December 23, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (238)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 243: For many reasons I feel zero holiday cheer so far. PiC got the tree up, and it’s nice to see the shiny sparkly but I’m just not feeling it. Busy-ness is definitely a factor. Everything (in the world) also feels so much harder than it needs to be. Every day with the kids is a whole lot of struggle. On the plus side, I’m not feeling the deep-seated anxiety that I usually feel around family stuff this time of year. Am I just too tired to? Maybe! But also I noticed that working through things in therapy and I am no longer feeling the anxiety-driven need to pack for these things six months out.

Lack of anxiety – good, lack of energy driven by the anxiety – less good.

It was another struggle today with brain fog and a storm passing through at the same time. Work was much tougher than it should have been.

But lots of packages arrived today! They were the key ones: books and treats I have to pack up by Wednesday for distribution. Whew. I was sweating the books package the most but a few other things were also important.

I hate this for Cloud @ Wandering Scientist. Her daughter caught whooping cough at school and now Cloud is sick too which ruins her plans to shop for presents in person. This reminds me of how much of my life is centered around doing most things 1-2 months in advance because odds are high that I’ll get sick, overwhelmed, or fatigued, or all of the above if I leave important things until near the day of.

Year 5, Day 244: Joe Udo at Retire by 40 has been retired for 12 years already! That really flew by. In his housekeeping post, he said: For 2024, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,000 for those under 50. If you’re over 50 like me, you can contribute up to $8,000. The Roth IRA is the best retirement account because you don’t have to pay tax when you withdraw from the account. Everyone should max out their Roth IRA every year. If you haven’t maxed out your contribution yet, now is a great time to do it. Actually, the deadline for 2024 is April 15^th. But I like to contribute in the same calendar year to keep it simple.

I don’t have any such advice. I had to max out a 401K this year, and we haven’t contributed to our Roth IRAs for a few years. I stopped contributing to the traditional IRA as well since I wasn’t getting a tax benefit from it and didn’t want to be constrained by RMDs in all our accounts.

I threw together our New Year cards and ordered them today. It’s too late to get them in the mail before I’m steamrolled by the holidays, but that doesn’t matter! Because they’re New Year cards and can go out in January! Go me, planning ahead for potential failures for once. And buying them at 60% off for a custom design at Office Depot made them much more affordable. Updates to farflung family and friends are nice, better when it doesn’t cost $200+. Plenty of people use Minted and other fancier services but it just doesn’t rank that high in my spending plans. I have to conserve our dollars for direct aid to folks (Larime, Linda Tirado) and others.

Year 5, Day 245: Smol Acrobat has been wandering about like a cranky old fogey grumping out of the blue, “but I wanted sushi!” every few days. They never tell us they want sushi at any point where it would have done any good, mind you, they’re just rolling up with a grievance while we’re putting together dinner as if we’d taken a poll and rejected their ask. Strong reaction from the kid who only eats cucumber rolls! I should give them a bowl of slivered cucumber on rice with a side of nori and see if that solves the problem.

Year 5, Day 246: I was reviewing Smol Acrobat’s doctor’s visit notes to find their height, I’m trying to get their Global Entry applications ready, and was very pleased to see that the doc recorded my request for a 6 month booster of the COVID vaccine next spring and approved it. I appreciate it when people listen to me and do what’s necessary without having to be told twice!

The GE application process is a total pain right now though. I had to change a detail for JB but I can’t do it myself, I need them to. Six emails in, they’re still insisting they changed it already and I’m sending screenshots of how they changed it (incorrectly) in one place but not the other place so I still can’t move forward. My “thanks for any help you can provide” is getting more and more sarcastic with every repetition.

My nightmares are back even though I’m still taking the prazosin. They’re not as intense as they used to be, yet, but still decidedly impactful. I usually remember the dreaming when I wake up pretty clearly but this one lingered all day: we were in small boats crossing oceans and meeting people we sort of knew in some faraway unknown places. I suspect it came from a pondering on the diaspora of boat people from Vietnam and how my cousins 20 years older than me lived that and remember it clearly.

Year 5, Day 247: Our car insurance went up 18% in the summer, and I just got the notification that it’s gone up again another 15%. What the hell??

Also annoying: I have blisters or blister type pain on almost all my toes today. The tops, sides and bottoms, variably. What did I do wrong now?? I asked each toe individually, why are you suddenly such a bad neighbor? I gleaned zero satisfactory information from this interrogation.

Searching the internets, specifically Mayo Clinic since general Googling is useless these days, didn’t turn up anything super useful but it did teach me about Bullous pemphigoid. Things could be much worse, is what they’re telling me. Still, having pretty much all toes hurt isn’t great.

December 16, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (237)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 236: 🎉🎉 I finally got my new retainer! It is tight so I have been instructed to wear it all the time for three months to adjust to the fit, alas, but the tech will now order the two sets that came with the $900 plan for the 2024 allotment. Thrilled to throw away my old nearly broken aligners and to have backups on the way. No matter how heavy duty these are, they’re not going to hold up against the stress that destroyed the old aligners.

Smol Acrobat is sick again and this time it comes with a side of Extra Cling. They keep asking to sleep in our bed, for me to sleep in their bed, and waking up crying for me at midnight. I have to cuddle them until they fall back asleep. And it has to be me. When PiC tries to offer a cuddle, they turn into an octopod and wrap around me even tighter whimpering in a high pitched protest. Finally after the third cycle of this, I whispered “they know what you’re doing, they’re reattaching, stop trying to help.” They relaxed a little after that. It still took 3 hours to escape their room.

Year 5, Day 237: We got some bad/disappointing news about JB’s coach leaving the group 🙁. They’re the only one who’s consistently there, good with managing the kids and they don’t have a replacement lined up. I hate change normally. When it leaves us with a whole lot of uncertainty, I hate it even more. This stinks.

Also I really hate when I took steps specifically to ameliorate burden on my team only to find out, because I can’t see the future, a week later that everything I did to help is actually doing the opposite because of other people not doing their part. I’ve found other ways to patch the holes I deliberately created but oh was that frustrating.

Year 5, Day 238: PiC insists that my puffer coat with holes in it has died its final death. It now refuses to puff back up after the last washing, so he might have a point. I also “know” that it’s ok for me to have good things that will last many years, but it was still an internal struggle so instead I tried to ignore his good point. He, knowing me, just went ahead and found me a replacement.

Part of me wants to be grumpy about how much it cost even after 40% off, but it’s a smaller part of me than it used to be.

I used to hate ceding control over anything at all, because I controlled so little. In reality I still control so little but my awareness of that fact, and glacially slow acceptance of it, has improved. Like, for example, I’m on week 19 in a row of doing exercises. They’re still laughably little compared to my fond memories of working out 30 years ago but those memories have been an impossibility for decades. Now I’ve committed to consistency with the hope of becoming stronger, less disconnected from my meatsuit, and maybe dropping some bulges. That last one has to stay the last in the list of priorities to make sure I stay focused on what’s most important. And the hell of it is, I think this is only working because I ceded control to a trainer who writes my weekly fitness plan and I just do as he says. I do pick and choose from the plan as if it was a menu, depending on how I feel on any given day, and I am curious if that really matters for my level of low fitness but generally, I am not making requests. I’m just doing the things and we’ve logged 18 weeks and still going.

My therapist calls this “being supported”. The mean gremlin inside me calls it something else entirely. But it’s a little quieter these days.

Year 5, Day 239: I had to go and jinx it, didn’t I? I was kicking rocks over the weirdly nice weather this week (because the bad weather messed up our special plans last month) so an atmospheric river landed on our doorstep early this morning.

Work continues to be a rollercoaster of “maybe we’ll be done soon? AUGH noooo another problem!!” I can’t even really take refuge in “it’ll be better soon” because the new year brings with it at least five major tasks I have to get on top of. I’ve made minor headway on three of them, but two remain elusive. I am going to have to decide how to take a few days off at the end of the year, though. I badly need the break. (And sleep. I need so much sleep. I won’t get it but I wants it, precious.)

Every time I think our cashflow looks good, we’re ok to give more in direct aid, it hits me shortly after that we actually have a 5-figure bill coming up soon which I DON’T have money set aside for. So no, not quite good. Drat. I’m transferring some of that cash into the house maintenance fund now so I don’t have to keep reminding myself.

Year 5, Day 240: My mom was diabetic but I’m not so I haven’t taken blood glucose blips very seriously. I’ve often ignored late night hunger with no issue but last night, that was totally the wrong move. The sudden hunger, despite having had a normal dinner at the normal time, was exceptionally irritating given I had just dropped into bed after another late night working. Fully intended to just ignore it but when I caved and got up, I started seeing spots, became lightheaded, dizzy, and nauseated. My whole body felt wrong. Painfully wrong. I couldn’t think at more than a crawl, and my thoughts were mostly: “ah, crap.” I inhaled a bagel with cream cheese, then a yogurt and some granola, and then drank most of a Gatorade. Probably should have gone in the opposite order because it was dicey by the time I got to the Gatorade – my breathing was irregular and vision was blurry and grey around the edges. It occurs to me this could also be related to the blood pressure meds I take for nightmares but that would be a bit odd since I’m on such a low dose.

Looking ahead to January isn’t just bad for work (still), it’s also chock full of appointments. AIYIYI. Birthdays, dentists (again??), parent-teacher conferences, a maintenance massage, we have to get together with 4 sets of friends. I’m not ready to face any of that.

*****

This GFM to repay debt for a pup that didn’t make it could use some help.

December 9, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (236)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 229: Work is positively harrowing this week. It’s going to be more late nights for another couple weeks after many weeks of late nights. I’m totally over it but still, have to keep on for a bit longer. Telling myself: breathe, hydrate, take it one day at a time. Get through as much as I can the earlier part of the week so that the meetings that come later do not derail everything in my brain.

An annoying thing: I asked my orthodontist about ongoing retainer care last year and was basically brushed off. They told me to keep wearing my last set of aligners. Fast forward a year and change: I’ve ground my teeth at night so much that there’s a hole in my aligner. I was in the office for JB’s appointment and asked them how I’d order new aligners and they were very confused. I should have been offered a retainer and a retainer program that covers up to 2 sets of retainers a year, for $900. For comparison, outright buying a new set of retainers costs $800. Additional annoyance, I was not prepared for that expense to be debited from our checking account and it temporarily dropped our balance below the daily required minimum for a day while the transfer in to cover the charge was taking some time. I normally never use the debit card to avoid this but the receptionist was being a pain about it and I needed to be done. Chase charged me a $12 service fee once that happened so today I politely asked them if they would refund the fee this time. I have never dropped the balance below that number in the 7 years the account has been open, surely we’re good for a waiver once in a long while.

Year 5, Day 230: New money side quests! Some investments a couple years back incurred preemptive withholding tax and it took me ages to figure out how to file the refund request. Finally figured it out and filed for a refund going back three years. This was sent to them in March. We finally received the letter today confirming that they were paying up, but the transfer is now two weeks late. The snail mail letter made it before the actual transfer. I followed up by email to see if they did it properly or if it got kicked back – wire transfers are the pits, and international transfers are worse. Crossing my fingers that they reply promptly and don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I know some financial institutions to have forked up wire transfers three times in a row. And they call themselves professional.

Second one: Saving JB’s backpack from zipper derailment. We considered buying a repair kit, but between the two of us, managed to save that $9. PiC reseated the zipper and then that curved needle I bought last year to save my own backpack came in handy again – though I should get a pair of pliers to help push it through thick fabric. I painfully sewed up the end of zipper into the side of the backpack, and added an extra patch to reinforce the physical backstop. It is very ugly but just needs to hold until the bottom of the backpack wears out – that probably won’t be too terribly long. So many finger cramps!

Also also, DRAT. I forgot to put in my replacement Bookoutlet order yesterday so I lost out on the sale prices. They are so deeply discounted it was still a bargain, but the principle of “overspending” irks me a little.

Year 5, Day 231: So many meetings today! It was really satisfying to put a big DONE through them as I finished up the day but wow was that a lot.

The new laptop arrived, I’ll need to set that up soon. I need to decide if I’m making that my work laptop with all the work it takes to set it up, or if this will be the family laptop. The latter is probably easier.

Bethh was so right! Netflix’s Man on the Inside is delightful. It was just too short, opinion motivated entirely by greed not because they shortchanged the storylines, and I wish we could get full 26 episode seasons of shows like this. It also featured a few other folks from The Good Place, that was fun.

Year 5, Day 232: My gardening has fallen off steeply since the start of November. Everything was dying or dead, I had to rip out my snap peas – so sad. The potatoes were likely ready to harvest but I simply haven’t had time or energy to dig them. This made it a bit more surprising to see all the grass and little clover-like things popping up in the small two foot patch I cleared for flowers. All of six poppies bloomed during the summer, their heads blew off a few days later, and that was it for my experiment with planting poppies. Or so I thought!

While picking out the grasses, trying to keep it clear enough early on so that I don’t accidentally rip out my still surviving poppy plants if I make another next attempt, I spotted three almost microscopic sprouts that look like they’re going to be poppies some day! It’s still so early they may not make it but there’s something so happy about seeing the possibility sprout. I scattered so many poppy seeds and snapdragon seeds (none of which came up), maybe they’re still there and waiting for their time to come.

Maybe there’s a metaphor in there but I worked super late again tonight and my brain is a non-wonder engine, it must shut down.

Year 5, Day 233: “She was sad, I could feel it. I should not be able to feel an emotion that is inside of someone else.” I bounced off Resident Alien the first time I started watch-listening to it but it’s landing this time. One of my reports had a devastating loss today, and I was at a loss for how to best express my grief in the form of support for them and their family. I eventually decided on a multi-tier approach since this won’t be over in a day. Dinner for this first day of bad news and flowers and care basket at separate dates in acknowledgement of the ongoing grief. Obviously until and unless they share with the rest of the department, I won’t either, but I do wish there was a way to push a button that signals a need for comfort and caring without invading anyone’s privacy.

This came on the heels of a physically draining morning and I really just wanted to curl up under the blankets and hide for a few hours. I couldn’t, of course. I had to tough it out and be productive in the few hours I had left in the afternoon before having to host a social event. It was fine but my exhaustion was so high that ten minutes in, I was checking the time. Still, we survived the week, and that’s something.

I hate that there’s no way to know how much melatonin is really in each tablet we take, and same for all the other supplements that I take. They help, but there’s always a chance that there’s other stuff that’s not so great in there. I wish it weren’t so cost prohibitive to regulate them the way medications are regulated. Of course even those aren’t immune to quality control issues. I find myself wishing for a chemistry set and the knowledge sufficient to test my own supplements to confirm they are what the companies selling them say they are.