April 4, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 10: Somehow, it’s never easier in the way you’d think it’ll be when just one of us has the day off. One of us is trying to use that time to get a lot of work done and then overdoes it, leaving the other one to overdo it with childcare and meal prep, and then everyone’s grumpy.
On top of that, Mondays are definitely the day you find out that someone screwed up two months ago. That despite your weekly confirmations that progress was being made on this project and finding out that not only was it not being made, it was never going to be worked on ever, and all your reassurances to dozens of stakeholders that it would be ready soon were wrong. Yes definitely a Monday thing. Chewed up precious precious time I did not have to spare. Chewed up patience I did not have to spare. Harumph.
Today felt like Friday. It was not.
*****
Smol times… While this is my favorite age range for babies/toddlers, it’s also the time they start the real tantrums when thwarted and it lasts longer than the time it takes to distract them with something else that’s shiny. They’re also really quick to spot anything you’re holding and declaring they MUST SEE IT. So thaaaat’s fun. (more…)
March 28, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 3: As promised, the Things Got Even Harder edition!
Challenge 1: 3 hours of sleep, y’all. Painsomnia had me deep in the marrow and it burned until 3 am. Of course, right when I finally drifted off, Smol’s white noise app, which runs on an iPhone so old it’s literally splitting apart, shut off and up popped Smol like a chirping jack o’lantern. I fixed it and went back to bed quietly cursing, and finally slept at 4 am. Fab. U. Lous.
Perfect way to start an incredibly hard first day of a tough week.
Challenge 2: PiC had to go on site for work today. That left me with Smol most of the day. So naturally….
Challenge 3: Smol woke up after a 45 minute nap sobbing fit to wake the dead. I’d prepared myself for a short nap and so I maintained my emotional equilibrium. I sat on the floor with them patting and humming, my butt going entirely numb, waiting for them to calm down. Usually they take about 10 minutes to stop crying and then signal they’re ready to get going. Today was weird. Of course it was. They kept kneeing me in the stomach when I stopped humming or patting, so I kept it up, working on my phone as much as I could while also patting and humming. My arms and butt were losing feeling steadily. But I figured I’d enjoy the cuddle however long I had it, it’s rare that they sit still anymore. Then they finally sat up, I got ready to get up, and FLOP. They burrowed onto my left shoulder, right cheek bright red. They’d been sleeping! And were going to keep on sleeping. Alrighty. So they got a catnap laying on me while I did what little I could on my phone. Momentary regret that my phone is too decrepit to have more work apps so I could make the most of that time.
Challenge 4: When they felt ready to get up, it was time to go go go for three hours. Time for food, play, more play, try to cram in a minute or two of work here and there whenever they veered off to do their own thing for a bit. Already tired, this was a particularly rough patch.
Challenge 5: Realizing I botched my own weekly meal / dinner plans by not ordering earlier. They sold out. Sigh. I’m too tired to kick myself. I’m just disappointed. We’ll figure it out.
*****
(more…)
March 21, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 361: *The day numbering reflects when I started chronicling our lives in the pandemic, about a week or two into the shutdowns.
This two year “anniversary” of when our lives all turned upside and stayed upside down has been bonus difficulty levels with a yucky cherry on top. We’re all frustrated and angry because even with little bits of “normalcy” like in person school for JB, everything else remains so topsy turvy that the stressors outweigh any good exponentially.
I’m starting to feel some resentment that folks have routine childcare support and we don’t even though I care about them and want them to have it. Or envy of that resource at least. I’m most definitely resentful that companies are acting like things can go back to normal now and are scheduling in person travel and conferences as if we parents of under 5s don’t have ENTIRELY unprotected kids. I’m so angry and tired of feeling like every minute of every single day is a slog because we can never take a break. We can swap off childminding for an hour or two at a time, yes, but there are always chores to do and there is always household stuff to do and we are always fighting against a tsunami of Needs to carve out any time for ourselves. And then I feel like an absolute heel for complaining, even just in my head or here, because there are lots of people who are in far far far worse situations.
*****
Some of this is because things that were already hard are going to get even harder. PiC has to go back to work on site. He now has conferences that require him to travel. I have absolutely ZERO idea how we’re going to manage that.
Spring break and summer are fast approaching. We’ve looked at multiple scenarios and they’re mostly impossible to manage because it adds hours of commute in addition to our work and Smol Acrobat schedules. And no matter what we choose, daycare or some combination of camps and at home virtual stuff, it’s going to cost $2000 a month just for JB.
I broke down and cried today. I don’t know how much more I can give.
***** (more…)
March 14, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 354: Smol started the festivities at FIVE AM.
I, having had severe heartburn until 2 am, was less than pleased. And less than half conscious. Thank goodness PiC took them for the morning round as usual.
I finally crawled out just after 7 am, barely functional and wishing for day’s end. What a way to start the week!
*****
JB had the gall to watch PiC making their lunch, to their exact specifications, and then asked: can I buy lunch today?
I came down on that like a ton of bricks. How rude!! Children, I tell ya.
*****
We had leftover ramen for lunch, yum. I’m glad that PiC pushed me into catering to my cravings yesterday. There was nothing on Bentocart we wanted so we decided that local takeout would be our “ease the pain” meals this week. It’s still surprising how much decision making capacity is freed up by choosing ahead of time to pay for just two meals that someone else cooks ready to reheat for dinners and maybe some leftovers for lunch. The planning ahead is one huge bonus, we’re no longer stressing over what to order and pick up while juggling two kids who need our attention now now now. We plan ahead and get the meals in the course of our chores. It also frees up enough energy to cook the rest of the week, without scraping rock bottom, or snarling to ourselves like bewildered rabid badgers!
Saturday afternoon I had cooked a big batch (4 large chicken breasts, from 2 Costco chicken packs) of the baked panko chicken. Remembering to spray oil on the foil before baking was instrumental to this batch turning out better than my first try and JB declared it their FAVORITE. That was a big enough batch for two dinners and a snack. I’d not have this foresight or energy without the takeout assist.
*****
I finally asked the right questions and updated my spreadsheets with a whole chunk of investing information on a portion of PiC’s portfolio I didn’t have before. We make decisions on that portfolio together but since I’d assumed the website was through his company intranet, I couldn’t access it. Not true! So now I have a whole load of information at my fingertips to work with and make better decisions with. That’s exciting.
***** (more…)
March 7, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 347: An ill-timed Amber Alert at 1 am woke me up and destroyed my ability to sleep the rest of the night. 😩 It was not good. Smol was up before 6 am which was also not appreciated and so I welcomed the dawn with bones made of lava. Le sigh.
*****
JB’s latest musical obsession is with the soundtrack from Encanto and it’s deeply uncomfortable. The songs cut so close to home and especially after brain therapy, Surface Pressure broke what little remained of my composure:
I don’t ask how hard the work is
Got a rough, indestructible surface
….
Under the surface
I’m pretty sure I’m worthless if I can’t be of service
….
Give it to your sister, it doesn’t hurt and
See if she can handle every family burden
Watch as she buckles and bends but never breaks
No mistakes, just
Pressure like a grip, grip, grip, and it won’t let go, whoa-
(more…)
February 28, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 340: Woof. Still recovering from the weekend physically. And I foolishly skipped the full dose of diphenhydramine I’ve been taking to force myself to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. On purpose or by accident? I don’t remember. Either way, I couldn’t sleep until very late and then couldn’t get up early. Sigh. I don’t want to be dependent on a sleep aid in the sense that I always need it to help me sleep at a reasonable hour but I am very dependent on sleep to live. Not loving this impasse. But for now I’m putting myself back on the full dose this week to get my body the rest it needs.
Upon emerging from our bedroom, in my haze, I was greeted by a chuckling Smol escaping from the bathroom, zipper bag of trial size mouthwashes swinging from one hand, headed straight for my knees. They were in such a good mood, it was a bit contagious, especially when they started chasing me around the house cackling.
*****
I’m fighting with myself to maintain a healthy boundary in one of my relationships. A loved one is having financial difficulties after an already long and arduous road to get where they are today. I have been supporting them for years in various ways, knowing that I have to NOT go overboard and have been relatively good about making myself stick to boundaries, but I still instinctively want to rescue them. I know that is unsustainable, it can’t be my (fifth) job, and it cannot be what my life revolves around. But it’s still hard to tell that part of me to sit down and just care without trying to take on their burdens for them.
This impulse is what my biodad played on for so long and it needs to be corralled.
I also have to stop feeding that deep down belief that I only have value when and if I help people. I need to find the belief that I am a good enough person as is somewhere in me.
***** (more…)
February 21, 2022
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 333: Our week of summer ended with yesterday’s warmth and fancy free sunshine. Today we’re back to cold, fog, and gloom. Brrrrrr!
*****
I was in a real mood all morning and because my brain was operating entirely off-kilter, ended up doing my work out of preferred order which just made it worse. I ended my morning work session without a certain amount of work done and the out of orderness meant that all the wrong and more irritating work was front and center.
I griped to PiC like a giant baby about my mood over lunch.
Smol’s staying awake longer between their first and second naps which means taking a 3-4 hour break from work that we have to get done later.
He had some emails to tackle after lunch but decided it was more important to go out with me, Sera, and Smol for a longer walk. It did help my mood so I’m glad he did.
Joking darkly with Abby about wanting to quit my job and how we’d engineer a windfall also helped.
We had our first Bentocart delivery which just happened to have enough Italian to work with the heart shaped pasta that JB asked for at the grocery store over the weekend to make an Italian dinner. Smol enjoyed 1.5 (weirdly buttery and weirdly delicious) meatballs and a double (adult) handful of heart pasta enough to feed themselves and thus redeemed themselves after yesterday’s dinner disaster where I felt like a failure because I couldn’t get the child to consume more than half a banana.
I keep forgetting that this kid isn’t a black hole for food and it is royally confusing when they eat like a small toddler with a moderate appetite. Tonight was better.
Speaking of forgetting things. I wasn’t feeling the same level of steaming garbage pain and fatigue as usual this morning and irrationally expected myself to feel happy as a result. Except everything else was still the same: COVID, working from home, no childcare, no under-5 vaccine, still juggling crappy conditions at work, still frustrated as hell over various family situations, still unable to plan anything for the year because so much that might be something to look forward to is dependent on a vaccine.
Big worries, small irritants, everything in between, that’s all the same even if I got half a decent night of sleep and don’t want to cry when I take two steps. I forget that feeling physically better isn’t a cure-all, it just feels like it should be.
*****
I’m feeling some real pressure to get JB enrolled into sports. They really miss their swim lessons, and I really want them to learn how to swim well before too long and while they still have the drive to learn. It’s an important life skill. They also need another activity to build their stamina. We’d been exploring either gymnastics or martial arts to start a second thing pre-pandemic but of course that plan went to hell. I feel like time is getting away from us. Suddenly they’re seven years old but can’t swim well because they’ve lost 2.5 years of practice. At the same time, we’re still in a holding pattern of juuuuuust keeping it together and I want to cry at the thought of adding one more thing to our plates. I guess the one thing that’s improved is as much of a handful as Smol is, they’re bigger and getting a bit easier to manage in some ways. Mostly not easy but still, as much as I love squashy infants, they are an absolute wrecking ball of work and fussiness. Smol has their things but they’re better now. So maybe that pressure has let up just enough for us to be able to take on something else for JB.
PiC has taken charge of getting information for some sports for us to evaluate. When I get over this feeling of overwhelm, we’ll sit down and figure something out.
I wish this dog could help me out.
*****
Smol’s firsts: they’re trying to give kisses now which are more like getting licked by a suckerfish. They also started rage squealing and biting when thwarted in their attempted to break into a cabinet so that’s a lot of fun.
Year 2, Day 334: What. A. Day.
Our tiny terrorist had a little mercy on us and didn’t wake everyone up at 5 am. That was much appreciated.
I’m frustrated with some things at work. Things are slowly improving, they’re a world better than they were last fall, but we’re only halfway through the struggle, I think. The internal issues all need time and patience to work out and I’m, as previously advertised, perilously in short supply of both. We’ll get through it, I was just feeling it particularly hard today.
The external stuff is more frustrating. Our clientele of late have been a particularly trying lot. They lie, they behave unethically and try to get away with it (no), lie some more, act totally entitled, and THEN expect to be coddled. I am doing my best not to let my feelings splash out on my team but here I can say more honestly: I hate these people so much. I’m sick of this nonsense. Act right and tell the truth! *HARUMPH*
It’s not all of them but it’s a large enough subset to make me gnash my teeth several times a day and I don’t see an end to these. But, as a leader, I have to keep my hollering under wraps among my reports because I don’t want to demoralize them. I’m here to hear their frustrations and empathize and help, not to dump my annoyance on them. It’s a bit isolating at times but I don’t think it’d be a good thing if I did have someone in the company to whine at anyway, that’s a bad habit to get into. Anyway, after working late into the night to resolve one person’s problems they created and still having half the problem to go, I’m calling it quits for today. I’ve had more than enough and I’ll have to try again tomorrow.
I don’t know how people shake it when they’ve hit this level of funk with clients at a job but a way must be found and soon. Maybe the way is a long vacation.
*****
I did a combo Bentocart order and cooking dinner: tofu soup (mine), lentil salad (mine), and pulled pork salad (theirs). Everyone had their favorite thing but everyone had some lentils, even Smol, which was nice. We still have one entree left from our big Monday order to serve for tomorrow’s dinner so I’m happy with how this first order stretched so far. I am not sure next week will work as well, I was struggling to find anything that sounded particularly appealing for either Monday or Tuesday. But that’s my weird appetite thing again. Sometimes I want all the food, sometimes I’m meh about everything. It’s not helpful!
*****
Over the weekend, a conversation with Maggie reminded me that I hadn’t even looked at our Alaska Air miles since the pandemic started, after working so very hard to build up a stash of miles for our Imaginary Big Fancy Trip to Somewhere. That triggered a big dash of adrenaline-worry: Am I going to lose all our miles??? We were told that PiC’s stash was set to expire in ten days without account activity and they had no idea when mine would expire so I quickly made donations from our accounts and held my breath. Still holding my breath yesterday, the activity hasn’t recorded yet. It’s still within the 3-5 business days they estimated for posting the activity so I’m hoping that both of our accounts will be ok by the end of the week.
Year 2, Day 335: Smol’s mercy extended one more day which was fortunate and appreciated.
I continue to be frustrated by complex tasks cropping up at work but that’s what I’m paid to deal with. 😒 Meh.
I AM happy that Smol’s in my favorite age range with babies though. Smol gets into everything of course but they’re cute and little and walking like a determined and dizzy zombie, two arms extended forward, cackling or calling out nonsensical syllables like a tipsy town crier. They play in weird and interesting ways, they emote Really Intensely and cycle through emotions.
Oh! I emailed the local gym about their masking policies for the summer camp. I’m hoping they will require masking and JB might be able to do a week or two of summer gymnastics for fun at this age before it gets intense and competitive.
Year 2, Day 336: SCADS of Good News today! The HSA transfer from Random Crappy Company to Fidelity is done! WOO!
Both our Alaska Air mileage accounts updated to show activity so we are safe for another two years. I will plan to do a bit of card churning this year to add some miles too. Look at me, living with hope that we’ll ever travel again!
AND some good developments at work are happening. Really helpful for the morale.
Today is JB and PiC’s Friday, they both have Friday off. Lucky ducks! They did the Trader Joe’s run while I dealt with some pressing business and came home with 14 bananas because we’ve been eating them like monkeys lately. Literally. JB eats them upside down now. Because that’s how monkeys do it! Duh.
*****
Reflecting on how this week was different: we both felt that ordering premade meals for the start of the week made a huge difference in our stress levels. You could see it as simply paying for the privilege of moving the thinking about dinner to a different time but I perceive it very differently when I am setting up some orders for the next week rather than trying to get something now for tonight when I’m feeling the ticking of the clock as I / we have to make a decision with work demanding our attention and kids tugging at us and a dog to walk and and and. Planning ahead comes with an different kind of dopamine hit, the satisfaction of knowing you’ve settled a future question and you’re going to enjoy that later. It’s the same happy spot in my brain that loves travel planning even more than travel itself.
It also takes the pressure off in both not having to cook in that very small window of time between work and dinner and takes full cooking duties off both our plates for a couple days. It’s costly but I think I’m accepting that buying ourselves sanity this way is acceptable. We’ll do less when we have more childfree time back.
Year 2, Day 337: The Smol Acrobat is out of mercy. Up before 6 am making today feel like a Monday top to nearly bottom.
But since PiC had the day off, he caught the early baby, and I prepped their Adventure Lunch.
He went for a rare weekday run during Smol’s first nap while I worked and JB did chores and took TV breaks. They’re currently in love with Encanto video activities so they did a couple of those.
My break at lunch time was all about getting them out the door by noon, and off on an Adventure they went! Sera stayed home with me and for three blissful hours the house was otherwise empty. I had my pre-pandemic lunch of a cheese quesadilla eaten while hovering over my keyboard dashing through emails and I cleared enough of my work to be in shouting distance of caught up when they got back.
As Monday as it felt internally, PiC’s day off was greatly to my benefit to make it a Friday by the end of the night.
They all had a wonderful time out and about and came home in radiant moods. Smol passed out HARD when I put them down for a nap but was so happy that they didn’t even have the I’m sooooooo tired meltdown. JB floated on air the rest of the day.
:: Do you get all discombobulated by long weekends?