November 17, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (285)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 203: Damn that moment of sharing a bite of food with JB! I had been fending off their germs pretty well the last five days and got complacent (forgot, even). The germs immediately took advantage of the direct infection vector and ambushed me. I came away the loser in the confrontation with congestion and cotton fluff for brains. There are no good times for this but this is definitely a bad time. We have the final prep for SmolAc’s birthday coming up and we have to make our final selections for Open Enrollment. With minutes ticking down, I finally told PiC that if he wasn’t sure of some of his healthcare plans, we can just stick with the HMO in 2026 and prepare ourselves for HDHP/HSA in 2027 assuming everything else stays the same (remaining employed by the same companies). *Knocks wood, throws salt, etc*

The added complexity is that I just started physical therapy and we have no idea what they charge for that. So it’s a crapshoot where we’d land financially in 2026 if I’m still going to PT. Right now it’s entirely covered.

Year 6, Day 204: Our neighbor’s busy season hit at the same time as her partner’s scheduld had surgery and has needed favors left and right for their school age kid. Luckily it’s super easy, just picking them up or dropping them off on our way out or back in, and sometimes I only get the ask a few minutes before it needs doing but that meshes perfectly with my schedule since I try to force myself to get ready earlier than necessary. I like banking the favors. I know they’re not keeping score but it makes me feel better and yes, I know, it shouldn’t be a thing. And yet. This is my brain.

As my reward this week, their cat came to meow at me for petting, even in the rain!, and I was very pleased to oblige. We had a nice chat of MROW. mow? MRROWWW. MIAO.

Year 6, Day 205: I was up and working at 5 am and that should have been good for knocking off by 2 pm but instead I worked 12 straight hours and then tacked on another 1-2 after getting the kids off to bed. Chalk that up to the weird intersection of being really sick but also incredibly stressed and anxious.

It was interrupted by one of my favorite neighborhood dogs tackling me, though, and that was The Best. He’s as happy to see me as I am to see him and that feels like a compliment seeing as how I don’t provide for any of his needs. I DID have a bacon treat hidden up my sleeve but he didn’t even notice it until I held it out, he was too busy trying to hug me and rubbing on my legs like a cat.

Year 6, Day 206: Utterly overwhelmed today. I think every year, the pressure starts cranking up at the end of August now, with the start of school and dozens of school activities that make me cranky and spiky and then sometime in November the whole Jenga pile comes tumbling down. We may have hit that point. Bad meetings at work. This damn virus has its hooks in me, I’m feeling worse than ever. I hate the pressure at work and don’t see any way of turning it down. The kids have events this and next weekend that will require me at my best and I’m nowhere near there. I took some really deep breaths, ate a food, and tried to reset my spinny circle of death brain spiral.

Year 6, Day 207: We have entered the “Hast ye offended yon witch?” era. My computer started acting weird last week, restarting randomly or anytime I put it to sleep and woke it back up. This week, some of the restarts are accompanied by a screeching that would put the AOL dial up screams to shame. Then to cap it all off, though I must say I was taking this all in my stride up to this point, my phone just bricked.

That’s a real problem. 2-step authentication is generally linked to my phone, as is my work authentication app. I use my phone for everything. Texting, alarms for schedules, my medication regimen, emails, notes for everything that I think of during the day that I need to do later but will forget if I don’t write them down. All my books live there now! (A moment of: oh this is what I get for not buying a Kobo device, isn’t it? Maybe I can load the app on my old phone.) Sigh. I missed the ONE appointment available so I’m going to have to wait til Monday to get this fixed. What a giant pain in the caboose.

November 10, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (284)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 196: Number crunching: I keep going back to the drawing board to reevaluate whether we can/should try to do the HDHP/HSA plan again. I swore it off after the one year we tried it because of sticker shock. I’m talking myself around again because PiC’s company will contribute $2000 to the HSA, reducing our contributions to $6750. I can swallow the idea if we know we’re not going to get more than 50% of the way to the OOP Max ($6800) but it gets a lot harder to accept the math if we do spend that much. Looking at 2025’s rates for our actual healthcare usage, we’d have spent $5700 of the $6800 cap already thanks to me. Under our current plan, I’ve only spent $550 this year. My emergency room visit cost us $250. On our Explanation of Benefits, the list of charges for that visit was well over $10k. Our coverage is really good. (Everyone should have this coverage, I will always believe that everyone deserves this level of access to healthcare as a minimum.)

If we have to pay up to our OOP max with the HDHP, then we’ll spend $12,500. On the plain HMO (which I love), we’d spend $10,500 – but, even in a year with an ER visit or a baby labor and delivery, on this plan we’d have a hard time hitting even $1000 in OOP.

If we only use about $2000 worth of coverage (roughly what we would have spent this year if I didn’t land myself in the ER), then we’d spend $8000 and keep $4500 in federally tax advantaged funds to invest.

Or we could stay on our current plan and spend $8250 on premiums and copays and not have any tax advantaged savings at all.

The math is if we’re lucky and if the HDHP actually does cover lab work and all immunizations, we’ll sock away some future savings for health expenses. I worry about that luck bit.

Year 6, Day 197: Election Day was unexpectedly positive. CA’s Prop 50 was passed. No one thinks it’s GOOD, but (most) everyone thinks we have to do something to stop the Republicans from turning this into a fascist police state and this is our something.

I’m thrilled for NYC voting in Mamdani decisively. I’ve watched the energy of his campaign – the intelligence, timing and welcoming open arms – and yearn for more of that nationwide. All of us need someone willing to do the work in a open and inclusive way. I know he has his work cut out for him. I hope his staffing for the transition and going forward is as smart and strong as it was for the campaign.

It was insulting that Cuomo, the sex pest who was horrible in office on so many levels, insisted on running as an independent, that establishment Democrats still supported Cuomo after he lost the primary, and that all kinds of money was spent on his campaign. I’m especially glad he lost. I hope that sends a stinging message to the establishment that their way doesn’t work and we don’t want it. We want someone willing to try and willing to fight.

Year 6, Day 198: For $6, we can get one loaf of rustic Italian bread at Costco OR a bag of usually 2 large or medium loaves and 4 small rolls from the Too Good To Go app (referral link if you want to try it) now that a large local bakery has joined the program. Some days we pick Costco, more days we pick the TGTG app, it just depends on if a Costco trip is already in the cards.

SmolAc thinks it’s deeply unfair that sometimes PiC brings me leftovers from meetings for my lunch the next day.

Gee, I dunno kid, what’s better: 3 catered meals (lunch and two snacks) a day guaranteed or sometimes I get to eat lunch if I have time and I remember and if I don’t have so many meetings it’s impossible? Of course we don’t expect them to understand, this is my internal dialogue.

My doc thinks these shoulder pains I’ve been experiencing periodically are rotator cuff impingement. Ha, I’ve been dealing with it for years assuming it was just a fibro symptom and never mentioned it to her. Whoops. She’s set me up with a PT referral and thinks it’s very PTable.

She’s pretty great. We’ve had some good conversations in these past few years, she’s been my primary care for going on 12?, but we’ve gotten to know each other better in the past few. She doesn’t have a lot of answers for my weird problems but she has a lot of compassion and is really supportive of most anything I might want to do or try for my health. None of my earlier doctors up til I was 30 was worth a damn so I appreciate her a lot.

Year 6, Day 199: PiC and I have been married 13 years and together … Uh. 20? Something like that. I’ve always said if I were alone again, whether because of divorce or worse, I’d never date again. This one marriage has been good and I have no patience for nonsense. I think my contentment is that we chose this. We built this life and we chose it with each other. I never thought that marriage was important or necessary, and I was always willing to walk away if lines were crossed, so when we chose marriage, that had little to do with societal expectations.

I say this with a bit of amusement that while I’m juggling the Big Job and family and all that, I’m comfortable with my relationship choice being stable and boring. Well, not boring to me but probably boring from the outside. At the same time, I’ve got three friends experimenting with poly relationships and they’re all from very conservative traditional backgrounds (we grew up together) so they were a little hesitant to share their exploration with me. They very quickly learned that I’m glad to support them. As long as they’re being true to themselves and not harming others, go forth, enjoy! I never want to have any part of it and I’m perfectly happy hearing them out. It’s a nice place to be in.

Year 6, Day 200: A few new poppies are sprouting outside, good job, poppies. The counter green onions really love water. I was being so careful trying not to drown them but figured out they only shoot up when they get twice as much water.

Work is even more intense now, this time with personnel issues! *fake unenthused jazz hands* I had my problem staff issue earlier this year and now I have to teach someone how to handle theirs. It’s taking up half my time every day and I do not appreciate it. It absolutely has to be done, no question. Morale for the rest of the team is really low. Directly dealing with The Problem who is making messes and can’t be trusted is the only way we keep the rot from spreading. Absolutely miserable job to do but I absolutely won’t allow TP to break the team with their arrogance and selfishness. Wish me luck next week, lots coming down the pike for this particular problem all week long. Unfortunately that means half my weeks have been borked all to hell and I sit down on this Friday night to realize ALL the balls I’ve been dropping these past few weeks. Taking some deep breaths. Nothing irretrievably broken, just a wave of stress over the tribbles of my to do list. But the first step is making sure everything gets ON that list so I can then start checking them off. Always love that part of the to do!