May 19, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (259)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 6, Day 21: What a day (negative). I dislike most of the new people I’ve worked with for the past 18 months, they are so incompetent and make my life so much more complicated than it needs to be. Today’s confidential news was like a gut punch: Someone I actually like working with is scheduled to be laid off. I hate this so much. Within this new and larger structure, my voice is not valued or respected at more than one level above me so I can’t do anything other than be angry. So! many! incompetent people all around us so of course this one actually competent person gets laid off. 🤬 I made it a point to give positive feedback about them in case it did make some secret sort of difference. I doubt it will but I had to do something. In other enraging work matters, upper management seems to think it’s ok to handwave clear violations of labor law and expect I’ll just go along with it. Newsflash, I won’t. I will never be that person. So I fought an uphill battle about that as well. More reasons for them to hate me but I won this round for my people. It doesn’t feel like a victory, though. Even though eventually someone had to admit they were wrong and apologize (not to me, though, couldn’t possibly apologize to the person who caught your department-wide mistakes) for the royal fork-up, I’m furious that I had to fight the fight in the first place.

This all feels like a flipping exhausting, completely unnecessary, exercise. It sent me spite job hunting. Sadly I’m still not seeing anything I especially want to do instead. If only we had retirement money. I would like to be secretly retired. I could handle all the usual kid stuff that I do, garden, continue with doing my Helping People work. Sigh.

Year 6, Day 22: Week 40 of working out with a trainer remotely. Sometimes I feel a little stronger. Most of the time I feel like I’m struggling to make progress. He keeps inching up the workouts every week, one way or another, that’s what he’s supposed to do, but that confuses my sense of progress because I only focus on how I feel doing today’s workout. More often than not I feel like noodle arms or weak. I noticed that my arms are probably (can’t say for sure, I haven’t measured for actual data) bigger because the sleeves of tees that fit fine last year feels too tight this year. Maybe I should measure for actual data. Part of me remains in denial about my changing body shape because I love my Fat Rabbit Farm tees, they don’t make these three designs anymore, and I don’t want to give them up.

Year 6, Day 23: ’tis a rough morning when I’m the first one awake, much later than we should be. I was up working til midnight last night, everyone else was long asleep by the time I called it quits so I thought they got good rest but we’re all running a bit ragged today.

I visited the garden for a moment of peace and maybe a reset. Out of 10 seeds, the green beans are doing the most. 5 out of 7 have a healthy start with leaves! 2 are trying their best (mood). 3 never germinated (also mood). Of the 10 cucumbers, 4 germinated and they’ve not been doing more than peeking a pair of tiny leaves above ground. I encourage them but won’t get my hopes up. Of the 6 sugar snap peas I planted, only 1 germinated and is doing a fine job of making a bundle of little leaves. Sometime this weekend I need to fix part of the auto watering setup and run it to make sure it works.

Year 6, Day 24: My personal policy is never to open the door to unexpected visitors because they’re either evangelicals or scammers. I don’t hold with being evangelized at by any religion or scammed TYVM. Unfortunately, PiC was home when someone came by and learned the hard way about my firm policy. They asked for times he’d be home and his phone number to schedule a visit. Personally I don’t think there’s any reason any legit company would be sending people door to door without business cards or having contacted us through official means so I was even more skeptical than usual. I did a few searches and asked if they said anything about an energy bill. Yep, they said they’d be coming to “review your energy bill” for savings related to the “IRA”. And there’s the scam. They’ll steal our account number and transfer our account without our authorization and rack up charges.

It was an object lesson for dinner: scammers can get anyone. They come at inconvenient times, they get you when you’re distracted, they pressure you to give personal information face to face which can be socially uncomfortable to refuse. They do this because their tactics are effective. If they can get you off guard, you’ll make mistakes that they can exploit. That can happen to anyone sufficiently distracted.

Year 6, Day 25: It’s daddy long legs season. Every year, there’s a point in the year when they are out in abundance and keep swarming our front door trying to get in. I don’t know why they want in so badly but it gets tiresome catching and releasing them. We’ve evicted four of them already.

It’s ALSO the time of year when I’m scheduling meetings 2-5 weeks out and having to shake myself when it crosses over into summer: Oh! I don’t have regular school pick up that day. What DO I have? The summer schedule (with camp, without camp, with travel, without travel) might just break my brain.

I was very frustrated this weekend when I took my 8P jeans for a test wear. It’s the right size and fits at all points. Until I start walking around. Then they kept slipping. Argh! The mental load of this week has been such that it wasn’t until today that I realized I don’t have to return them and start shopping again. There’s this thing called a belt! It helps keep pants up! They’re not purely decorative! So I’ll be trying on some belts next week. It’s a pity how little processing power I had this week for common sense problems.

Murderbot is out on AppleTV and to my great disappointment, it does indeed require a subscription. I suspected as much but hadn’t ever had enough interest to see for myself. I can do a free 7day trial. Maybe I wait til all the episodes are out and then binge them in a week.

May 12, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (258)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 6, Day 14: What a bummer of a morning. Both an 8 am call and missed one of my favorite neighborhood dogs walking by. PiC assured me that he fulfilled the petting duties but that didn’t help my need to pet a dog!

I’ve spent the last few weeks cajoling my seeds to grow to mostly no avail. One intrepid cucumber seedling peeked through, and I hoped for more but hope was fading after more knowledgeable gardening friends said the seeds were probably all duds. Then two more cucumber seedlings peeked out! And one sugar snap pea, and today, two green bean plants!

Last week’s exercise was a real struggle, my fatigue isn’t the worst it ever was but it’s heavy enough that it’s messing with even my internal mental motivation. Usually, even if I physically don’t feel up to it, mentally I still want to try. It’s been hard to find even that bit of mental desire to try, or feel stronger.

Year 6, Day 15: The cost of rice at our local Asian market is up 20%. We’ve pulled out storage bins so we can store a bit more than we usually do in case the next problem after higher prices is shortages and then empty shelves. I don’t know how long that situation would last but we want to have some really basic staples on hand for the worst of it. I think back to my parents’ refugee days, when all they had to eat regularly was rice and fish sauce. Even I can’t imagine things getting that bad this year, boy do I hope I’m right, and they survived that for a year. We will find a way to manage.

JB asked what else we’ll stockpile and I’m not totally sure at the moment. Dry goods are easier. I’m making sure that we have necessities. They each have a next size up coat, shoes, and underwear. We need next size up socks. Smol Acrobat has a stash of next size up hand me downs. JB’s stash is mixed. I probably need to get half a dozen pants. They’re tearing out their knees at a slower rate than previous years so that’s a relief.

Year 6, Day 16: I’m putting in an order at Weee! for ingredients for two recipes and that led to 40 minutes of spreadsheeting the grocery prices we paid at the local Asian market in the past six months compared to Weee!’s pricing. It’s a mix. Many of the small items we’d get (coconut cream, rice flour) are more expensive locally. But I never happen across error pricing online. That only happens in person, if ever (just over 2 lbs of pork butt for just under $6).

Had to work til nearly midnight. We had a roofing person come by for an hour to make decisions, I had to hunt down COVID booster appointments for everyone to make sure we’re as immune protected as possible before summer sets in. I had to have a consultation call with someone in a completely different time zone. The FSA claims had to be submitted because our cashflow is quite borked from an unfortunate confluence of expenses and we need to weather this moment of the year where expenses outpace the cash on hand.

Year 6, Day 17: No dogs again this morning but a crow friend was on our driveway and scared off by the kids rushing outside. They weren’t rushing at the crow friend, they didn’t even notice them I’m sure, but I did and I waved to them on their perch across the street before I put down a few treats. They were in the watching mood so they saw the treats and once the kids and I cleared out of the immediate space, the crows came over to pick up their treats before flying off.

That was nice but wuuuff I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed. There are so many things that I need to do at work, both day to day and at higher levels, but my brain’s really not feeling up to the bigger things.

On the home front I’m also feeling this anxiety. Our GP and the pediatrician have both approved our boosters, we just need to get all our appointments set up. We also asked about their policy on measles titers and boosters, the PA will ask about our getting titers done to test for immunity so that we know what we’re dealing with. I’m having regrets – a lot of these things were meant to be done in April but the days got away from me so they’re all landing in May when things are always hectic. Next year, I will do better with our boosters – we’ll get them in April, if we still HAVE COVID vaccines. Sigh. That existential dread doesn’t help anything. I think it’s worse this week between the fatigue and having no time to do my usual political actions.

Oh. It’s not that. It’s that my surrogate parents truly believe that the Jan 6 insurrection was engineered by the FBI and I’m feeling physical pain and discomfort sitting with that knowledge. I suspected that they might be thinking along those lines, but having it confirmed – emotional and physical pain.

Year 6, Day 18: It’s possible, on the third hand, my overwhelm is simply because I’m overwhelmed. There’s too much to do, and only one me. PiC does a ton of heavy lifting but as always, there’s always so much to do. I took the time out for a massage today. Iit is always incredibly painful to reset my muscles, and then I’m exhausted after. I managed to wade through most of my work, wish all the moms happy early Mother’s Day, put together a chicken pot pie (I’d cooked all the components a couple weeks back and frozen them)(also it turns out my frozen pie crust needs to be out of the freezer for 5 hours, not 1.5, to be workable), water the plants, clean up, make nuoc mao in prep for making thit kho later, open a sack of soil and hill my potatoes without accidentally burying the baby green bean plants.

It sounds like I got a lot done but I didn’t to take my friend’s dog for a walk or play fetch, clean the shower, vacuum any part of the house, scrub the tile, submit another FSA claim, try on my new trousers with work blouses to make sure they’re worth keeping, or find a belt for the jeans I took for a test wear yesterday. I’m sure there’s another dozen things I’ve forgotten. The list is always neverending but it’s felt worse this week. Also the Okini coordinator contacted me about some bigger needs that came up and I need to put together an email update to past contributors for the April donations and for this appeal in case folks can pitch in for these.

That leads me to: it’s been hard feeling cashflow-broke. We can absorb most impacts but I impulsively gave enough to put us in the hole for a couple months. Oops. I had to halt all giving this month and borrow a significant amount of money from our emergency fund. I was commiserating with a friend that it’s very hard to want to spend on all the things and save all the money at the same time.