August 4, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (270)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 98: For the past two weeks, the weather has been perfectly nice and I have sweated buckets, like I’m powered by an internal nuclear reactor. Nothing else is particularly wrong, so I have no clue what this is about. Meanwhile the most heat sensitive folks, PiC and JB, have been practically frolicking in the mild temps. Bodies continue to be Weird. Well, mine, anyway. Perimenopause?

Also my left shoulder tendon (or ligament, or muscle, I don’t know how one isolates which thing is twanging) has been stressed for three days which is not ideal.

First aid kit debate: hard case or soft zipper pouch? I saw a prepacked first aid kit in a hard case and it triggered my container avarice. Our freebie from Target or Walgreens ages ago is a fabric rectangle zip pouch (has the depth of the hard case but flexibility of fabric) but the inside is shedding plasticky bits everywhere now. I thought maybe a pencil case? But it’s not quite the thing.

Year 6, Day 99: I just realized that the tubing assigned to the sugar snap peas had pulled loose and the plant hasn’t been getting water! No wonder half of it’s suddenly dying 😭 I have to buy more tubing anchors but for the moment, my first task was to (finally) get the netting up on the 6 foot tall stakes. I did (to no one’s surprise) zero research on training the plants to grow on a trellis before now so the plants mostly leaned on a stake or two if they were at the right angle. This was my avoiding setting up a proper trellis but if I can get the plants to grow up the netting and stakes, I can continue avoiding a real trellis for another year!

Year 6, Day 100: Electronics hygiene! I had no idea how much keeping my electronics plugged in, while I’m working, impacted battery life but my one laptop went from 3-4 hours of battery life off charger to 60-90 minutes. It’s older, but not THAT old. There is a good reason for that habit – we kept having power outages so it was always a gamble if I let the battery run down naturally before charging back up. Now that I have a second laptop and the Yeti, I can change my habits. I’ve been super mindful to only charge the backup laptop as needed and my phone only gets charged to 80% most of the time. Their batteries are still in really decent shape, they still work even when run down to as little as 10%. Both the Pixel 6 and laptop only die at 3%, which is a vast improvement over the Pixel 2 that would turn off at 33%.

Year 6, Day 101: When someone who should have some idea of how much free time you have (none. I have negative free time) says something like “just add this half hour (or an hour) activity to your day like I do”, I just want to snap my teeth at them. It’s not like I wasn’t incredibly busy before kids. I was. I also didn’t underestimate how much busier I would be with kids. That’s part of why I didn’t want to have them in my 20s! Added to that, now I’ve got a job that’s tripled in worries and responsibilities with two young kids so no, in fact, it’s not possible for me to “just add an hour” to do a thing I want to do. I promised JB that we would look into a new sport for them this time last year. It’s taken me 12 months to create one gap in my schedule to take them to a new activity. I was interested in it too but homigosh the logistics of making one more thing possible during the school year is simply brainswoggling.

On that note, in two days, I’ve (deeeep breath):

• taken JB on a 2-hour excursion,
• done the laundry,
• collected and organized donation items,
• took out the trash,
• deep cleaned the bathroom vanity,
• directed JB’s room cleaning efforts with very specific targeted tasks (pull all the plushies out of X, canvass the whole house for all pens, pencils, color pencils, markers, crayons and put them in their homes, collect all hygiene related things and put them in their homes, sort through plushies to see which will be moved out),
• then taken JB on a 3-hour errand that’ll net $250 in gift cards in a month,
• coordinated our correspondence (addressed 6 envelopes and stuffed them with goodies, JB’s working on the letters, to family and friends),
• organized Christmas gifts for several niblings,
• set up a cart full of books for another set of niblings,
• hunted down and ordered a new backpack for JB,
• ordered a giant tote bag for our use,
• ordered the garden tubing anchors and set them up when they arrived,
• compulsively checked reporting on work KPIs,
• scrubbed the stove,
• started catching up on my workouts that have been neglected for 3 weeks due to travel (ow, my everything),
• ordered refills of several medications,
• ordered a sink drain cover so I can (briefly) soak and scrub our cast iron range grates,
• unplugged the toilet,
• figured out how to fix our Internet connection (only took 3 hours!),
• took JB to their activity,
• Did our net worth summary,
• Paid all the bills,
• Checked, sorted and recycled the mail.

These were on my 2 days off. PiC took care of dinners because I had no brain left to think about food. Mostly this was what I wanted to get done, so I’m not feeling particularly put out, but I did want to do a few more things that were just for me: baking biscuits or bread, and sewing a simple project. Maybe tomorrow.

Year 6, Day 102: Ah ha! My pencil case idea to replace the first aid kit was a bust, the one I picked was too small. I considered using one of our Costco turkey plastic containers but I’ve already doled them all out: 4 for JB’s art supplies, 2 for Smol Acrobat’s stickers and markers, 1 for my receipts and 2 for masks. I considered buying 4 extra large replacement pencil cases for JB and trade for the turkey containers, then realized it’d be cheaper to just buy myself one extra large pencil case. Duh. But no, that didn’t feel right. PiC suggested a tackle box. No, that didn’t feel right either. Too big, I want this to be small enough to fit in our current cabinets, a tackle box requires too much shelf space. Then I remembered! I bought PiC a washi tape container with removable slats several years ago, I’d bought some for my jewelry, and he’s never used it! It’s still in the garage! I ran to get it and transferred everything over and it all fit! 🎉 Money already spent years ago now being put to good use. I feel so accomplished. Go figure it’s something like this that makes me feel good and not the mile long list of things I’ve gotten done this week.

July 28, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (269)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 91: For the first time in 10+ years, someone I care about made a judgemental comment about my parenting and hurt my feelings. This isn’t the first time I’ve been criticized, it’s just the first time since I learned to stop running myself down as a parent annnnd it turns out that defense mechanism, though unhealthy, was really effective at protecting me from hurt feelings. It might be the first time I’ve thought, though I didn’t say it, “you don’t understand, you’re not a parent.” 99% of the time I don’t believe that you have to be a parent to understand that family dynamics can be complicated. I’m not sure this is that 1% of the time either, maybe my feelings were just hurt and they had a point, albeit an incredibly harsh and rather mean point. Not my favorite milestone! But a clear sign that therapy has removed some of my walls. Don’t exactly love the side effect but I accept it.

Year 6, Day 92: As a joke, I started listing my “good deeds” for the day in hopes of building up goodwill in the universe and had a weird amount of them today. I noticed some workers had locked themselves out and got the attention of their oblivious coworker. I gave strangers directions (the right ones, even, which is not usually my strong suit). I ran an errand for a friend. Donated a huge batch of points to help someone fleeing abuse. Someone else asked for a favor which is taking all week to figure out. I snapped a picture of a menu that strangers were struggling to read and let them zoom in on my phone.

Year 6, Day 95: I’ve been so full-on this week, I just read a headline that Cambodia is calling for a ceasefire. What?? I had no idea they’d been skirmishing with Thailand. We’re such a disaster here in the US, it’s almost hard to focus attention on anywhere else. Except Gaza. That’s always in the back of my consciousness.

July 21, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (268)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 84: I’ve become such a pillow hog. I want, depending on if I’m working or resting, 4-6 firmish fluffy pillows at a time. I’ve entered the stage of life where there is so much discomfort from pain, painsomnia, heartburn that strikes randomly, and sleep deprivation that I require ALL THE PILLOWS as recompense. I’m still searching for a good cushion of some sort that will properly support my neck and back when I have to work from bed. Currently the imperfect solution is a stack of 5 pillows but they eventually slide or squish down.

Year 6, Day 85: Nothing like realizing that in your haze of overworkedness and sleep deprivation, you’ve gone and written the giant check using the wrong checkbook so that giant check is being drawn on the account that doesn’t have that much money while the right account that has all that money is sitting RIGHT THERE. DAMMIT! I went through all the options and none of them were “the best one” so I picked the least troublesome one for the guy: writing him a fresh check from the right account today and then plan to beg fee forgiveness from the wrong bank account whenever they return the check as unpaid. Sigh. Call this the “dumbass / too tired to exist” tax. I knew I’d drop some balls because of how tired I’ve been but I didn’t think it’d be a five figure ball.

Year 6, Day 86: We have the good fortune of having basic dental insurance that covers two cleanings a year and we’re diligent about making sure everyone goes. I’ve finally completely shifted us to a relatively consistent Jan/Feb and June/July schedule which feels like a small victory. My attempts to keep all routine appointments out of the Sept-Dec period are a tiny step towards keeping that fall to winter period a little bit more sane. I enjoy my own time in the dentist’s chair, but miss coasting for months and months without having to think about yet another appointment.

Naturally my current task is trying to find a slot on the calendar to add a “dabbling in — lessons” this summer before they return to school. There’s a local place but we’ve been warned that the traffic and parking in that area is terrible and that’s off-putting. For being SoCal born and bred where terrible traffic and bad parking is so common, my tolerance for that is almost non-existent. We’ll see. I promised JB that we’d give it a shot to see if we like the place and the sport enough to put up with the inconveniences. No pun intended. No clue how we’d make that work during the school year but if we can fit in 2-3 lessons before school starts, that should be a good taste.

Year 6, Day 87: Here’s an exasperating thing. I’ve developed a scent aversion to my deodorant. Both Degree and Suave which have been totally fine and don’t irritate my skin. It’s just that suddenly, I cannot stand the smell. This is really quite annoying. I bought some Dove deodorants which smell better but don’t work half as well. Also annoying.

I’ve been utterly dislocated in space and time this summer. Everything that should be routine hasn’t been. My weeks of alone time for whole days – nope. Instead it’s been travel and work stuff and home maintenance and more. My brain has gone into a weird (self protective?) huddle where it never really knows where I am on a map. Even when I was just walking around SF which I’m reasonably familiar with, my brain refused to connect to anything as familiar. I might as well have been in the city for the first time.

Year 6, Day 88: I was feeling Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer in my bones, so I put that on, following by Journey’s Any Way You Want It. Wilson Phillips and Hold On was next, as I contemplated how many of my friends who keep getting into bad relationships could do with taking those lyrics to heart. Pat Benatar’s We Belong came up next in the rotation and my heart felt gripped in maudlin remembering.

Very longtime readers were around during a tumultuous period of life when my coworkers and I loved to play Pat Benatar but everything else in that office was pure hell. I carried the awful from that job for years, took me ages to shed most of the defensive mechanisms. Rcently a colleague from that time affirmed my recollection of the toxicity and evil. They were further along in their career back then and even they were horrified by the pure meanness that dominated that office. Grateful that’s so far in the rearview that it’s just the occasional momentary ICK that sets in thanks to sensory memories.