By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (210)

June 10, 2024

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 68: I woke up to a very swollen hook finger (swollen so much it can neither bend nor be straightened out. Hook!) and that set the tone of the day. Smol Acrobat was very clingy all through breakfast. I couldn’t shake the looming doomsies feeling from the moment I sat down to work, I also couldn’t quite focus without being hyper aware that I’d overdone it over the weekend and that should have provided dopamine for days, instead my brain is quietly chanting new dopamine new dopamine in the background like whispering Minions. Waiting for a lot of things to ship/arrive: snacks for my Lakota sponsee, the hose accoutrements so the drip watering system can work properly, an answer about my new seeds order.

I keep hoping something going right will fix the mindset or settle down the unpleasant unsettled restless feelings but that’s not happening.

Instead I got the opposite of a fix: a meeting ran way too long and then my team ran into tech problems that ate the rest of my afternoon like a hydra chomping on a nice snack. What a Monday. I received too much Monday, I need to return some. Where do I send it?

Year 5, Day 69: I miss my girl. I just realized again today that I can yell at my computer in frustration without upsetting any canine sensibilities. On the one hand, great, I’m yelling, but on the other, of course I wish I couldn’t. The grief has dulled, it’s a bearable sadness.

Whenever the turmoil at work gets to be too much and a friend says “you’re great you can get another job if they suck”, I feel the opposite of reassured. I know what they mean but also (I sound whiny even to me here, sorry, I know) I don’t wanna. Where else can I be a total gremlin? Avoiding talking to people 99.9% of the time is a huge factor in my quality of life. While the job is definitely imperfect, it caters to the highly antisocial part of me. I can exist in almost sheer isolation, while still managing a large team, which has preserved a good deal of my energy for the important things all these years. That’s the part that’s so hard to replace. Any other high level management job is going to require peopling to an unbearable degree.

Changing jobs may be unavoidable but … Cross your fingers that it’s not?

Year 5, Day 70: My hook finger is a hook no more! Yay!

We can never use up a whole container of sour cream or even remember we have it. The waste makes me sour. How do you remember things that accidentally get pushed to the back of the fridge or are only a sometimes food?

PiC brought home a chocolate chip and a raisin bagel, the tasty and the terrible respectively, leftovers from some work meeting. Raisins are for other people (like everyone else in my household).

We’re on the last steps of THIS chore!: The will and trusts have been updated to include Smol Acrobat, change our executor(s), disinherit my biodad and biobrother from claims on the estate or guardianship of the kids (in the hopefully unlikely event that our chosen guardian won’t be available, the court will generally go first to bio relations and I don’t want them to be in the mix AT ALL), and name backup beneficiaries. We need to sign the documents with a remote notary, and we need to find a friend to witness that signing. Once that’s done, I’ll make copies available to our executors and our chosen guardian so if they’re actually needed in the worst case scenario, all responsible people have the required documentation in hand already. I’ve seen some horror stories about people having had wills made but locked them in some drawer where they couldn’t be found, thereby rendering them useless and the estate went to someone it was not intended to go to.

I’m beyond overwhelmed right now. In the next two weeks, at home, we have scheduled: a (much anticipated) family visit, a wedding, 2 more family visits, a funeral (not someone I knew but family knew). At work, everything is a complete mess, and tons of vacations requiring coverage coming up, and tons of recruiting I have to somehow do at the same time, and KPIs to meet. My ears and shoulders have become one.

Year 5, Day 71: Work: terrible. Spreadsheets to document the terrible have been enabled so we can try to attempt to fix ALL the terrible and also because there is SO MUCH terrible that I can’t keep track of it all.

Also terrible, I’m still waging bureaucratic war with UHC that is holding more than $1000 hostage. They keep rejecting my therapy claims with “PLEASE PROVIDE DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES PROVIDED SO WE MAY PROCESS YOUR CLAIM REQUEST”.

I DID! SIX TIMES! On every claim! There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the ones that they accept and the ones they reject. For some claims, it looks like they have actually sent more rejections than I have submitted claims. United Healthcare is the worst.

Also also, Smol Acrobat spiked a fever and tested positive for COVID AGAIN today. Then negative six hours later. I’m thoroughly confused. PiC and I are negative… I’m not feeling great but that’s as much attributable to stress and sleep deprivation as any virus.

But my claw finger is still not a claw (yay!) and the green bean sprouts have put out two large leaves each (yay!) and the snap pea and snapdragon seeds have arrived (yay!) so I will plant some tomorrow? This weekend?

PiC is a saint, he ran to Costco late tonight to pick up supplies and also get me a new hose for our drip irrigation system that’s awesome except for the wickedly leaky old hose that we haven’t used in about 7 years and no wonder it’s leaky after sitting in the sun and fog all this time.

Year 5, Day 72: Smol Acrobat’s third COVID test is negative. So did they have COVID this round of fever or not? I have no idea and I hate this all so much. Smol Acrobat has also started engaging in prolonged histrionics this week, screaming they want or need a hug at the top of their lungs but refusing all overtures. These fits last anywhere from 15 minutes to a record 75 minutes, set off by the most innocuous things. It’s exhausting. I can’t tell if this is a post-COVID or a terrible-threes or both thing but I’m very much ready for the fits to stop.

I was going to push myself to help clear out the work logs for my team who are swamped because of the Terrible, but then remembered that I handle an entire section of work alone on top of active management work . They each have 2-6 people backing them up, and I have no one. So it’s probably ok that I don’t ALSO over extend myself to help them (which necessarily means neglecting my whole host of responsibilities).

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