December 19, 2022

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (133)

Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 3, Day 267: If I ever have to justify why I insist on prepping for things like travel or holidays six months ahead, this is why. How I feel today and will likely feel all week is why. A viral steamroller has come through and absolutely crushed me at one of the worst possible times. December is a terrible month for my immune system and it’s inevitable that something will derail any plans to prepare at the last minute.

I’d had a bit of a sore throat last week but after so many sleepless nights, naturally it was fatigue. Saturday night I was starting to feel iffy. Sunday morning confirmed it. I had caught something. I’d had more than a few hours of sleep and still felt like I’d been completely flattened by morning. I feel like that on and off normally but combined with actual sleep and a sore throat, it’s most likely something viral. Sigh.

So I’m very glad that A) PiC was amazing and ran every single errand on Saturday, including the Costco run where he B) found a few premade foods so we can get through the week with minimal cooking from scratch. We liked their confusing but tasty ravioli lasagna, so we are going to do that more often.

Year 3, Day 268: I’m doing my best to think and wish it away but it’s possible I caught Smol’s HMF disease. I’ve got a variety of symptoms and some fit and some might fit or might be unrelated. Please be unrelated.

There was a new episode of Leverage Redemption today! YEE! It helped me through the tired and sick brain fog hump.

I recently discovered that a friend had escaped a DV/stalker situation with very few belongings and I put out the Bat signal on Twitter. I had to be discreet and protect their privacy but we raised enough to get them a winter coat and boots. Someone else is donating some gently used clothes as well. Depending on cash flow, we’ll see what else we can get together. I remember our family sheltering a cousin, when I was about 6?, from an abusive stalker ex and I hate that this is still such a problem 30+ years later. Another good friend recommended these resources. I hope you never need it but I’m sharing them here: Stalking Resource Center, SafetyNet, and NNEDV.

As a brain relaxer, I browsed things on sale at Kate Spade. There’s dopamine from looking at pretty things, and sale prices, without the danger of buying anything because I’m not paying even 60% off Kate Spade prices today. $80 after discounts on a wallet? Not today, darlin.

I do like that little nylon backpack. I have a use for something like that for day trips and errands without kids, it’s handy to have something hands free but that’s something to think about later.

Year 3, Day 269: Today’s arguably the worst day of this illness so far. My ability to remember faces and names and similar facts was just gone. That’s not super critical to my work but it’s important enough that I cancelled a meeting to conserve the few remaining functioning brain cells for the critical stuff. While angrily griping to myself mid morning that I still wasn’t better, I caught myself. I’d done nothing to help me get better. I’ve been popping pain meds around the clock for days to ignore the sore throat and other symptoms, and doing the bare minimum at work and at parenting, but that’s not actually resting. Oops. I moved myself to work from bed, since I still had to get through some things, and took a lot more breaks.

I wrote JB’s teacher a thank you for doing a unit on a variety of fall and winter holidays, instead of Christmassing it up, because that is important to us. Finished up my last handwritten letter of the year to my senior friend and put that in the mail. We’re not sending Christmas / family cards again this year. I enjoy getting them but have simply not been up to the task of getting any together for us. Maybe in the spring I’ll throw together a tiny 4 year look back. One picture from each year we’ve missed since 2020. That’s a lot of ground to cover.

Minor food victory: I helped Smol eat a little bit of salad with dressing, and then they chose to eat a little bit more on their own. They can be a very reluctant eater most of the time, and reject veggies a lot, so these tiny wins feel big.

Year 3, Day 270: We’re having a really rough time with JB this week in particular but this situation has been developing for some time. They’re staying up later and later, I can hear them singing some nights, and waking up very late the next morning which almost always means they’re dragging their feet and having to be told to get through a routine they already know. At the start of the school year, they were getting up on time, on their own, and getting completely ready without a word from us.

They tell me that they’re really tired in the morning, which I can see and am unsurprised by, because there are a lot of nights they’re up singing to themselves late into the night. They claim a dry throat is why they’re getting up in the middle of the night too. Gee, correlation?

Parenting remains frustrating.

*****

Seeing Scalzi’s offer to write a short story to get Locus Magazine to their fundraising goal made me think, gosh, it’s too bad I don’t have any talent or skill that I can offer as incentive when we do these giving things that come up every so often or…every year. I’m good at a few things that are useful but nothing at all useful to offer up as a prize of sorts.

Year 3, Day 271: I’m admiring stamps again. I still want the elephant stamps. Also the women cryptologist stamps. The red fox ones look very cute but I’m not sure I have a real need for 40¢ stamps. Charles M Schulz ones are cute. Next year they’re coming out with the Tomie daPaola and John Lewis stamps.

I’m not a philatelist, of course, I just love using neat stamps when I send people letters and cards.

Smol Acrobat slept hard today, sleeping in until 8:30. It’s been a rough week for them too, I think. But happily they were so enthused about breakfast, I didn’t have to fight with them at all. They asked for two helpings of eggs, ate them all!, half a banana, and a whole waffle. Amazing.

My headache is still a constant companion, as is the iffy throat and congestion.

December 12, 2022

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (132)

Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 3, Day 260: Smol’s third round of fever started last night, coinciding perfectly with my fatigue deepening to the point I didn’t even hear them wake and cry at 4 am. PiC took care of them, but I usually hear and respond to all middle of the night wakings. Getting up felt like a forced swim up through multiple levels of sediment. Heavy and yucky and my ears kept popping.

Working felt the same way today, too. Just a lot of yuck and struggle to get the basics squared away. Pre-holiday hangover?

My arm is still sore from my flu shot which reminds me that yay I finally got my flu shot! It’s been hard to muster any energy or time. No new symptoms from the shot, I just continue to be generally headachy, muscle achy, fatigued and have an on again off again sore throat. Maybe, maybe if I can pull off another night of sleep or ten, I’ll feel better? It doesn’t help that I’m also anticipating with great stress and no joy the upcoming time with family that involves a lot of logistics and problem solving and no help whatsoever.

Year 3, Day 261: Ah yes one of the few days I have meetings scheduled would be following a horrible up constantly with a very sad Smol Acrobat night. It’s not clear what was wrong. They were sad and couldn’t get comfortable, but I didn’t know why. Their fever was down and I had administered Tylenol just for their general discomfort but they just couldn’t deal. They napped at daycare, thankfully, twice even, but were terribly sad at lunch and refused to eat. This was a puzzle and teachers tried to feed them to no avail. According to the doctor, though, this is actually their third virus in the past 2.5 weeks, so we have to take them for another round of COVID and flu tests. Also, it turns out there’s a chance they were exposed to hand foot mouth disease last week, we’re just finding out now. Mega sigh.

For my part, I was 90% zombie today. I’m just so tired. And maybe this contributed to my feeling slightly inadequate. One of my dear friends (#1) was a key player in planning a major inauguration and gala, and she did a magnificent job. I simply cannot imagine wrapping my head around doing anything that immense or that highly visible. Our mutual dear friend (#2, much older than both of us) selected #1 over me to be the executor of her will in this year’s rewrite and #1 is also the designated party planner. #2 doesn’t want a funeral, she wants a big party. Don’t get me wrong, I am not gunning for more jobs, but I admit to a small pang of “well gosh, what am I good for then?” As you know, if I don’t have a use, a job to do, then I don’t know what the point of me is in a friendship.

It’s possible I’ll write the obituary, I wrote her late spouse’s, but that feels like small potatoes. Then again, I’m not sure how I’ll even do that, my heart is in my throat whenever I think about writing it. And yet I feel like I need to prepare raw material now before it’s too late. In any case, I agree with #2s choice of #1 for an executor. It’s practical, her kids are quite a bit older than ours and she’s more intimately familiar with #1’s tastes and preferences because she’s very particular about tastes herself. I’m not that person. I’m a nuts and bolts, behind the scenes person. Pure functionality over form, entirely about getting a job done with zero thought for performance and flair. I’m no good at the latter, I’m uncomfortable with fanfare. I 0% wanted to be the center of attention at my own wedding and only got through that by ignoring people if I wasn’t face to face with them. The choice truly does make sense to me. I just want to be more of service in the event of #2’s passing. If nothing else, to numb the grief, I suppose.

Year 3, Day 262: I really don’t know what’s what with COVID anymore. PiC’s employer has noted higher community transmission rates and moved their company guidance accordingly. But it’s only “masks recommended and limited in person meetings”. Meanwhile everywhere I look, hardly anyone is masked. Half the people at the orthodontist were unmasked, and they actually require masking. One lady had the nerve to tell her kid to REMOVE their mask when they stepped inside. I guess that’s “require” since they didn’t enforce it or chastise it unmasked people.

Smol’s still sick and in a lot of pain. They couldn’t eat all day and PiC and I were racking our brains on how to help them. I’m exhausted from the past two nights of all nighters with them. I had to set aside time to just lay down and rest during the day because it doesn’t look like this will resolve quickly, it’s very probably hand foot mouth disease. They were exposed last week and we only got the notification yesterday about the exposure. Not that we could have done anything about it last week, either.

After I had the brilliant notion of picking up Jamba Juice for them, and it worked! They slurped down a huge amount and were smiling for the first time at a meal in days! They opened their mouth wide saying ah! ah! ah! They suddenly felt good enough to let me take a good look inside and sure enough: herpangina. Sigh. They’re miserable and it’s so sad.

Year 3, Day 263: Not for the first time since I started using them, I’m grateful someone mentioned setting phone alarms for things like appointments. It’s been a huge help for picking up JB from school. I get very deep into my focused work day to day and really need that sharp jerk to pull my brain out of the depths on time.

Especially on days like today, my third day after a sleepless night, and my brain is barely just creaking along, at least I don’t have to also worry that I’ll forget someone somewhere. That’s happened a couple of times, before the alarms, and I know they’re fine but I would just as soon skip that guilt (strongly linked to how I felt when I was constantly left at school), thank you very much.

I thought about cooking with that chicken I defrosted on Monday and haven’t touched. Since I started work at 530, I had some time by the afternoon. But the two and a half brain cells I had left piped up and said maybe don’t wipe yourself out the rest of the way cooking when there are still classes to drive to? Good job, tiny voice.

Year 3, Day 264: Mulling over how, since starting daycare, I’ve gotten a few days a week with chunks of uninterrupted time to work which is REALLY good. But the tradeoff is germs germs germs omg germs. Thankfully so far not COVID, but every other kind of viral fever-inducing thing out there has come home with them. They’re on Virus number 6 in 3 months and this one is absolutely brutal. I thought patting them down 3-5 times a night was bad (and it was). This go-round, they’re absolutely hysterical with discomfort throughout the night, night after night.

Today is an at-home day for Smol, who is still sad and sick, which reminds me just how physically exhausting it is to be ON constantly with an active toddler when I’m super tired, plus have work to do (which I of course cannot even think about while I’m on Smol minding duty). Feels like all the options are bad right now.

Big sighs.

*****

I noticed that my lifelong friend had big smile wrinkles that weren’t there before this year, in pictures she texted me. Then I noticed that I have them. We’re prematurely aging! The long running joke is that this sort of thing doesn’t usually show up on our (Asian) faces for a few more years, and then generally it happens all at once. I guess the pandemic kick-started it.

*****

We donated again to the Child and Family Relief Round 2: Our goal is to provide 500 food packages to families in need in different provinces of Afghanistan. Aseel’s Emergency food Package Emergency Food Package 1 (92 USD per package) feeds a family of 6-8 members for five weeks.

December 5, 2022

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (131)

Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 3, Day 253: *creak* go my bones and *creak* goes my brain. Having gotten up with Smol several times overnight, I’d logged maybe three hours of sleep by the time it was time to get up for the day. This mystery illness is the pits.

After seeing everyone off, I made the call that laying down first, rather than last after I’d done the majority of my work and felt like a herd of elephants had trampled me, was the wiser choice. It was but I didn’t feel refreshed after a 45 minute liedown during which my back started complaining. What’s with our bodies getting hurt from laying down?? Honestly.

Work itself was happily uneventful. I ironed out more details for holiday stuff and when my brain stalled out, hopped over to organizing the administrative details of the Lakota orders. Several are pending or starting to ship.

I have several orders of my own pending. Some things are for packing, some things are for wrapping. All the things I bought already have a place to go: closet, or wrapped gift pile, but the combination of several boxes of hand me downs and shipped goodies overwhelmed my brain.

One last package arriving tonight hit my limit of patience with the amount of STUFF in the office which triggered a cleaning cascade. I can’t work surrounded by mess. An hour of sorting and cleaning mostly returned us to pre holiday equilibrium mess. That’s not good. I need to do a bit more decluttering or I’m going to be a real mental mess going into the end of the year. (more…)