September 15, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (276)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 140: New goal: be independently wealthy so that I can help as many people as I can reach and so I can quit my job and go work with animals all day. I was vetting some pet boarding facilities, initial research for one of the two problems I have to solve before I can adopt again, and saw a job listing which made me go YES I WANT TO DO THAT. Sigh. I miss being around and working with animals all day or night. Having an office dog when we have dogs at home is great, but it’s not the same. I don’t know if my body could actually handle that physical commitment anymore but if I was wealthy then I could do it part time! Win win!

Year 6, Day 141: Did I fail down the jetpens rabbithole? Yes I did. Did I doubt I’d want enough stuff to meet the $35 minimum? Yep. Did I find ten things to buy? Also yep. A mix of wants and gifts. I sent all the links to myself to ruminate on for a few days because I’m pretty sure I told myself I wasn’t allowed to buy more pens. But look, so cute! A Uni-ball One P mini gel pen! Panda donut washi! Kitty washi!

This is one of my current forms of meditation, I don’t use it often as it is habit forming, and it works like magic.

Year 6, Day 142: Walking back to the house, I realized I feel human again!? For the first time in weeks. Not good, but physically back to the usual baseline of aches, pains, and tired which is tolerable. What a huge relief.

This means I can tolerate a 5 minute shower again. I can now walk for 10 minutes without being bed bound for 4 hours. I can work and take JB where they need to go without collapsing like my skin only contains a mass of jellyfish! These things don’t seem like much to a normal person but they are everything when they’re gone.

I’m very slowly adding back very low-rep sets of my normal exercises. They’re still pretty low key to begin with and I have missed being able to do them.

Year 6, Day 143: Wow, are my children WHINY. SmolAc has started their transitional kindergarten program at daycare and one exciting (/s) addition to their routine is they now have take-home (optional) homework. It is terrible. SmolAc just spontaneously forgot how to write some of their letters that they’ve been writing just fine for months and so we had to practice it over and over with a letters book where they could trace and then write. I helped guide their hand a few times, then had them retrace and re-write. It was like pulling teeth. They whined and pouted and stomped and tried to quit over and over and over.  Good grief, child, it’s ONE letter. Lots of deep breaths until I couldn’t take it any longer and I sent them to have a snack.

This was published back in July when I was too busy to read the news and now it’s looming on the horizon: “In around 90 days, millions of Americans will learn about out-of-pocket cost hikes of more than 75 percent on average.” Open enrollment is around the corner in October so we’ll see how much of that giant percentage increase is going to impact us. This and losing the charitable deductions for itemizers are the two expected blows to our 2026 operation budget that I know of so far. It feels like I’m always adjusting for yet another hit to our finances, these days.

Year 6, Day 144: Two blows of bad news at once. A friend from blogging and Twitter for well over a decade has been fighting cancer and it’s now terminal. They aren’t that much older than me, and it is heartbreaking to imagine my world without them. This isn’t fair or ok or right. Another loved one is losing their dad to a serious illness, and it’s heartbreaking that this whole section of the family is having to absorb another loss so soon.

Several friends have come down with COVID or the flu, and JB’s been congested all day, so this cold/flu/COVID season is just roaring in. We just got the news that Kaiser will be stocking the COVID vaccine starting the 15th though, so with the Joker at HHS trying to do us out of vaccines with his ACIP meeting later this coming week, PiC and I are strategizing how we can get our vax ASAP without doing it on the same day. We’re grateful that it’ll be available! And we’d really appreciate if we could count on it being available for everyone and for more than 5 business days rather than being subject to the whims of the multitudes of anti-vaxxers.

September 8, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (275)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 133: A while ago, I asked Darcy at I Want Guac if she would share what she knows about international banking and currency, and I’m delighted that she obliged. Her post led me to Wanderer’s Norbert’s Gambit which was new to me, and also Wanderer’s banking operational security post which is very relevant to my interests.

I’m still absorbing a lot of this information to see what we can incorporate in our emergency planning (for one of the worst case scenarios: if we have to flee this country), and our day to day online and banking security practices. Those are two very different scenarios. In the former, I have to figure out how we’d survive if we couldn’t get access to our money in US banking institutions because fascism; versus functioning as normal day to day.

The comments put Fidelity on my list for possible international ATM-friendly cards and accounts. I hadn’t thought of them before, but a couple details sounded appealing so I need to do more research to confirm these will be useful to us:

Your Fidelity Cash Management account will automatically be reimbursed for all ATM fees charged by other institutions while using the Fidelity^® Debit Card at any ATM displaying the Visa^®, Plus^®, or Star^® logos. The reimbursement will be credited to the account the same day the ATM fee is debited. Fidelity does not charge foreign transaction fees; however, if you choose to pay a foreign debit card transaction in US dollars, your transaction may be processed at a rate different than market exchange.

Year 6, Day 134: Corporeality was such a mistake.We’re now on Day 11 of this Fucking Flare.

Is it just me or are the Amazon First Reads Historical Fiction selections ALWAYS WW1 and WW2? I’ve been skipping most of their free book selections because there’s only so much WW1/2 set fiction I can take. But I now need to decide if we cancel Prime entirely. We’d been splitting the cost with a few other people for years, and they’re taking that sharing ability away October 1st, so I have to decide if we cut them loose entirely and give up access to Prime Video which has been one of my main (Leverage Redemption!) reasons for continuing the sharing arrangement. We have been using them less and less for shipping reasons. Our primary shipping use case is that sometimes there’s literally no one else who will ship to the reservations and when people need food and babies need diapers, you get that to them any way you can.

Year 6, Day 135: TWO bits of good news today. After 12 days I might finally be turning a corner on the CFS part of my flare. We may be moving into the “is just excruciating fibro pain” part. Yay! I’d sound a little sarcastic there but honestly just being in terrible pain, while not fun, is more manageable than pain and overwhelming fatigue. Fingers crossed.

And one crow friend was alerting on the neighbor’s roof today, and came over to ours for a snack so I ran to oblige. Usually I only put down two treats at a time in case they don’t spot me distributing them. This time I was pretty sure they were waiting so I put out a handful. They were flying solo so they took a few minutes to eat some before stuffing their beak with the rest and flew away. It was fun to watch.

Year 6, Day 136: Labubu dolls: I don’t get it. At least, even though the Beanie baby craze was also irrational, they were cute.

The start of a new school year is a lot. Back to school night. Fundraisers start up. Parent teacher conferences are at the end of the month. The big fundraiser culmination celebration event is this month. Start of the monthly PTA events (which JB wants to attend and PiC often feels obligated to volunteer at). PTA meetings that come with the side of guilt I can’t seem to shake about not doing more than paying for membership, attending meetings virtually and attending some of the community events. I absolutely don’t have time or energy for more. And yet the stupid guilt always bites at me. It’s worse in the first meeting because they’re asking for volunteers for committees. They do put on a lot of events that the kids love and it’s meaningful. But there’s just no wiggle room I can eke out and if I could, this wouldn’t be top of my priority list. Maybe I’ll shake it by the time SmolAc is through elementary school.

Year 6, Day 137: This year is the band year for the local districts. All kids are invited to join the band and learn an instrument this school year. The lessons are free, you have to supply the instrument. The teachers strongly encourage all the kids to try it. It’s a great way to dip a toe into music! I haven’t been able to figure out how to fit in music lessons in JB’s schedule so this is good. This is also Yet Another Thing.

I talked to JB very seriously about how challenging it’ll be at first and once they’re committed, they aren’t allowed to quit just because it’s hard sometimes. The work will pay off. It’ll get easier only with practice. We were able to borrow an instrument from a friend, and had to spend $100 on the other required supplies. Otherwise we would have had to rent one for $30-40/month.

Sadly, their nemesis, a kid I’m heartily sick of, has declared their intentions to join too because they’re going to “master the flute just like their sibling” and good God can we not catch a flipping break from this obnoxious brat? They’re in JB’s class, they’re assigned to JB’s small group in PE, now they’re joining band, they’re constantly picking fights and stirring shit and lying about JB to other kids to turn them against JB. Half my imaginary empire for this kid to move to another state.

I keep reminding myself that JB knows they’re loved. They have dozens of friends their age and trusted adults all over the country. World, even. They have a buddy in the UK who comes to visit them once or twice a year! They have multiple activities and friends at every one. It’s the very rare library visit (PiC takes them almost every weekend) that they don’t run into a friend or three to play with entirely unplanned. A couple jerkface kids, annoying though they are, shouldn’t make or break their school year. They are thoroughly over the kid, I certainly am, but they’re still enjoying life and school and they’re not miserable over school. But I would still give half that empire for that kid, the source of so much annoyance for everyone, to disappear. They’re that classic mean kid who everyone placates in hopes of delaying the target on their backs a little longer. Ugh. Anyway as long as it’s petty stupid shit, we try to focus on all the ways we can make life and school positive in spite of the misery-maker.

PiC asks me if I think the parents of the crappy kids know their kids suck. I say, no, the kids are both themselves and the products of their parents in varying degrees. Unless the parents are garbage, they probably think their kid is the normal one.

September 1, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (274)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 126: I’m tetchy today. We went to a family gathering on Saturday. It was good fun for all of us! We very much needed that catch up. But it wiped me out completely. I spent most of Sunday laid up. No batch cooking for me. 🙁 Today was less bad but only less in the sense that I can sit upright but otherwise am kinda useless. Walking is a tall order, doing anything that requires standing is right out. I probably need another 2-3 days to recover, probably, and I resent that so much.

I took it very easy on Saturday, sitting down most of the time, mostly indoors shaded from the sun and wind. All I did was parent when the kids needed me, and talk to some friends. PiC did the bulk of the SmolAc herding. Yet, by the evening, it felt like I’d been plugged into the wall and every muscle was separately being electrocuted. I also resent how much this reminds me that I can’t do stamina-requiring things like go to protests. My friends did this weekend, and I’m grateful for their activism on these days when both the personal and world outlooks are so bleak.

Alas, no paws or claws today, either. That would have cheered me up immensely.

Year 6, Day 127: I always spend a little time reading current job listings, keeping feelers out the market for opportunities, in an attempt to stay informed enough that I don’t feel completely flat-footed when my time runs out at this job. It’s been a depressing exercise, the past 18 months of listings at best generate an “ugh. meh. bleck.” There was only one that looked remotely interesting last year, an Assistant Director in an advocacy organization helping incarcerated people reintegrate into society. I spotted one today that I am definitely not qualified for, running a conservation organization, but the employer piqued my interest. I don’t yearn to start yet another job in the workplace but this must be my gut telling me that if I must change jobs, only jobs that are about doing good in the world are going to fit the bill. That’s new.

It’s a bit of a luxury criteria considering the number of people out of work now, and at the payscale I’d want/need, so I should adjust my attitude and hold on to this job which at least does some measure of good with a reasonable moral compass and isn’t outright evil.

Year 6, Day 128: Every time I try to deal with Comcast for an outage credit, they try to upsell me on their mobile service. Why on earth would I want a year of terrible free mobile service from them when they can’t even give us reliable high-speed internet? I had 3 outages in a single week alone! Honestly.

I’m still very much on the cusp of this flare up so I’m still having to be careful to coddle my body what seems like a ridiculous amount. But after less than ten minutes standing, my whole body starts initiating a shutdown sequence so my opinions don’t matter here. 😒

By spacing out the prep for this really simple recipe for Vietnamese Pork-Stuffed Fried Tofu In Tomato Sauce, skipping stuffing the tofu entirely, and sitting down for 95% of the prep, I did manage to cook a whole new dish. It’s pretty good! It’s now meatballs and tofu in sauce but still good. That’s kind of nice.

Year 6, Day 129: Normally, I only read ebooks on my Kindle and Kobo apps on my phone so I’ve never replaced my old timey Kindle since it was too annoying to read on a device that didn’t have a light of its own. This isn’t usually an issue, except when I buy a Humble Bundle and then have to download every file, text them to my phone, download them there and THEN upload to the Kobo app. What a PAIN. It’s not something I do often, maybe once a year, but woof is it a timesink.

The app interface is also frustrating. We can’t do bulk actions that I’ve been able to find (adding multiple books to collections), and I hate that series of books are organized alphabetically instead of by volume and that I have no way to change that within my collections. So when I have a 20 book series, I have to open the info for every single one to hunt down the next book in the series.

I wonder if it’s even worth submitting feedback. I’m going to try.

Year 6, Day 130: I’m on Day 6 or 7 of this damn flare and am reflecting on how this is awful and yet it’s lucky that the way they present, I can force myself to do some of the things I need to do. It’s miserable and I pay a very steep price for forcing it, but I can force the issue. So crucial things like work and school pick up can usually happen even if my insides will then threaten to be my outsides if I don’t collapse in short order. But cooking is going too far, and sometimes showering is, too, even a quick ten minutes version. “Lucky”.

On the COVID front we personally know four people, one in July and three in August, who have caught it and it’s hard not to feel like it’s hemming us in on all sides psychologically with the usual late summer surge, and the latest bullshit restrictions on vaccines taking away one major layer of protection (we still mask regularly). Our main supplier of masks these days, Vogmask, is seeing lower demand which is affecting their inventory so that’s a bit worrying. I spent a big chunk of cash recently replenishing our supply now that SmolAc and I are wearing them, too.

(Yes, there are likely better masks but fitwise these are consistent good fits for our size and shape faces, and the kids can easily carry and put them on and take them off. And they get the super colorful ones. Those factors all add up to wearing them happily and for long periods of time as needed instead of avoiding them or taking them off repeatedly.)

I used to wear my flomask most regularly so I have tons of those filters. I stopped because the bottom elastic was overstretched. They recently started stocking those, so I can fix that, and wearing that more. Our healthcare provider is still supplying us with home tests, so I’m collecting those and tucking some into holiday gifts for folks who don’t have ready access.