful for my friend who sends many dog pictures and videos daily. It’s not the same as my Sera 🐶 (or Seamus, or Doggle), but it staves off the worst of the dog-loneliness.

We’ve got an unusually jam packed day: PiC’s appointment, JB’s self-defense class, open house. Our friend who doesn’t drive has an appointment late tonight and we’re both frustrated we can’t save them a bus ride by chauffeuring because we’re already over-committed.

Frustration at work keeps increasing. There’s a ton of pressure to fix problems caused by people acting in bad faith, produce more than we can produce, while taking a hit from a hiring misstep. But we still have to try to do the best we can do, even though we now know that it’s impossible to hit our primary KPI, and of course I’m responsible for making it happen. Thus, this headline from a Fortune article resonates: Workers are eyeing the exit in 2024 as LinkedIn and Microsoft study warns more people want to quit their jobs now than during the Great Resignation. For the most part, my job has had the key elements needed to support a comfortable life. Not enough balance but we were getting there. Things changed dramatically this year. It’s too early to say whether it was for the better or worse because a lot of change is still to come, but the changes that have already happened stink. We’re inundated with lousy new colleagues who just barely do their jobs a month and change after deadlines and I’m feeling absolutely stabby. ⚔️ Even while we’re grateful that PiC is still employed, I’m taking many deep breaths. I have to give this some time, not least because we aren’t ready to lose my income either. We can do this.

Third try finally worked! My set of fingerprints are finally approved for volunteering at the school. I don’t want to volunteer for most things that involve herding children and talking to people. I do want to volunteer to help out in the library sometimes. Once in a while. That’s for next year though.

Summer camps are booking up fast, and I’ve booked four weeks of camp with 3-4 more weeks to figure out. I volunteered to take 2 bonus kids (JB’s friend and their sibling) for one of the weeks where we could only do half days. I’ll still be working but figured the kids are old enough to entertain themselves enough to get by for 3 hours a day.

I need to just put the brakes on for literally anything else extra, for a while, I think.

“She’s your friend? You have friends?” #Xena

Year 5, Day 44: Smol Acrobat insisted on sleeping on my arm all night so naturally I couldn’t sleep. They sure woke up cheerfully, though. Still a whole lot more coughing and sneezing today than I’d hoped to be doing on Day 12 of this. I appreciated the day hitting the mid-70s one more time, though. These are our handful of summer weather days for the season, probably. The fog’s rolling back in soon enough.

I’m doing my best to resist the urge to eat all the Girl Scout Lemonade cookies. They’ll all taste great until I hit the fourth one and then it’s all regrets. Just two cookies!

Dear old friend and I had a short chat about how terrible things are right now. Every generation has had their horrible terrible thing that dominated the social consciousness, I admitted, we’re no different in that respect. She’s got 40 years on me, she personally remembers many of them. But, she pointed out, what’s different is this time it feels like democracy is about to collapse. We didn’t have that before in the middle crisis or the Vietnam war and protests and so on. She’s right about that. It does feel like fascism is on the brink of taking over completely more days than not.

“You and I will be together for all eternity” #Xena (Is it just me, or do only villain types think having to exist for an eternity as a good thing?)

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