August 2, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 134: I woke myself up shouting at a neighbor for dismissing her kid’s attempt to murder my baby as “that’s just what kids do” and that really set the tone for my day. I won’t say it exactly went downhill from there, it just kept circling the drain as Smol struggled to nap, JB’s class started unexpectedly late and I had to scramble to get some Spanish activities together so they weren’t just wasting time, then JB couldn’t get themselves together enough to knock off 2 minutes of chores in under 20 minutes. I definitely lost my temper at the 15th distraction and shouted. I normally don’t shout but zero of the firm non shouting reminders or stern warnings worked.
I just want the house to myself for two hours. Just two hours that’s all I’m asking. Instead we’re getting ready to attend a far away funeral and it’s going to be time for me to be trapped in a car with a severely undersocialized extrovert for 9 hours and I think I will truly lose my mind. Bye-bye mind. Bye-bye.
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Over the weekend, I finally downloaded the last pictures up to the present time from our phones and cleared out the Google Drives so they’re no longer threatening to shut down. That’s Phase 1.
Phase 2 is renaming a whole hell of a lot of files and editing their metadata so they’re as correct as possible. That’s going to suck where I have old files that have been through multiple programs and lost the right file metadata. Phase 3 is deleting the 2 years worth of files I already uploaded to the NAS. Phase 4 is uploading all the completed files that have all the corrected file metadata to our NAS.
I’m giving myself a small break before I start Phase 2.
Actually, a small break and an interim task. I’m going to create the private shared file where I will be saving copies of our estate plan to share that and the action plan in case something happens to us. We’re going to need to change the executors of our will, and once that’s done, our executors will need easy access to the paperwork. I also want to make sure they have access to it sooner than later so we can have a conversation about what we want.
The point of this is to say: holy crap I’m doing my work so much faster when I’m JUST doing my work and not also juggling the two data streams. Also: man, I still got through all my work last week even while juggling multiple major personal projects. I’m pretty awesome.
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July 26, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 127: At first, I thought this was a GET THEE OUT OF THE KITCHEN kind of day.
I boiled 6 eggs to make deviled eggs. They were all boiled the same amount of time and yet 3 were soft boiled, 1 was fine, the last 2 were put back on to boil because I didn’t even want to risk it. I added three more eggs to a new pot to boil and forgot about it and burned the eggs and the pot. Then I got into a fight with the formula dispenser and spilled half a pod of formula all over the counter and the floor. By midday, point, I was just grateful that no living beings were hurt.
It turns out my ill luck was more widespread than that. Everything I touched went wrong in some way. I made bulgogi, roasted broccoli, and roasted potatoes. The bulgogi was sort of watery, the broccoli cold, the potatoes slightly underdone.
I’ve been fighting to reclaim data on Google Photos with zero luck, it won’t budge despite my having downloaded and permanently deleted several GBs of files and photos since last week. I found a folder of 2017-2019 photos in Drive taking up space so I dumped that too. Somehow, a spreadsheet I use daily to store project notes, financial research, and other important stuff was caught up in that, and permanently deleted. I had to sit with some pretty nasty feelings for a while when I saw that “file was deleted” note. So much work, gone.
And given the number of times I saw warnings about “are you sure? Deleting these files permanently means they cannot be retrieved” I know they’re gone gone.
I’ll have to recreate it from memory as best I can over time. I’ll also need to look into how to sync my Google Drive files to our NAS because if I lose any even more important spreadsheets, I really will throw up.
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Money things, my phone. I’m running up against a serious lack of storage again. I only took the 64 GB phone when I upgraded to the Pixel and gave PiC my iPhone a couple years back. That was foolish of me. I’m on this mega mission to move all the photos off our devices and backing them up elsewhere so if I can get that done, I will reclaim that storage. I really don’t want to have to replace my phone until next year. I just bought a new phone for PiC last year, I’d like to go a year in between phone purchases if possible.
Year 2, Day 128: Maureen’s tweets (below) very much encapsulates how I feel about the world right now and travel. I still don’t want to because THE NUMBER OF DECISIONS we have to make with every single thing we do is overwhelming. (more…)
July 19, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 120: PiC graciously took the 6 am wake up period with Smol, so I took the 8:30 am-12 pm shift with the kids. JB had tutoring for a big block of that time so it was me and Smol for most of that time. JB was predictably furious that Smol had to go down for their nap by the time their lesson was done, though, so I soothed their grudge with letting them do the bedtime routine of reading and singing. Their mood visibly improved with the wrangling of a sleepy, adoring, but also very grumpy (because sleepy) Smol Acrobat. After we completed the nap putdown, JB danced out to tell PiC: It’s your turn with the kids! Clearly, we have been doing the swappity-de-do for a while.
PiC took the next four hours after that and then we split the remaining evening chores.
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At lunch (I was working) JB asked PiC to text me: “Mommy I hope you don’t have too much work to do.”
Me too, kiddo. But I do.
Happily they decided to unload the entire dishwasher on their own though their primary assignment is only to do the utensils. That was nice.
*****
Money things, the coffeemaker: PiC’s french press was dropped and shattered so I had to order an immediate replacement. He says he’s not addicted to coffee but tell him he’s not going to have a coffeemaker for a day and see what happens, I dare you! 😉
Money things, my mouse: I have been fighting with my mouse for weeks and weeks and weeks. It keeps disconnecting. I finally went through all my old peripherals in the Computer Box and found one that does work but I hate the scrolling action on it. I’ve already adjusted the responsiveness up as far as it’ll go in the settings but it still lags and I hate it. I use it 8 hours a day, but am having trouble justifying the purchase of a new mouse just because I don’t like it. But then again it’s a lot of hours of use a day…. JB has been wanting to use a mouse with their set up but I was going to give them my Oldest Mouse that is much smaller and would fit their hand better. If I do that, I could retire this Second Oldest as a back up for them.
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July 12, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 113: Well, I forgot today was Monday 16 times even though I put in about 6 hours of work today. Holiday weekends always throw me for a loop. We had a conference call lunch with family for funsies so that was one bit of relaxing we did, and then we also took everyone for a looooong walk later in the afternoon. I needed to try to walk off some back aches and that didn’t quite work as planned but it was still good to stretch my legs. I did not get out for a walk more than twice last week. That’s pretty bad and it was even more obvious by how much I huffed and puffed my way back up the hill.
*****
Some days I am starting to see a tiny bit of the more normal parent me peek out. Sometimes I have patience again, kind of like before the pandemic. Not a lot, and not for long but I thought that part of me had died, crawled out of the grave, gotten bludgeoned, and died again.
Year 2, Day 114: For once, my decision to go to bed instead of working late the night before worked out. Usually I lay there futilely trying to fall asleep, get frustrated, and then feel like it was all a wasted effort by 2 or 3 am.
This time, I still didn’t fall asleep when I wanted to but I did get enough rest that after Smol Acrobat started their 6 am round of thumping, babbling, and hawk cries, I was just about able to get up and prep their bottle. PiC changed and fed them while I took care of my toilette, and then he passed out with the baby happily remonstrating next to his prone body. Smol and I hung out for the next hour and a half, playing, walking the dog, eating again, me trying to work a little bit in two minute spurts.
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I’m covering for people on the team being out again this week, this is the fourth or fifth time in five weeks, because everyone’s doing some kind of travel now that CA is opened up again. I’m DROWNING in work and my brain can hardly keep up. Well, it will. But I hate this feeling of being behind on everything.
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We made a rookie mistake and miscalculated both how long it would take us to run two errands and underestimated how much formula to bring with us for those errands for Smol. So underfed and tired Smol was very unhappy. We skipped their last nap and put them straight to bed after feeding but it was still too little too late, they were up multiple times in the night just miserable. Sigh.
Year 2, Day 115: My body’s all out of whack this week for other reasons but that lack of sleep really loosens up my joints. This is not great. On top of a doubled workload, I also need to schedule two sets of activities and lessons for JB for the rest of the month so at some point. One teacher won’t be available for weekly lessons anymore and the other one isn’t teaching anymore so I have to pick a replacement. I’ve got to find the time for that. Thank goodness PiC is on lunch prep today.
My pain was so high by the end of the day, between sleep-deprivation fatigue, stress multiplying my aches, and overdoing the walk in the afternoon that when I got up from bed, having forgotten my bedside water, I could only hobble. Hello, geriatric me.
Year 2, Day 116: We were supposed to do pizza night last night! We forgot. My brain is maxed out. All I could think this morning was I hate work, I want to retire.
I ran a load of laundry last night, the dishwasher this morning, and the robot vacuum this afternoon. Thank goodness for robot helpers! JB suffered a great disappointment when an Auntie had to cancel their call this afternoon, they instead spent their afternoon doing a consolation puzzle (100-200 piece puzzles are too easy for them now, we need to level up. What’s next, 300?), reading, racing on NitroType, and watching the Hello Kitty and Friends Adventure shorts that I had picked out for their viewing. I really shouldn’t share so much Hello Kitty stuff with JB. Passing along my personal obsession to the next generation is Not Good for our pocketbooks. (But it’s so CUTE.)
Year 2, Day 117: Thinking of my CPA and how she still owes me a few amendments that would result in refunds and how I can’t pay her until she tells me how much I owe. I’d like to pay her. I already sent a reminder saying I’d like to pay her, please tell me how much but she just said she would get back to me. Still waiting….
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Smol woke up, and laid back down to nap several times over the course of an hour. I can’t tell if I should count that as awake time or asleep time for the purpose of calculating their next nap time!
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We’re starting to see school related information and it’s giving me whiplash. The CDC says vaccinated teachers and students don’t need to mask. I want to know why this country thinks I’ll believe anyone who is maskless without solid proof of vaccination given the behaviors we’ve seen to date. The tantrums, the lying, the people who spoiled vaccines, the person who was caught selling blank vaccine cards. And even if I wasn’t completely mistrustful of the general public, kids under 12 still can’t be vaccinated so are we going to only expect them to mask? Personally, though we’re both vaccinated, PiC and I stay masked to keep JB company. They have been really good about it but I know it helps with their compliance to have us masked. Our friends with under-12 do the same.
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We’ve been having medium range planning conversations about the next car. We need to decide 1. what we need 2. when we need it and 3. when what we need will be available. Ideally this purchase will be somewhere 2-5 years down the line, if we can push it out that far, because I want to save for this incrementally over a long time. Also because we aren’t convinced the technology is mature enough for what we’re looking for. We don’t want to get into a new tech money and time pit.
He’s done some initial research and for the size of hybrid vehicle we need for four humans plus an additional guest at times, a large dog, and luggage, we’re looking at $30-50k. That’s a staggering sum. The high end is almost laughable and it’s really truly unlikely we’d ever be willing to make that happen. That’s huge. HUGE. It’s far too large a proportion of our income.
Heck, the low end of the range is the total cost of what I’ve paid for the two cars I’ve purchased for myself in the past twenty years: one new and one used. I know that’s a meaningless stat but it’s still true. My first car served me well until I had to let my dad keep it ten years ago. I eventually gave it up permanently in the Going No Contact process. My second car is over 15 years old and I fully expected to hit 20 years in it. I’m not sure if it’ll be my car or the dog car that gets replaced but they’re both quite old and the maintenance costs are real.
:: How old are your vehicles? Do you have timelines for replacing them?
July 5, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 106: An unexpected boon of Smol’s early morning wakings is that if I can get up too, PiC and I have time to talk for a few minutes like adult humans with interests in the world and live together. This morning we talked about the photos of our dear recently deceased friend that I found over the weekend while doing data backup. We couldn’t decide at first the best way to share with their widow but landed on making a photo book. So that’ll be my thing this and next week.
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I read The Pout-Pout Fish (Bookshop, Amazon) to Smol. They’re not quite old enough to appreciate it yet but it nailed my feelings today. I feel sick (Blub), achy (Bluuuub), and tired. . . (Bluuuuuuuuub).
*****
PiC cooked all weekend and I’m so grateful to him.
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Smol slept through the night most nights last week but come Friday, that went out the window. They just had this burst of development and they had to wake up the first night because HANGRY! The second night because … I’m not sure why but just needed to be held and sung to for a few minutes. The third night was to babble and raspberry to themselves a few times. Weird, but funny!
One less funny side effect of the development is their mood swings. So many swings. Happy sad happy sad.
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There’s a chance we might have daycare in October so I inputted the cost into my spreadsheet for the last three months of the year. O_O This upended my delicately balanced cashflow and budget. Daycare is so expensive, even part-time. I don’t want to reduce our savings but we’re going to have to. Better to know now. At least I already funded our brokerage for our planned weekly investments for the next quarter. We’d sold some investments to shift our allocation so that helps soothe my nerves. (more…)
June 28, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 99: Smol slept through the night! But chose to end the night at 5 am. Win some, lose some. I didn’t get to sleep until midnight because of my leg pain, PiC didn’t get to sleep until 2 am because of work, so we were both in rough shape. But they had a good first nap, which freed us to get work done and feed everyone breakfast and settle into a bit of a rhythm for the rest of the morning.
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Sera’s got a dry hacking cough that started last week. It was only once a day before and sounded like she was just trying to clear her throat but today it’s acting up more frequently so we’ll need to get to the vet. I wasn’t ready to go back yet. The last time we were there tore my heart to pieces. I’m not ready.
The vet’s booking routine appointments well into July, their first available is in ten days. That’s not great but I’ll take it.
This keeps turning my mind to my second dog. He developed a heart murmur which turned into congestive heart failure and it was awful. I’m hoping so much that this won’t be anything close to that.
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JB woke up very late and was a rumpled mess in mind and body. They brushed their hair and their teeth but boy was their mood terrible. We clashed a few times. We managed to pull it out of the dumpster once in the morning, and then by mid afternoon, they were wound up again over losing one of their little art kit doodads. There’s only so many crises I can manage and work on a Monday.
Year 2, Day 100: Is today Tuesday? Friday? Wednesday? Monday? I don’t know. This is how most days start: What day is it? Weekday or weekend?
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June 21, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 92: Some mornings, you have your shit together. Some mornings, you don’t even notice that you and the kids are still in your pajamas when lessons start. Guesses which today was? I can’t even entirely blame the pandemic or the kids. Pre-kids, PiC DEFINITELY had to yell “PANTS!” at me more than once when I started to wander out of the house without actual pants on.
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People are traveling again for the summer, including my teams, which means that I’ve got a massive workload with very little time to manage it. It’s got me wistfully wishing for retirement money now because I really don’t want to go to work today, tomorrow, or the next day. Maybe this is burnout talking. Maybe I just need to schedule some of my own time off even though we aren’t traveling. I don’t yet because I’m worried that it’ll make it even harder to go back.
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Mondays stink in the normal course of things but they are worse now that PiC’s Mondays and Tuesdays are so jam-packed. I’ve started taking over the bulk of childcare on Mondays so he can deal with his particularly difficult Tuesdays. Making that an expected part of my Mondays actually eases my stress factor a bit but boy it sure it still tiring.
Of course it being a terrible nap day made things extra hard on all of us.
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We spent $80 at Sprouts on the weekend to get a lot of produce and fish. I got way too much sockeye salmon (almost 2 lbs) and that’ll probably make three dinners for us.
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I had such brain fog today that I had to choose to run an errand mid-afternoon to try and clear it. It did work, thankfully. It’s such a hard thing when every single decision is so zero-sum. 20 or 30 minutes to clear my head has such a tangible impact on what I can get done, but at the same time, the less obvious impact where I can regain some breathing space and my patience also has an impact on my workday and my day.
Year 2, Day 93: Oh my aching knees. I’ve been playing and sitting on the ground with Smol too much. My knees are both swollen and hyperextending today. What a combination. I was on the overnight last night. They were squirming around 130 am but settled back on their own, and howling at 330 am and needed a feed. We’re working on weaning off night feeds to try and get uninterrupted sleep overnight and are down from 4 ounces to 2 ounces per night waking. It’s not that they’re always up for prolonged painful periods, it’s that the wake ups are always disruptive and we aren’t getting enough consecutive hours strung together. My fingers are crossed that we can get to 10-12 consecutive hours overnight without needing parental intervention.
My circles are starting to dip their toes back into circulating more. We had a masked playdate with friends we haven’t seen in person for more than a year. One friend got a haircut. Another one will schedule one soon. Yet others traveled for vacation recently.
I wonder when we’ll be out of pandemic times here. I’ve gotten in the habit of these weekly logs, I wonder when I’ll close these out.
I see there’s cause for concern about the Delta variants and I wonder how that’ll affect us here with family who are vaccine hesitant. It doesn’t feel like this is over yet but it also feels like many are putting a cap on it like it is. Our kids are still unprotected so we remain in a strange limbo. (more…)