March 6, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 340: After a high pain weekend, it’s almost (?) a relief to start a weekday where I get to sit for more than 3 hours at a time. It was such a cold day. The rain poured down, becoming hail at one point, and chilled me to the marrow. To further complicate the week, it’s parent-teacher conference week so JB comes home at 1 pm every day. Thank goodness I put it in the Google Calendar or else I would have blown past the pick up entirely. I set new alarms for this week on my phone, both for each day and for the end of the week to go reset all the alarms again.
I promised to take a look at my cousin’s kid’s college scholarship essays if I had time today, so once time-critical work was shelved, I dove into the 6 short essays. It’s been a while since I last read a teen’s writing and I did my best to keep the edits light. It was a favor for my cousin so I didn’t expect to hear from my nibling, but they texted me a polite thanks and I was a little too surprised. Apparently I’m that geezer expecting the younguns to be brats. I recently rendered a similar sort of favor to another cousin whose child never bothered to speak to me directly, and those kids are close, so I mentally painted them with the same brush. Oops. At least I helped in the first place….
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I probably could have (should have? Naaaah…) used that time to help out my staff because they’re also having a high volume Monday but I’ve arranged more resources for them. It doesn’t always have to be me personally that does the work to catch them up.
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Lakota family: I’ve been collecting funds for this family who cares for more than 16 kids. They received an emergency placement of 2 more grandkids, but they’re out of bed space. They asked for bunk beds (and all the bedding stuff), and clothes for the kids, along with hygiene and cleaning supplies. The two grandkids that WR took in came with only the clothes on their backs. One didn’t even have shoes. Another granddaughter also needed clothes. Over the weekend, my friend with older boys gathering up clothes from her kids to contribute, and I found a set of bunk beds and mattresses that we could afford. I hate shopping at Walmart on principle but I couldn’t get it for our budget anywhere else. Now, we need money for the clothes, hygiene, cleaning supplies, etc. I tapped a few friends on the shoulder but this is where the lack of a functioning and robust Twitter really sucks. So much of our fundraising happened there.
Year 3, Day 341: It’s a real limbo-brain sort of day. I’m waiting for a replacement lantern for our emergency kit (due this week), a replacement water bottle (due ??), a reply from Contigo about the other water bottle.
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JB was exposed to COVID last week by a kid who doesn’t mask and we don’t know what day they could have contracted it. We’ve been testing them every day since the weekend. So far, still negative. It’s really not great to have to worry about this.
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Last week my mood was so dark nothing could shake it. Not comfort food, not petting Sera, not toddler giggles and hugs. I even passed on sushi night because I knew it would just make me madder to expect it to help me feel better, and then have that fail. Maybe a baby goat or lamb could have helped but Shep’s too far away. Today, it’s not great but it’s not terrible. Sushi could make a dent this time, so we picked up a few rolls and a sashimi salad to go with soba and tofu from the pantry. Smol Acrobat’s shenanigans (want this! no, that! no, I hate it! wait, I want more! but I hate it! Sit! on! Mama!) did put a damper on my enjoyment but not enough to make it counterproductive.
Grieving for my brother. He was so much more than me, better than me at doing things in so many ways, but his need to seek the quick win and talk the big talk, and then later, his mental health issues, well. He never found his way. I see a neatly groomed young man at the bank with a Vietnamese name on his name tag and my heart aches. That could have been my brother but he’s lost to us now. Alive but gone.
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Lakota family: The bunk beds shipped! I breathed a sigh of relief for that. I hope it is delivered in one piece. I put together a shopping cart of basic supplies and bedding for the kids. Friends have been contributing piecemeal and it’s adding up.
Year 3, Day 342: It’s taking longer each night for the pain subside so I’m getting less and less sleep each day this week. What a terrible trend.
Momentarily having deeply mixed feelings about going to full time daycare. That (foolish) sense of “but we managed with no childcare or only 3 days two months ago” keeps nibbling at me without regard for the reality that it sucked and that we were slowly losing the battle to keep our sanity. This may be down to getting more days of uninterrupted work but not nearly enough hours because JB is only gone 5-6 hours a day. Once upon a time, my ideal was 8-10 solid hours of not speaking to anyone per working day. Now with only 5-6 hours a day, and with the work has been expanding to fill all the hours, plus an hour or two a week catching up with family… it all adds up to feeling incredibly antsy without a specific cause.
At 6 am on Monday (the day this goes live), we have to battle for one of 12 slots in the recreational swim lesson program. Smol should be easier but JB’s classes are really tough to get into. Wish us luck?
Good things today: 3/4 of a soft peanut butter cookie with peanuts in it!
We ended the day on a real low point. Smol Acrobat came home from daycare looking like their face had been mauled. Another kid and they wanted the same toy and the other kid went full Sabretooth on their face. They had HUGE livid scratches and gouges, and lots of perpendicular scratches to the huge gouges that tell me that the kid took more than one pass at them. The teacher was busy with other kids and didn’t catch the altercation, they only noticed when the crying started. PiC has seen the likely culprit acting very aggressively towards other kids when frustrated or wanting something another kid has so we have our suspicions who it is. Smol says yes to their name every time we list the classmate names, and no to everyone else. So that’s incredibly frustrating. As much as we understand that kids this age are terrible at communicating, respecting boundaries, and regulating their emotions, this attack on Smol was much more serious than the standard toddler swipe or smack over a disagreement.
Year 3, Day 343: PiC fielded all the parent and director meetings about the incident at daycare. We discussed after and we’re in a holding pattern now. The daycare has to have a meeting with the other kid’s parents and work out an action plan. Whatever it is, it had better include a whole lot more attention to Smol’s interactions with that particular kid.
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I keep rolling over my list of weekend to-dos. Maybe writing it down means I’ll actually do it? I need to cut JB’s hair and trim the hedges. I did get my other to-do list done: Follow up on missing cashback, get a refund for an order that never arrived, and fix the home back up server.
Year 3, Day 344: Whether it’s because of pain or because of nightmares, Smol woke up several times really upset, gesturing at the scratches on their face, sobbing like their heart was broken. Unusually, when PiC went to them at 5 am, the time he normally takes over the night wakings, Smol sobbed even harder, insisting on me.
That broke my heart. Not the part where they wanted me, but the part where they were so unsettled that they needed me instead of Dad who is their usual go to parent at this time of the day.
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The trouble with putting on old shows for a background soundtrack is they don’t hold up in a lot of ways throughout. There’s just so much casual sexism.
Booth (from Bones) cracking that he and Hodgkins don’t need to talk about an issue because “we’re not girls.” Ick. There’s also the thing where it feels like a form of copaganda, also ick. Though I won’t beat up on myself for wishing we lived in a world where people cared about “justice for all” and not the world we’re actually in.
I prefer more up to date shows like Legacies: (Hope) “I know this is a fairytale and all, but a nonconsensual kiss is never the answer.” It’s just harder to relegate the better shows to background only semi-listening.
February 27, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 333: Smol Acrobat was up at 530 am again. *falls on face* PiC and I split the painful morning hours but even with snagging an extra hour and a half, my body is absolutely wrecked. Over the weekend I developed another sore throat. If this is a new infection, I … well, I would want to throw things but that’s not an option right now. My everything is so off balance that I’ve actually lost muscle memory – plain forgot basic keyword shortcuts when typing.
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PiC said he wanted to spend more time with JB on their day off and I … don’t. Poised on the cliff over Guilt Spiral Bay, I had to remind myself that he spends his work day away from them. I do school pick up every day, which is fine. But that means I’m managing their activities even if minimally on week days. I have a lot less separation between parenting and work time than he does. I’m already “spending time” with them every day, albeit in the least positive way, so it doesn’t make me a bad mom for not wanting more today (on their day off when it’s not our day off). Also, see: sick again. I don’t want to spend time with anyone right now but my pillow and my blanket. Spiral averted.
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Their one chore was getting the laundry from the washer to the dryer and putting it away. Guess who repeatedly ran it on air fluff instead of timed dry, so it was still damp an hour later? Ah well.
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February 20, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 326: I rarely have the Sunday Scaries. What I do have is Sunday how am I starting a new week with my tank on completely empty???
I had a “blocky” weekend. One activity in the morning followed by lunch and putting Smol down for a nap whereupon I crashed for a few hours. Saturday even included a surprise nap for me. But I’m still not starting the day recharged or rested because this damn cough has been wrecking any semblance of rest I could have gotten. Here’s hoping my doc has prescription cough meds I can get immediately.
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Just realized that I started this memory in last week’s post and didn’t have time to finish it: I’m feeling alllllll of my 40 years today. When I was a young teen in martial arts at the community center, we had a classmate. I think he was 40? He could have only been 30. It sort of all looked the same from the vantage point of a 15 year old. Anyway, Harry was older than us by a lot and the poor guy crackled when he tried to stretch out with us. We were limber and young and wow, we really took it for granted. I did, at least.
Now I’m snap-crackle-popping when I turn my head and maaaan. It feels like a little bit of the past coming back to haunt me.
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We got the prescription cough meds just before the pharmacy closed. 🤞🤞
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February 13, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 319: Oh, my aching head. I was up all night coughing and sneezing and intermittently gasping for breath when my nasal passages would suddenly close up. That was not fun.
I thought Smol Acrobat might be turning a corner on their cold-thing as well, they weren’t nearly so unpleasant/moody after their nap yesterday as they’d been all week, but they still woke up screaming at 1 am. At least it was just one time. Sigh.
This is Week Four of random viral something. The better news is that it’s Week 3 of the antidepressants and while I’m not yet 100%, it’s getting better. That very unstable fragile feeling is a little less pressing and present each day. I feel a little less like I’m standing on a raft in a stormy sea each day.
Year 3, Day 320: My brain worked at the speed of the original game of Pong today.
Bink. Bonk.
Bink. Bonk.
Bink.
PLONK.
By the time we had to leave for JB’s class, it was an empty echoing cavern.
I can’t tell if this is the depression, anxiety, or being sick for a month finally all being too much for me. Or just Tuesday. Could just be a Tuesday.
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Smol Acrobat is an absolute pill at meals and tonight’s dinner was no different. They ate several bites voluntarily but then everything was screech! No! Demand! No! Demand! No!
They particularly dislike my insistence that they behave like a human with manners and say please along with whatever verb we’re fielding. They hold food hostage midmeal, holding it over the edge of their chair, asking yes? Yes?
NO.
Yes?
NO.
Yes? *grins, drops it*
They’re a tiny villain in the making.
Year 3, Day 321: Smol is keeping up their game of playing favorites and of course since PiC had an 8 am meeting, they chose him. That meant every single thing was a fight: wants milk. No, wants milk from Daddy.
Wants to get in the chair to eat. No, wants DADDY to help them into the high chair.
Wants milk. NO, milk from Mama is poison.
Wants more bagel. With cream cheese. No, don’t put away the peanut butter! Want cream cheese on bagel and want to see the peanut butter jar sitting on the counter. No reason.
Unreasonable terrorist! We fought every inch of our way through washing up, putting on socks and shoes, dropping off JB and coming back home.
They finally called a truce when I offered the opportunity to dump yard clippings into the compost. Thankfully, the hedge needed trimming badly anyway, so I clipped and they gathered. I can’t lift my arms now but at least we had peace for about 25 minutes.
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Mental health today was a bit shaky. I couldn’t figure out why.
I had outdoor time with the unreasonable toddler in the morning. I had a good but short conversation with my cousin. I picked up JB and walked Sera and floated a plan to bake a random cake today if JB gets all their chores done. We have an extra Duncan Hines strawberry cake box mix from their birthday. I don’t actually like it much, myself, though everyone else does. I used to love the box mixes but this one tastes chemical-ly to me. What’s a good box mix we should try instead?
Catching up with a friend late at night it occurred to me that the tough morning with Smol left me feeling like I was on a back foot all day. I was probably as emotionally exhausted as I was physically.
Year 3, Day 322: We’ve been seeing a lot of new birds around the house lately. Usually it’s just blackbirds and a bluejay, but I spotted a few robins last week and two blue headed, rusty red breasted small birds yesterday. I might have to try and look them up.
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Mental health today is … still opaque. It was a nice day outside. I appreciated the warmth of the sun, and cool breeze. But it just underlined the feeling that I can’t remember how to feel joy or happiness without the burden of whatever it is I’m feeling now. Heaviness. Bit of numbness.
This NYTimes opinion (gift link) article on supporting a friend with depression and suicidal ideation may be the closest to accurately describing the experience (and what one needs when dealing with depression) that I’ve seen in a long while: How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair?
It’s only later that I read that when you give a depressed person advice on how to get better, there’s a good chance all you are doing is telling the person that you just don’t get it.
I tried to remind Pete of all the wonderful blessings he enjoyed, what psychologists call “positive reframing.” I’ve since read that this might make sufferers feel even worse about themselves for not being able to enjoy all the things that are palpably enjoyable.
I learned, very gradually, that a friend’s job in these circumstances is not to cheer the person up. It’s to acknowledge the reality of the situation; it’s to hear, respect and love the person; it’s to show that you haven’t given up on him or her, that you haven’t walked away.
Year 3, Day 323: Our first Friday with childcare! It felt a bit strange. Not that we have had any actual routines on Fridays, it’s frequently a catch as catch can sort of merry go round with PiC and I taking turns hopping on childcare and school pickup and trading work time. We are just testing the full time waters without commitment right now and seeing what issues it raises for us. Right off the bat, I know PiC is nervous about the huge jump in cost. I was too, but I’ve been processing that for months. The other big thing is the dropoff and pickup grind. The daycare facilities are quite nice so we know they’re getting lots of chances to explore new things we can’t offer at home. BUT that means that it’s challenging getting them in and out of the classroom because they want to dawdle and explore and poke around and climb this thing and play with that giant connect four thing and wait! There is sports equipment right here to grab hold of and and and. It’s a solid 45 minutes at the top and bottom of each day.
That’s not including the 30-60 minutes of fighting with Smol to get them to get dressed, eat, wash up, put on socks and shoes, and a jacket and to go. You’d figure it was a 25 minute routine, right? Yes, if they cooperate. They have never cooperated. It’s constant redirection and herding them and working through one meltdown after another. We’ve never had a morning free of crying floor angel or rolling log full of scream. Not once. Toddlers. They’re hell on the nerves.
Still, at the end of this day, physically, I didn’t feel like a steamrollered pile of muck. It’s a weird distinction to make to folks with reasonable health, I’m imagining. I’m tired, yes. Very worn out, definitely. But I don’t feel that imperative to crawl into a dark hole and pull it in after me like most Fridays before this. This seems to be an improvement. Is it because of the meds or because of the childcare? Maybe both.
February 6, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 312: I’m on Week 3 of a cough and sore throat that won’t quit. Smol Acrobat came down sick yesterday and couldn’t nap or sleep properly so they’re home, and JB’s off school today too. Depression grabbed me by the throat on Saturday and it’s been a 48-hour-and-counting fight to stay neutral against passive self harm ideation, digging in my heels against spiraling further down this riptide, with no end in sight.
To say I’m gritting it out is an understatement.
At any given moment, I’m on the verge of throwing up, screaming with rage, and curling up into a ball of apathy never to move again. At the same time. Depression is a bizarre companion. Fatigue doesn’t make anything better.
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January 30, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 307: Woof. Stayed out way too late last night. Happy Year of the Bunny or Cat depending on which zodiac you use!
I’m going with Bunny-Cat. Which makes me think of Bunnicula.
I’m on Week 1 of the new medications. Telling myself to be patient during these first three weeks isn’t actually making me be patient.
It’s annoying that while I was the frog slowly boiling in depression, I was entirely focused on surviving day to day. Now that I KNOW that it’s likely been what’s driving at least some of my inability to focus or be patient, now that I am actually on meds, I’m hyperaware of each symptom that’s been blocking my focus. Irritability! Anxiety! Snapping at JB for being late! Anger at myself for being late! Anger about my fatigue! Every! Unreasonable! Thing!
Please let my lowest effective dose be really low so that I can get to it sooner than later. I don’t know that my frayed temper can take four or five weeks of this.
Year 3, Day 308: I actually slept deeply last night but still struggled to get up. I can’t say I felt rested, generally I never do, but I felt less unrested if that makes sense. I’ll take it and hope for more.
The tendons in my fingers aren’t working right today. That’s awkward! I rather need my fingers to flex as needed. That’s sort of crucial to all the typing and dog walking, eating, and driving that has to happen today.
Letter writing was a lot harder too, with fingers that didn’t want to grip or glide a pen across paper.
Year 3, Day 309: My mentor reminded me that we have enough money that we can use some of it to buy our peace of mind. I’ve had to sit with that reminder a bit to see what form of help we can buy that would be a net benefit.
Some things, like hiring cleaners, are more stressful than they are helpful because PiC is extremely particular about taking care of our things and the last set of cleaners didn’t use ladders or stepstools, they climbed right on our furniture and floating vanities to clean above them. That worried me, I didn’t want them slipping and falling off or the floating vanity to crack off the wall. At installation we were told the beams attaching it to the could hold a certain amount of weight but the vanity weight plus a person might be too much.
I’ll start with ordering food delivery. It’s not the best bang for our buck but on Friday, we won’t have to figure out what to do for dinner and that’s a small cache of brain we can reclaim. PiC and I both think about dinner, that’s probably not efficient, but we’re sharing the pain and that’s something.
Bigger picture, we may have to take that full time daycare hit sooner than planned. Last year, I thought maybe we’d start around the summer. Now, I’m thinking… maybe much sooner. These part time weeks are wearing on me this year.
Year 3, Day 310: Every time I hear a pharma ad run through the side effects and say something about not taking this while breastfeeding, I feel this whooosh of relief that I’m not going to ever breastfeed again.
The prices at our new local Mediterranean restaurant have gone up 20%. Yeeps! I ordered anyway. We’ll have some for dinner tonight and I’ll freeze some for next week.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are hectic. I’m cramming a whole day of work into a few hours before self defense. We try to arrive half an hour early so we can get parking and to give JB another 15-25 minutes of cardio. The kids play serious games of tag and gymnastics before class starts. Makes me feel like we’re getting extra bang for our buck. We already save 30% by prepaying for the year but when would I ever turn down a little extra bonus?
I hit the Gap and Old Navy clearance sales for our Lakota families. If everything ships, I’ll have acquired 44 tops, 10 pairs of pants, 10 pairs of sneakers and toddler boots, and 64 pairs of socks split between the Allen Youth Center and the Red Shirt School for $370.
Year 3, Day 311: Maybe the meds are helping even at sub-therapeutic levels. Maybe it’s a placebo effect. Whatever it is, even with my cold getting much worse today, and terrible sleep interrupted with nightmares, heartburn, and other indefensible reasons last night, my level of end of week despair was not nearly as high as any other Friday of the past few months. PiC did cover a lot of the work day with Smol and that helped too but I took my turns both morning and afternoon despite feeling like garbage with this cough and chills.
Today’s dinner: small pies and fancy salads!
Pies: Chicken Tikka Masala, Cajun Chicken, Beef and Stout, Apple Saffron
Salads that I wouldn’t have time to make: Seared Lemon Pepper Tuna , Tabouli Quinoa Salad with Mediterranean Chicken, Duck Breast.
Very expensive for the quantities we’re getting but I couldn’t make this without doubling the cost in time and ingredients. Triple that of frustration. Also it’s sampler style so we can taste four different pies in one go. One pie can barely happen around here, forget more than that!
January 23, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 300: I love and hate holiday Mondays. This one everyone else has off except me. I should have taken it as a vacation day but I forgot to.
On the one hand, it never feels like Monday, it feels like an odd floater day and it makes all the rest of the week feel off. On the other hand, I got to sleep in a little because Smol didn’t insist on being officially awake at 6 am (minor miracle) and no one else had to be taken to school or to daycare or anything by a certain time. I always appreciate a little more rest when I’m this fatigued. My nights have been plagued with intense fear nightmares since last week. My subconscious is clearly fixated on my fear of abandonment. Is this enhanced because of the upcoming psych evaluation? I realize that I’ve internalized the old stigma of the ADD/ADHD from days past. I certainly didn’t feel anything like judgement for friends who were diagnosed in adulthood in the past few years but I feel it for myself.
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