May 31, 2021

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (52)

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 71: I overheard kindergarten students talking about their experiences at Disneyland and other amusement parks with frequent flier style attitudes. They might have been exaggerating but if not, and this is the Bay Area so it’s totally plausible, the idea that young kids might have gone to Disney multiple times already was jarring. I grew up a mere hour away from there and we went to Disneyland once only because my school arranged a field trip when we were older. We couldn’t afford to go to Disneyland for fun. And it’s so much more expensive now than it was back in the 80s. Heck, with the money we have now, it still seems prohibitively expensive.

We go to Comic Con every year but we stay with family, we economize on food expenses, and kids attend free. Even with travel, we make it an affordable trip in a way I can’t imagine making Disney because just getting into the door is exorbitant.

*****

Civilizing small humans while still giving them the tools to thrive is hard work.

*****

We’re on Day 3 of terrible second and third naps for Smol. They were doing so WELL for a few days last week; they’d get two really solid naps. In this series, we are getting one semi-decent morning nap and then we’re lucky to get 40 minutes at a time after that.

Sigh.

*****

I missed this Ask the Grumpies when it first came around: How are you dealing with returning to post-vaccination life? I’m not anywhere near returning to post-vaccination life myself. I’m not yet fully vaccinated so it’s not a relevant question yet. Even when I am, the kids still aren’t close to vaccines yet. We still assume that we won’t be traveling this year for a lot of reasons. So their question of what do we want to keep from pandemic life is more relevant to me. A lot more stuff became accessible for me this year with the shift to remote only and curbside services. Though we never used grocery delivery, curbside pickups for retail and restaurants was so so so helpful in preserving my limited energy.

Year 2, Day 72: Here’s a sad discovery. Those little packs of powdered donuts that were such a treat when I was growing up? They taste terrible (now)! Of course JB still likes them. I too enjoyed terrible tasting desserts as a kid. And a teen. And in my 20s.

*****

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May 24, 2021

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (51)

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 64: I had an imperfect weekend. I didn’t check off half the things I needed done, I didn’t get nearly enough rest or food or water. But we did get five and a half major things done, we did get Smol to have three really decent naps across two days, we each did get some sleep on alternating nights. Not bad. So when Monday came back around the corner bearing the expectations of work again, I was zero percent excited.

It’s not you, Monday, it’s me and work. I’m not in love anymore.

What would I do if I didn’t need to work today? I’d still need to finalize our taxes, our CPA has been MIA for a week and it’s our last day. I better get that done.

I’d turn those four boiled eggs into a small batch of deviled eggs. (We’ll see if I have time.) We’d still need to figure out lunch and dinner. I ordered a Monday delivery of Indian vegetarian side dishes and they tend to deliver earlier in the day so we could have that for lunch or dinner along with some salmon and rice. Maybe I’d prep some tofu to add to Indian, or cut up that paneer that was hiding in back of the fridge. I need a new recipe for cooking small frozen scallops. The last batch was not to my satisfaction.

I’d check in with JB’s tutor to confirm they’re still on for lessons this week, and get a start on crafting some envelopes for the magnets I ordered to send to family and friends.

All this would be fit in around Smol’s nap times. Who has time for a job amidst all that???

What actually happened: not that. I got some work done. I did pay our taxes and filed our return. I cooked a little bit to prep for dinner. I made it outside for a bit of a walk after JB’s lesson because they were furious that PiC and Smol were walking Sera without them.

Year 2, Day 65: I was up at 5:30 am, thinking that Smol Acrobat was up for the day, because they couldn’t soothe themselves back to sleep. I took them out for a quick feed and to play but they passed out after eating instead. Well ok then. I won’t argue with that! I dropped them back in their crib for what turned out to be a good 2 hour sleep. I put those two hours to good use, mostly: walked the dog, cut up fruit, made deviled eggs for everyone else for breakfast. I had a bit of breakfast for myself while I powered through some really complex work problems. Sadly, before I could put all of them to bed, I heard a CRASH come from the kitchen. JB had dropped my precious Pyrex and it shattered. *cries* My Pyrex! My time and energy cleaning all of that up! *cries* I was nearly wrecked by the time I swept and vacuumed.

The next two hours were spent with Smol Acrobat since they, of course, woke up right when I finished clearing up that mess and PiC had two hours of meetings. My arms were jelly by the time Smol’s nap time came back around and I’d gotten them squared away. Naturally, the moment that JB finished class, they showed up in my office demanding their baby. Whoops. The baby, they are napping. Sorry! (Again, furious. Notice a pattern?)

Then it was time to plow through a pile of work and bills to pay. So many bills to pay! I don’t know how they all came to be clustered at the end of the month.

Our utility bill has been steadily rising the past three months and I’m baffled as to why but this has to stop. That mystery has to wait though, today turned into TAX RESEARCH day. UGH. I had to dig through 11 years of returns and forms to figure out my problem with my missing 8606 forms. I went down that rabbithole because we both missed filing the 8606 this year. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Ugh. It needed to be done, but I’m a little worried my accountant is going to hate me. This has been the year of discovering years of mistakes. Hopefully they won’t hate me too much… some were mostly their errors originally that I’m catching. I just wish I’d caught them before.

Smol’s sleep training results are all over the map. We had increasingly large blocks of sleep and then a reversion back to multiple wakings a night. We get great naps for a day or two and then a reversion to fighting and fussing. It gives me a pit in my stomach, listening to the crying some days, even though most days I’m ok with the process. I need to compile our notes for the sleep consultant to figure out what to tweak to get to full night sleep. With no time in the day to even finish a full day of work, adding data collation sounds like a barrel of laughs. Gotta be done.

Year 2, Day 66: The day really got away from us. We managed to get through last night with just one feeding but Smol was up again at 6 am. Ghastly.

We were playing on the floor just before naptime. Sera came in to see what the chirp-shrieking was about. Smol, laying on the floor, stopped and stared at her. She looked at them, then at me, then wandered off. My throat closed up with grief anew. Seamus would have come and laid down nearby, offering his side or his tail for the baby’s inspection. He would have let the baby wiggle and lurch their way over to him and grab his tail like a lollipop. Once I’d put the baby into the crib for a nap and they started hollering, he would have stayed in the room until they fell asleep. During sleep training, he never once let the baby cry it out alone. He’d lay nearby, we’d leave and shut the door behind us. He’d prod the door to be let out only after the snoring started. He was always there. And now he’s gone. And I miss him so so so much.

*****

I unearthed some lamb and beef curry from the freezer for lunch, still good five months later.

*****

My work day was completely derailed with a series of (work) problems. I finally just gave up on getting my usual work done and shut down to go deal with dinner. Everyone was out of sorts for various reasons. PiC’s stressed by the lack of time. He can’t get his work done, or his exercise in, or a million other things. I’m frustrated by the mountains of work and my lack of patience with JB this morning. I oversaw their reading assessment for school and was a complete jerk about their inability to follow directions. I was doing my best to guide them only on navigating the platform and not commenting on their answers at all but I had to walk away to compose myself when they went back to check their answers and changed them to the wrong ones. It was right, why are you doing that?? I forced myself by sheer force of will not to affect their answers. I physically put my hand over my mouth to stop myself at times. JB was frustrated that they keep biting their cheek when eating. It’s happened twice at every meal for the past three days and they are furious. Smol didn’t want their micro nap at the end of the day and they were furious about the whole business. Sera was pretty happy though.

Year 2, Day 67: I’m still trying to knock out the more complex problems at work one at a time and it feels hopeless. The sheer volume is overwhelming right now, and nothing is helped by the constant interruptions and lack of dedicated work time. PiC and I continue to trade off work time blocks so that helps a little.

I’m struggling with feelings today. Mostly the failure related feelings: guilt, sadness, frustration.

I’m on a mission to get Smol to settle down at night better which means a combination of getting them to eat well and sleep during the day and timing the naps so that they aren’t awake for 3+ hours before bedtime. It’s a tricky dance. We spend short 10-20 minute blocks out in the ultra windy yard with JB and Sera to give Smol plenty of fresh air and natural light in between each nap.

Observing JB’s Spanish lessons has been frustrating. They don’t seem to be absorbing anything, and I can’t tell if it’s because they truly don’t remember anything or if the teacher’s soft approach lets them off the hook. It makes me bananas when they’re asked “do you remember this phrase” and without taking even half a beat, they immediately say “no”. But the tutor doesn’t press them to try, they just move the lesson along, and I’m not sure that’s always the right approach. I feel this frustration when we verbally review math and money concepts and they just wildly guess answers, mentally flailing like they don’t have any foundation to start from even though we’ve been talking about money and the value of coins for years. It feels like I’m banging my head on a wall: I’ve got a headache, I’m annoyed and absolutely nothing changes. I’m trying to prioritize – teaching them how to be a good human is probably more important than specific skills but it’s hard to let go of the desire to educate them in everything useful. We started revisiting a daily earnings chart but we’ve absolutely sucked at recording earnings and demerits regularly there too so that feels like a bust. Another bust among too many.

My dear friend’s spouse is dying and I’ve offered support in all the ways I am currently able to. They are not very responsive, understandably, but I thought that was their desired level of engagement. I just got some feedback from a mutual close friend that it’s not good enough and that sucks. There simply aren’t enough minutes in any day to rest, eat, drink, work, parent, and support and I hate that I’m coming up short.

Year 2, Day 68: I’m embarrassed to admit that for the past four years I thought our dryer was a little bit broken because at a certain point, the heat would turn off but the drum would keep rotating periodically. There’s a little rectangle on the screen, and the load isn’t always dry, so I was convinced that was an error. But it worked otherwise so I shrugged it off as a low priority problem. I just did some Googling and discovered that it’s not an error state, it’s the wrinkle prevention setting! ALL THE FACEPALMS.

It doesn’t explain why the load is still damp at times, though.

*****

Left to their own devices, JB likes to decide we’re having sandwiches for lunch. That’s fine if they’re making them. If they were always in charge of lunch, we’d eat an endless cycle of tuna salad and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We have really got to teach them to make something else.

*****

Yay I nabbed a sale on Poshmark! I don’t use the app often but I’m glad it still works on occasion.

*****

I really need to get my eyes checked again. I’m noticing some eye strain when working.

May 17, 2021

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (50)

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 57: I’m thinking about how people are here for a minute, in the grand scheme of the universe, and how I hope to matter in the lives of the people who know me but that in the end, my life will be over and forgotten in a blink. Just .. a thought.

*****

We’ve scheduled a free initial call with a sleep consultant for this week.

We’re also battling a reverse cycling situation where Smol Acrobat is waking to eat twice a night. We’re trying to shift those calories into the daytime and it’s been tough because they have no interest in eating during the day. On another angle, PiC wanted to replace the hand me down nipples that we were using. They finally came in stock and it turns out that might be one of the reasons Smol has been disinterested in eating. We picked up medium flow and they were much more interested, though we struggled with the nipples collapsing. We’re still figuring this out.

*****

I want to be helpful to JB when they say something doesn’t feel good but I really don’t know what to do with “My tongue feels funny.”

*****

We live, work, school, and play at home. We have no commutes right now. Yet we still can’t get done with dinner, bath, and bedtime by 730 pm every night. Why?? Related: Why am I not in bed by 8 every night? That would be the dream.

An hour later I realize the answer to this question tonight is: because we have no childcare and they chose to play in the backyard for an hour in afternoon while I worked on the patio outside. Oh right. Any changes to our routine means the schedule slips by an hour or so very quickly. (more…)

May 10, 2021

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (49)

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 50: After three extra terrible nights in a row, my anxiety had been steadily ramping up so that I was wound tight anticipating a fourth bad night and bad nights forever. It was a rough lot of months before we found a way to switch off. But! PiC caught a “good” night of sleep with Smol! They slept four hours, woke up for half an hour, and slept another four! Their morning started at 530 but that’s just shy of miraculous for us. I am working on breathing through my expectations and hopes that fuel the anxiety that crops up whenever we’re caught in a series (but not a useful pattern we can address) of bad nights.

We’re also coming to the end of our time with the Snoo so that’s contributing to my anxiety about the tools we have to cope.

Of course the trade off seems to be losing the good blocks of napping we had during the day last week.

I know these are all phases but in the thick of each tough one, it’s hard to push out from reacting and just be. I’m working on it.

Sadly, despite actually getting a few hours of sleep, my pain is much higher today. What’s that about? Does it seem “safe” to have pain when sleep is possible? How is that logical, body? Or maybe this is the anxiety backlash manifesting.

*****

The afternoon brought something unexpected. A friend sent some Lily’s (sugar replacement) peanut butter cups! I haven’t been able to get to the one store that carries them for a few months so this was a delightful surprise. JB has been trying to convince me to like surprises better than I have for years and this kind of thing does help change my deeply ingrained habit of expecting terrible things when I’m surprised. Long time readers will remember that there was a long period of terrible surprises with my Mom’s poor health. Car accident after car accident after blackout dental emergency after getting lost after blackout after a stroke after …. you get the picture. Surprises, historically, have been BAD.

Year 2, Day 51: Some news out of Pfizer today: if all goes well, the younger set down to age 2 may have a vaccine by the fall. This has set off a whole lot of mixed feelings.

I want to see the people I want to see. I don’t want to be rushed into a whirlwind of make up activities. We’ve already gotten a birthday party invitation for an outdoor meet up and though I love the people inviting us, my first feeling was a sinking feeling.

I want childcare but I don’t want to socialize much more than we do now. One meeting a week plus a couple video calls is enough.

*****

Urge to scream rising. Is this burnout? Probably. Does it matter? Nope. There’s nothing we can do about the things causing that burnout right now. AUGHHHHH.

I know the usual advice is to take a break but any little break I take makes me extra antsy to just quit entirely.

For now, today, I will remind myself not to seek a dopamine hit by way of JETPENS, and just breathe through the mini pity party I’m hosting for myself. That dopamine hit can be for another time when I can consciously choose a treat and enjoy both the choice and the eventual selections. I love stationery things so much.

It was like pulling teeth but I wrote some Mother’s Day cards and might even be in time to get them in the mail.

*****

Breathing through the discomfort worked. I found a neutral emotional setting. We ordered in falafel and schwarma for dinner so we could just enjoy a food and not fuss about cooking and clean-up. The baby took a decent afternoon nap. I didn’t get all my work done but I caught up a respectable amount so I am not going to think about it again tonight. I needed to reset my equilibrium and not trying to shut out the negative feelings helped them pass through.

Year 2, Day 52: The shopping from a box goodies are still making JB’s day. They’re wearing another new to them item that’s 1.5 sizes too big but that’s fine. They’re having fun with it and, really, their philosophy on wearing the fancy dress stuff on any day because every day is a fancy day has some merit.

*****

Most of JB’s schedule this week was cleared because all their tutors had personal issues. We only had two out of four Spanish lessons, their superhero fitness class is on hiatus, their tutor and their ballet teacher both have health issues to tend to. It’s left them with more free time than they had during Spring Break! We’ve been managing ok with giving them a mix of totally free time to do as they wish, some outdoor time with one of us walking the dog, some unsupervised backyard time, and some “play with your baby” time. It’s not great but I am, on principle, in favor of them having some unscheduled days like this. Just …maybe not a full week at once next time?

We are super thankful to aunties and uncles who make time to have playdate calls with them, though. Again and again I bless those beloved family who choose not to have kids but still enjoy spending time with mine. They help our world keep turning.

*****

We’ve been discussing how we’re going to deal with Smol’s continued horror show of sleep. A friend has recommended a sleep consultant that they used, I’ve done some research separately into some sleep consultants. We’re slowly working out a plan for ourselves but we may also need to get some help. We didn’t get any with JB but we also were in far less demanding jobs, with Seamus instead of Sera and didn’t have a 6 year old running around needing parenting in a pandemic. Help is not a bad thing, I tell myself over and over.

Year 2, Day 53: My wrist has been tender and painful for two weeks now. Just an observation. I’m practicing the habit of noticing but not winding myself up about it. I long ago learned to punish myself emotionally, deeply and intensely, for my body’s “failings” and I’m still working to undo that reflex. It did me no good and there’s no reason to keep holding on to it.

*****

I came off a short four hour sleep session last night expecting to feel like a pair of beat up old shoes. Strangely, though I didn’t feel GOOD, I also didn’t feel the expected dragging fatigue that’s sidelined me most days last week from venturing past our front door. I decided that if I didn’t feel horrible, it was as good a time as any to take all the kids out for a long walk, so we did!

Year 2, Day 54: Conundrum. Smol Acrobat LOVES hanging out with JB. JB LOVES hanging out with Smol Acrobat. The reasons they love hanging out are because JB loves singing and dancing and making loud obnoxious to parents noises for SA and SA absolutely cackles with the joy of it.

But it scrapes layers off our brains.  HOW DO WE TOLERATE THIS. I think we have to if we want work time.

*****

I have turned into my mother. I can down a full glass of water without taking a breath. 30 years ago, I used to sip like a tiny butterfly.

May 3, 2021

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (48)

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 43: Today was my relative’s funeral. I took most of the day to attend services virtually and just be. After the services were over, I took all the kids out for a walk. We spent 15 minutes in the backyard. JB tested out a hand me down tricycle that was gifted to Smol Acrobat far far far too early. Smol lay in their stroller contemplating belly buttons and sunbeams. I had a late lunch alone. Followed that up with a scoop of ice cream when the kids were all otherwise distracted. I did some work in the quiet.

*****

Last night was my second night in a row on Smol Acrobat watch. By the afternoon, I was tired down to my marrow. How the heck did I do this for four months in a row?? I was moving around purely automatically by 3 pm, doing what needed to be done, but none of it was enjoyable.

I cooked miso salmon and green beans for dinner, and decided to eat my feelings with a batch of Annie’s cinnamon rolls which are chock full of everything my body hasn’t been a fan of. Too bad, my brain needed it. No guilt, though, I refuse to let food become a guilt thing. I just try to maintain balance. JB thumbs upped the salmon over the green beans. They thumbs upped the cinnamon rolls over the salmon. Shocker, I know.

*****

PiC was on duty with Smol tonight, thankfully.

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April 26, 2021

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (47)

Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 2, Day 36: WordPress is threatening to take away Classic editor in the app “soon” and that makes me mad. I don’t have time or brain to waste on figuring out the stinkin’ block editor so this may mean a forced pause in my blogging for a while. I almost entirely update on my phone in stolen moments here and there.

*****

I have been so tired that I:

• Set down my aligner case where it belongs and then spent the next ten minutes searching for it.
• Tried to place an order online without ever entering my credit card information.
• Tried to turn on the baby monitor six times and forgot what I was doing every time.
• Watched PiC make Sera get up for a last outing, then completely forgot that happened and went to take her out again half an hour later.
• Kept forgetting to close Twitter to open my Kindle or Kobo apps to read a book. I got stuck on scrolling because I couldn’t remember what else I was going to do.

*****

Is there a greater gift than a partner who doesn’t need to be told what to do next? I’m not that partner right now, PiC is. I was planning to cook dinner with my zero energy and less than half a brain. He decided we were getting take out, asked if I had a preference, placed the order and picked it up. We’re totally imperfect people but we also always try to do our best for each other and it shows. He’s the best.

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