September 16, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (224)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 152: Reminding myself as much as I legitimately hate almost everything about my job right now, I hate self inflicted injury and being poor more. So don’t quit don’t quit don’t quit. All the department heads are frustrated, and demotivated, right now, and I can’t fix it for myself or for them. I didn’t cause it and it’s not my business to fix, but it’s so EXTRA frustrating that we’re all so unhappy. (Is the strength of my quittiness correlated with my lack of dog? Very possibly.)

Some of the fruits of my shopping spree have started to come in. The Vogmask is a nice alternative mask to have on hand. I’m still primarily wearing the flo-mask but there are times that it isn’t suitable. The IKEA delivery finally arrived so I organized the utensils drawer that has been annoying me for almost a decade. It’s really quite satisfying to see it nice and neat. It led to bagging up a lot of utensils for donation too, which is a good thing to do regularly. I’ll do a more thorough sweep of the plastic utensils that accumulate over time later this week.

Trainer time: this is the start of Week Six! I haven’t been able to do more than three consecutive workouts in more than 20 years and I have missed that so much. I’m not feeling any stronger yet, it’s much too soon for that, but I’m feeling that challenged feeling of striving for something harder than I can do right now without the usual getting knocked on my fibro/CFS ass follow-up and that’s really something. Week SIX. So planks are still harder than they have any right to be, but I’m enjoying the assumption that I will keep doing this and therefore eventually get stronger. The modified pushups and the lateral raises are still very satisfying.

Year 5, Day 153: My goodness the weather has turned. It’s viciously hot in most places but firmly turning into fall here. The heater went on this morning for a spell, I’ve been bumming around in sweatpants instead of shorts. The gloom was so close in that the curtains had to be drawn around 6 pm. I don’t mind exactly, it’s just that weird feeling of living in the shift. But also weather in general is just strange these days. Just last week we rode out a heat wave.

PiC had picked up a precooked Irish stew from Costco and it was perfect for tonight. Smol Acrobat was a bit of a butt about the potatoes but otherwise everyone else was happy with mopping up thick gravy with their carb of choice and the very filling carrots, potatoes and generous meat chunks. It’s probably just cheaper to buy this than to make it from scratch. It’s certainly easier!

Year 5, Day 153: Every morning, when I realize it’s not a “kid activities at the end of the day” I heave a sigh of relief. I’m so relieved that today is one of those. I have a list of things for JB to do when they get home and that’ll buy me a few hours of peace while they tootle around the house.

About five(?) years ago I had a massive allergy attack seeming bout of ridiculously obnoxiously persistent itching. My scalp was a mess. My hands and feet would sprout rash like patterns randomly. Allergy tests revealed no answers so the allergist advised me to stay on a very low dose of antihistamine daily ongoing once all the itching calmed down from the higher dose. A few months ago, having had no flare ups in years, I idly wondered if it had finally settled down enough that I could stop taking them but waved the question away. Long story long: I unintentionally forgot my antihistamine four nights in a row last week because I refilled my pill boxes incompletely and the answer is NOPE. I cannot stop taking them! It’s now been five+ days of non-stop itching even with 20 mg of antihistamine daily. What a terrible unforced error.

The California fire season feels like it’s year round nearly. There are three major fires that I’m aware of right now and at least one of them has forced evacuations of people I know. It was touch and go for the second group / fire but they said the evac orders were cancelled.

Yipes! I forgot it was still a trainer day until 10 pm. I got out of bed to finish the second half of my exercises. I wonder what the problem is with my brain. Originally to avoid setting off the fatigue and pain, we decided on an every other day schedule. The day immediately after I do a workout, I wish it was a workout day again. But the day after that, I forget that it’s a training day. This is consistent whether it’s a weekday or weekend. Maybe I should try four days in a row, ride the momentum? Or maybe two days, skip a day, then two days.

Year 5, Day 155: My Corelle order arrived! I’m a little iffy on the larger serving bowls we bought, they’re much bigger than I envisioned and where am I going to store them? But I am delighted with the little dip bowls and appetizer plates (my picks). Our prior set of dip bowls are down to 3 survivors out of …. 8? maybe? I remember the first one I broke about 8 years ago. Then I broke two more microwaving butter in them. The other 2 were someone else’s fault. The new little bowls are both microwave and dishwasher safe they are adequately protected from me. Not if I drop them, though, RIP first bowl. Originally I’d been yearning for a set of metal dip bowls – it’d take some real doing to break those! Sadly, the only set of metal bowls I liked was out of stock. Happily, Corelle came along with a 40% off Labor Day sale and that brought the price point down to a much more palatable range.

This also got me thinking about how it must be so American to think of holidays synonymously with sales. Do other countries do that nearly as much as we do? Surely not?

Also! I finally did my passport pictures! I have no idea if it’s any good, I can only hope. While I was at it, I did pictures for the kids and printed all that out as well to get moving on their passport applications. JB’s has expired and Smol Acrobat hasn’t had one yet so it’s time if we plan to try any international travel in the next few years. The State department claims that Oct-Dec is their slow period (low volume), let’s test that claim because I know of some people’s applications taking 6-12 months in the past year.

Year 5, Day 156: Oh my stars and garters, to quote the good Doctor Hank McCoy. It’s been a WEEK.

Lots of mutual aid this week. Friends with medical problems, cash crunches of the two digit to four digit varieties, evacuating the SoCal fires, Diane Duane’s book sale, and more. Also getting called on at the last minute to help a high schooler edit some writing. Once an English major, always an English major?

Nightmares every night leave me wrung out and exhausted by morning. Complaining about it at Bluesky caught the attention of someone with similar problems and they dropped me a line letting me know about a medication they’ve used to great effect for eliminating the nightmares. I immediately scheduled an appointment to talk to my doctor about it.

At work, a few small things slowed down just enough for me to catch my breath for a second, then I was pummeled with more personnel problems. It’s of the unfortunate event variety, not a performance issue, but I am going to fight to support and keep someone through a tough personal time. It’s going to land hard on my team but I will find a way to make it work. That’s the right thing to do. There are moments, especially when I hit the 10 pm still at my desk mark, when I wish I was willing to be mediocre at my job. I can draw some lines but that one, I can’t let go.

September 9, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (223)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 145: I had vague notions of going somewhere with the family today, maybe a BART adventure to … I dunno. And with that stellar planning, instead I:

• Finally replaced the older elastic on JB’s school masks. Fresh elastic! Better protection!
• Finally ran that load of laundry I’d been planning to do since Wednesday. After helping me put an extra large load of wash into the washer, Smol Acrobat left the garage saying: dat’s enough for today. I should have taken that as a suggestion.
• Inspected my plants and planted several more snap peas in hopes they will crowd around the one plant that’s set apart from the others and puny in its solitude.
• Discovered that the onions I left in the ground months ago are sprouting new greens, as are the garlic cloves I lazily stuck in the soil and barely covered up. Low effort gardening win!
• PiC was struggling with patching a hole in Smol Acrobat’s bike tire so I started weeding, a thing the kids often like to “help” with, and ended up pulling so many weeds. And yet that wasn’t even half of them. Pah.

Prescription for poor judgement/overly ambitious chore tackling: Acetaminophen AND ibuprofen, hot shower, heating pad, a ton of water and a liedown.

Year 5, Day 146: I’m so sore today.

Our Vogmasks arrived! Finally. Happily, everyone’s sizes were correct so I may buy a full set to leave in the car. Inevitably someone will forget their mask at a bad time: they’re all in the wash or the backups are in the other backpack or bag, whatever. We carry them with us almost all the time, it’s that 1-2% of the time when you’re in a rush and didn’t realize you’d set your mask down for a minute and didn’t pick it up again.

JB wanted to beg off self defense today, offering to trade much house cleaning if they were allowed to skip. I really wanted to skip too but they’d missed last week already, plus a bunch over the summer, so I had to put my foot down for both of us. They were disappointed but didn’t complain. I had to lug work along and keep on working there, annoyingly, but still ended my workday at 10 pm. Grumble.

I took a break to make a big batch of spaghetti carbonara for dinner. This was appreciated by everyone but Smol Acrobat who complained: I wike de bacon and de gween beans but I don’t wike da pasta.

I knew they would be the objector but not to what, exactly. It might be the pasta shape. They’re used to ravioli and tortellini and lasagna, I can’t remember the last time we had a long pasta.

Year 5, Day 147: I don’t use TikTok but by golly are there so many cautionary tales about not being such a ???? that you believe everything influencers say to do. The latest is particularly relevant to this blog: “a viral glitch” to deposit a bad check and withdraw cash from that bad check when the bank makes it available immediately. That’s both fraud (knowingly depositing a bad check) and all kinds of setting yourself up for disaster. Have these people never been hit with an overdraft charge? Have they never seen how a single charge, if you don’t have that $30+ plus the money you overdrafted by, snowballs into months and years of financial chaos? It gives me hives just thinking about accidental overdrafts over the years that happened because my checking account was still a delicate ecosystem where being even two pennies off, or having two checks cashed in the wrong order, would set off an overdraft and chain reaction of panic as other bills came due and were processed. Luckily for me, I monitored that stuff obsessively and tweaked my system until I’d built up enough of a cushion that it could withstand any transaction going through in any order. But to be doing this on purpose with money you don’t have?? Noooooo!

Year 5, Day 148: Chatting with my sister about the kids and my fears and things, these things about Curran suddenly resonated so strongly. He built the Pack so his future family would be protected. I’ve worked so hard to build connections outside my bio family to provide my kids with chosen family they can rely on, unlike the bio family that I couldn’t.
He absolutely believed that Mahon would have kicked him out if he hadn’t taken care of the Rampaging Bear situation. My belief in the inevitability of abandonment by all trusted adults is just about ironclad. Still working on it. Chipping away bit by bit.

Also, the aswang from Grimm! Talk about the abusive sort of family obligation traditions.

Musing on bodies: What a terrible idea. The constant need for cleaning, and eating (multiple times a day!), flossing and brushing, dressing and undressing. It’s just maintenance maintenance maintenance. And that’s before taking into account illnesses or allergies or any deviation from a healthy state.

PTA meeting tonight – I forgot about it three times today. And just like that, our October calendar has filled up. Conference week, another PTA meeting, the fall carnival, a birthday party, a second attempt at SDCC registration.

Year 5, Day 149: I’ve been having vivid involved dreams again, not necessarily nightmares but alternate reality types of things. I usually wake up still half in that reality so I remember them pretty clearly, but they are weird.

I feel absurd for even thinking this but I was doing more research on native to CA flowers that aren’t toxic to animals (and people of course) and hopefully perennials. I planted poppies this year since we are currently without dog but that was unsuccessful anyway. I found baby blue eyes and am contemplating splurging on a ridiculous number of seeds (using a gift card!) in hopes they will be easy to grow and will produce the “field full of flowers” impression I’d like to have. $16 on more flower seeds that may come to nothing??

September 2, 2024

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (222)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 5, Day 138: Starting the week on a low point again. The cumulative effects of the last week, last week, and this weekend were too much. By Sunday mid-morning my body was in shutdown mode. I could feel the fatigue like a sledgehammer hovering over my body. I took a lot more breaks than usual to try and recover enough to take the kids to the part, but it was too late. It was already too late when I woke up, honestly. My body shut down mid-afternoon.

I’m moderately functional today! While not good, I’m MUCH better than yesterday when I was drained to the dregs. I’ve managed to run two loads of laundry and the dishwasher. Update, four loads of laundry and uh, I didn’t realize that the dishes were already clean. 🤦🏻‍♀️ That and my low score on today’s Duolingo are good indicators that today’s “better” wasn’t back to baseline.

It being our first warm lovely day in a while, the ant colony moved into the kitchen to look for food and water. Took a bit of hunting to find the ant bait we used last time but I dotted the kitchen and crossed my fingers this will take care of them.

This was my first day without massive frustration at work in several months. I’m writing this after I shut down so I couldn’t jinx myself. Here’s hoping it won’t be the only one this week.

Trainer time. It didn’t feel good, just ok, but I was able to break my exercises across the day enough so that I completed all 11 sets without undue fatigue. That’s something!

Year 5, Day 139: If I was going into the negatives on Sunday, which forced the full body shutdown, then I’m hovering at a 2 today. For most of the morning I squeaked by on a trickle of motivation but that just wasn’t going to get me through the day. Finally I remembered I’d been wanting to watch Deadpool, with sound this time, I last watched it in 2017 on a plane without headphones. 🤦🏻‍♀️ It was very rated-R but it was also what my brain needed to nudge it into gear. Then I remembered the Lego movie existed and that crutch got me the rest of the way through my day.

It wasn’t until the end of the day that I realized I’m likely dragging because yesterday was arm day and maybe I overdid it. This feeling in my shoulders, like mini elephants started nesting in there, finally tipped me off. That ache and fatigue is a direct result of the dozen lateral raises, modified pushups and planks. Better ratchet down the number of reps per set, I can’t keep functioning like a sodden pile of noodles every other day.

We picked a small handful of snap pea tendrils for our salad tonight to encourage them to quit spending energy on tendrils and start making flowers. If it doesn’t work, at least we got to enjoy some part of the plants.

A Happy Thing: we’re still using the nasal spray for the kids when they go to daycare/school. For Smol Acrobat, being too little and uncoordinated to mask on their own, and too young to remember on their own, that’s their only daily protection aside from the vaccine. They were resistant the first month but now they’re a champ at letting me do the spray. These small favors are appreciated.

Year 5, Day 140: Thanks to a recommendation from One Sick Vet, I picked up a set of longer term reuseable over-the-ear masks for everyone from Vogmask (20% off until the end of the month). We have disposables on rotation for the kids, JB has a set of cloth masks that are layered with a filter for school, I use the flomask, and PiC rotates between disposables. Everyone has a flomask but I’m the only one who prefers it over all the other mask options. Occasionally I need something over the ear and less bulky, though, and I want to keep a set of good masks on hand as backups for the family when they forget and leave the house without theirs. We’ll try these out and if we like them well enough, I’ll buy a set for the car.

Unhappily, JB came home with all the gastroenteritis symptoms. I’ve made up their sick bed (they get to camp out on the floor when vomit is involved to try to limit the horrific vomit cleanup that still haunts me to this day. Vomit was specifically written out of my parenting contract when I was pregnant with JB, I’m on wound care!), their sick bag, their assortment of fluids and administered Zofran left over from the last time we were the House of Vomit. Every ounce of me is now focused on hoping that it’s only a touch of the stomach flu and not, say, rotavirus. They don’t have a temperature so it’s promising on that front, at least.

With the two viral infections going on, JB’s and Smol Acrobat’s low fever and congestion, I deemed it the better part of valor not to do my full workout today. It felt like wimping out but not wearing myself down to a shadow is the whole point of working with a trainer.

Year 5, Day 141: JB deliberately stayed burritoed in their sick camp this morning well past the time they should have gotten up. I suspected they were a little better than they were letting on but didn’t press the point since I wanted them to be vomit free for at least a full day before sending them back to school. In some ways it was easier for me to have them home sick (or “sick”) than not: I didn’t have to rush to drop off, or pick up, or run them to self defense. I just had meetings, and attempted to shift a mountain of work, and instructed them to eat bland food at intervals. They did crafts, reading and then finally, in the mid afternoon, asked to watch some TV. Their stomach pain was clearly better by then, but I was too busy to care whether they were doing anything educational or productive.

Things at work are really hectic in a different way as the end of our fiscal year looms. I’ve got strategy sessions and plans to deploy and people to keep motivated and in relatively decent morale. Blech. I personally have zero motivation and all the annoyance. But I remind myself daily that we can get through this and see how it looks on the other side. I did, however, see a really interesting job listing that didn’t make me scoff and close it immediately. Unfortunately it’s across a bridge and they want hybrid work, “remote for the right candidate” and I’m leery of any job where remote is considered a special accommodation. I know how quickly and easily those can be yanked. It pays more than my current job but the difference would mean nothing if I had to commute even one day a week. I’d have to figure out after school care and things would get complicated fast. It’s not worth it. 100% remote only!

Year 5, Day 142: Early signs that my birthday is approaching – I got another invitation to join AARP. It’s got me wondering, are the discounts worth it? The PTA discounts aren’t worth a plugged nickel so I’m skeptical about these.

Our heat snap is apparently over! Smol Acrobat and I pulled out our cozy bathrobes after our showers to enjoy some Lego movie together while PiC and JB went to their Back to School Night. Smol Acrobat had wanted to go but I didn’t like the sound of their congestion and their fatigue was enough for me to think it’d be far wiser to be curled up in blankets early. They were slightly befuddled by the change in routine, we ALWAYS have all four of us home where did half the family go? But they really wanted to watch the Lego movie so that helped ease the confusion.

Me, I’m still paying the physical price for using up all available energy plus reserves two weekends ago. At best, I replenish at a trickle, so this recharging may take weeks for me to feel like the sole inhabitant of my body again and not like I’m smuggling a mountain in each limb.