Health & Well Being/Life/Parenting & Family

I won the logistical Covid-lottery (and it’s still hard)

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

Thank you all for the kind comments yesterday. It was so nice to “talk” to some other adults during what was otherwise a pretty tough slog. Isolation has been, well, isolating.

Yesterday was a hard day. My daughter felt awful. She had a fever and mostly slept on the couch bed all day. My son felt pretty much fine and had a ton of energy and wanted to do ALL THE THINGS! Free reign on the video game console was not enough to keep him occupied. I was feeling okay, my husband was feeling rough. It was a loooong day.

My son crashed in the evening and fell asleep early. But he woke up at 2am and came to sleep with me on the couch bed. I had finally fallen asleep after midnight, so being up again less than two hours later was a real bummer. Luckily it didn’t take as along to get back asleep.

My son went back to his bed (of his own accord) around 5am and slept there until 7am. Which was better than the 6am wake up the day before.

I hope my husband slept well last night.

It’s so hard to be away from work all week. I’ve spent HOURS getting sub plans ready every night, and checking the work my students are doing online. Today they start watching movies, so all of this – the planning and scoring – will get a lot easier. I’m so thankful for that.

Yesterday I missed our Open House. It’s the first time I have not been at Back-to-School Night or Open House in my 18 years of teaching. It felt really weird to miss it.

I definitely can’t smell. I can kinda taste. I can taste that something is sweet or salty or bitter. The first bite I can even taste some more of the flavor. But by the end of the bite its mostly paste – a saliva tasting paste. It sucks, and when I read it generally takes 4-6 weeks to resolve I had a bit of a melt down. I’m just trying to be accepting of it and not dwell on it too much.

In many ways I won the logistical Covid lottery. I got my positive on a Saturday morning. I got 48 hours of isolation to rest before the rest of my family went down. We have a unit where I could isolate when I was the only one positive and where my husband could stay when he was the only one negative. My kids’ isolation times started soon enough after mine that they won’t be at home after I go back (pending negative rapid tests of course). Now we can all be together, so no one parent is stuck doing all the parenting. So far, nobody’s very sick. We’re getting it close enough to summer that we should be more protected from the current variant during our travels (this is HUGE). We have friends willing to grab us some groceries when we need it. My friend was able to sub for 4 of the 5 days (this is INCREDIBLY helpful to my piece of mind and what my students actually accomplish while I’m gone). So much of this is logistically amazing!

And yet, it’s hard.

I missed my martial arts retreat. My kids missed really cool field trips. We’re missing half of their cousins’ visit. (We haven’t even met one of their cousins (she’s two) and the other one was 6 months old when we met him. I am really bummed to miss so much of their time here.) Being away from work is hard and requires a TON of work; now I won’t get done with important stuff before the school year ends. I guess my point is, that even when you win the logistical covid lottery, it’s still really hard logistically! Being stuck at home for a week, with no warning it’s going to happen, is hard. This is why Covid causes so much anxiety – because we all know it might upend our lives at any moment.

I know I’m going to look back on this, and be grateful it happened when and how it did. When we’re flying to St. Louis to see family, I’m going to heave a big sigh of relief on the plane (through my kn95 mask) knowing we have some extra protection. I do not want to downplay how lucky, in many respects, we are. But we can be lucky and it can still be hard.

Both can be true.

Thank you again for all the comments yesterday. They REALLY brightened my day.

Health & Well Being/Parenting & Family

The final domino fell (and thoughts on how it’s still weird to have Covid)

Posted on by noemikjames / 21 Comments

My husband tested positive this morning. He felt pretty bad last night, but we waited until the morning to ensure a positive rapid. And boy was it positive! He got the strongest line of all.

He’s going to stay downstairs today, because he feels pretty awful, but also has to participate in some zoom meetings. My daughter felt pretty bad by the time she went to sleep. She’s still sleeping as I type this at 8:30am. My son still seems okay; we’ll see if his symptoms worsen today.

I noticed this morning that I can’t smell. Or taste really. I can smell really strong things like coffee, but it’s super muted. Like just a hint of it. Taste too. Like I could tell my toothpaste tasted like something, but not really what it tasted like. I heard losing your smell was less common with this variant, and yet here we are… ((shrugs))

So now we’re all stuck at home together. I suppose when we need groceries we’ll have to have them brought to us, or ask friends to grab them for us. My in-laws come home today from Texas with my SIL and her kids. We won’t be able to see them for a while, and will miss a large portion of their visit.

My kids missed really cool field trips this week, to Alcatraz (my daughter) and the Aquarium of the Bay (my son). I’m missing my trip. It’s a lot. I’m feeling kind of bummed out about it today.

I’m noticing that there are still a lot of big feelings around Covid. Some of the responses I’ve gotten have been… just a little off? I think some people still consider it a moral failing if you get it. Which I suppose is just a fear response. We’ve continued to be more cautious than most people – we always wear masks in indoor public spaces and only very rarely eat at restaurants. We did see a couple movies but each time the theater was almost empty and we kept our masks on. I think when some people who are still really afraid to get it see a family like ours go down, they need to find ways to assure themselves that we were less cautious than they are, to assure themselves they’ll be able to avoid it even though we couldn’t.

And maybe that is true. We certainly weren’t the most cautious family out there. j

But still. I have to admit, even the response here, which has been basically two people, has surprised me. I know people haven’t been commenting much here for a while (did I write something that offended everyone?), but I guess I was expecting more of a response to “oh hey my whole family has Covid!” But maybe I’m putting it out there wrong. Or people are just busy. Or it’s just truly not that big a deal anymore. I don’t know.

I want to be clear that my feelings aren’t hurt or anything, it’s just something I’ve noticed. And wondered about.

It is weird being on the other side. Yesterday afternoon we got the emails from the kids schools and it was surreal to know that MY KIDS were the ones alluded to in the “someone from your child’s class tested positive for Covid” messages. It isn’t you for so long (it hasn’t been us for over two years!) and then it is you. And it’s weird.

San Francisco has a ton of cases right now – higher than the national average by a lot. They say it’s because we mostly avoided it for so long. Even in the city it’s the well-to-do neighborhoods that have much higher numbers now, the neighborhoods where people were able to avoid getting sick back when sheltering-in-place was possible for them, and not the less economically advantaged citizens of the city.

{Our hospitalizations are not as high compared to the national average, which means that high vaccination rates do still keep hospitalizations low.}

Just like Covid is finally coming to all the places that were able to keep it away for so long, it came for San Francisco, and it came for us. It does feel like the ultimately lesson is that it’s increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to avoid it forever. It’s a sobering thought.

Health & Well Being/Parenting & Family

The Big Switch

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

My kids both tested positive this morning, so we opened all the windows and cranked the air purifier up and made the big switch. Now my husband is the lone Covid negative member of our household, sheltering in the unit and the rest of us are upstairs.

{My son originally tested negative when my husband just swabbed his nose, but I tested him again swabbing his mouth and nose and that came back positive. I really do think swabbing the mouth is important with this new variant!}

It’s so weird to me that my husband – who I sleep with! – is the only one who hasn’t tested positive yet. That is crazy.

I’m glad he’s getting a day away from everyone though. He definitely needs it.

Yesterday was a doozy. Our cat, who had been explosively vomiting for a few days, vomited blood on Sunday morning. My husband then spent 4.5 hours waiting to get her into the vet, while my kids stayed upstairs alone and I listened to them on the monitor. It was… less than ideal.

$1500 later our cat is… fine? The only important info we got was that we can give her a quarter teaspoon of Miralax in wet food to help her with her constipation. I’m glad to know that, but $1500 seems like a steep price for it.

I have to say, I’m bummed my kids got this but I’m grateful they got it early in my isolation time so we can isolate together. I was worried they would test positive later in the week and we’d have staggered isolation times. Now we can all be home this week together.

So far my daughter has a stuffy nose and sore throat, and my son has a sore throat and mild cough. We’ll see where the day takes us.

Both kids are missing really cool field trips this week, my daughter to Alcatraz and my son to the Aquarium by the Bay. They are both super bummed.

It’s going to be a long week…

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Things I’m grateful for (COVID addition)

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

I’m grateful that I got positives on Saturday morning, so I didn’t have to struggle to find coverage for my classes or make sub plans.

I’m grateful that we have enough tests at home to test myself and the family without being worried about further testing. We also have enough to keep testing the kids every day before school and my husband before he has to go into work.

I’m grateful that I already have someone covering me on Thursday and Friday at school, so I only need to find someone for the other three days (or my colleagues only need to cover me those days).

I’m grateful that I have distance learning lessons saved in Google classroom that I can easily post for my classes this week. It’s still going to be hard to plan knowing I can’t actually go in there and organize stuff and lay stuff out, but it will be a lot easier than it would be if I had nothing saved from last year.

I am SO GRATEFUL that we have a separate unit where I can isolate without a mask on, and that we have a comfortable queen-sized bed upstairs for my husband to sleep in. (It’s a Couch Bed and I spent on it for six weeks when my husband was acting as bate for the bed bugs in our unit so I can vouch for its comfort.)

I’m grateful that the unit has a bathroom and kitchen, so I can take care of myself almost completely. We even have an extra TV that I brought in here. (My husband’s friend gave us his bigger TV when he moved across country and we kept our original TV for “pandemic play dates” in the backyard and garage.)

I’m grateful that we already have two air purifiers and we recently ordered a ton of new kn95s. Along with the copious rapid tests we already had lying around, we have pretty much everything we need to manage this without running errands or ordering stuff online.

I’m grateful that the weather is nice and we can have windows open without being too hot or too cold.

I’m grateful that my husband is amazing and can totally handle this, even though he’s going to be a mess by the time it’s over.

I’m grateful that I could still cancel my AirBnB for a full refund yesterday and I did that without any issues. Even if I get nothing from Alaska Airlines, I was able to get half the money from my trip back (both the AirBnB and the flights were $300). Im also grateful that the timing was very clear and there was no “but maybe I could go if I test negative on Thursday” to wonder about. The CDC says I can’t travel until 5/23 and that is after my trip so there is absolutely no ambiguity. (I hate ambiguity.)

I’m grateful that this is definitely the trip I am least sad to miss this summer. Am I bummed I can’t go? Definitely. But I’m not devastated.

And finally, I’m grateful that after this is done I’ll have some primed omicron antibodies ready to help fight off whatever I might be exposed to over the summer. Between me having antibodies and my daughter getting boosted (we’re going to get her a booster shot as soon as she turns 12 in early June), half of our family will have a little extra protection.

Or maybe we all will because we’ll all get it!? I haven’t let myself think too much about the many different scenarios that might play out this week. I’m just going to take things one day at a time.

And of course, most importantly I’m grateful that I have been vaccinated and boosted and that I don’t have any underlying conditions that make me susceptible to more serious outcomes. This morning I feel pretty awful – bad cough, stuffy nose, sore throat, body aches, chills – but so far it’s not worse than flus I’ve had before (and I can still smell!) Of course the possibility of long covid will linger, but I’m not terrified to have this.

Have you or someone in your household has COVID? How did it go?

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Abrupt change of (lots of) plans

Posted on by noemikjames / 1 Comment

Can you guess from the title?

Well, can ya?

Well if you guessed COVID, then you are correct! I tested positive on rapid tests twice this morning. It was a dry scratchiness in my throat that prompted me to take a rapid test yesterday and today. Yesterday’s was negative. Today’s were positive.

Just the faintest line, but it was there. Both times.

So, so faint! And yet, they are there.

{I did swab my mouth and nose, because I read doing so helps the test detect the omicron variant. Just want to put that out there.}

My son tested negative, thank god, so he went to his belt test with a heavy duty mask on. My husband and daughter also tested negative so he’s also at the dojo supporting our son and she’s at the Reproductive Justice March with a friend. Both of them are also wearing heavy duty masks.

{I get to watch his test via Zoom, thank goodness. While I’m sad not to be there in person, I am just so relieved that he can be there.}

Of course my Oregon trip next weekend is cancelled. I’m also missing our Open House this week, which normally I would be super stoked about, but this year I had cool stuff to share. In the end I’m not really sad to miss it, but I’m less stoked than most years.

I went to get a PCR test this morning, from the city testing sites that bring back results WAY faster than Kaiser. I should have my result by tomorrow. I already emailed my admins and the district nurse. I always wear a respirator mask in the classroom, and now I’m so glad that I have!

Okay, so my son just finished his test and while I got to watch on zoom I was pretty devastated not to be there. In the grand scheme of things it’s fine, but it really does make my heart hurt. We have spent hours practicing and to not be there in person was rough.

I’m not feeling super great now. Body aches and chills. I’m going to sign off for now, but I’ll try to update tomorrow.

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How do you forgive yourself for stupid (money wasting) mistakes?

Posted on by noemikjames / 15 Comments

The guy I rear ended last week filed a claim. I got the email on Friday.

I spent over an hour on hold Friday evening trying to talk to someone about it, but eventually I gave up and hung up. 10 minutes later I missed a call from the claims department.

I was so frustrated.

And so mad at myself for making such a stupid mistake that is probably going to cost us a ton of money even though very little damage was done.

I’m still trying to forgive myself but I’m doing a horrible job of it. I got a hold of an insurance agent via email and she explained that if the cost of the repairs is under $1000, our premiums won’t go up. (I will obviously forgo adding our car’s repairs to the claim if that keeps our total under $1000, but if his repairs cost that much I might as well get our car fixed.) If our insurance pays out more than $1000, our premiums will go up $3000 over six years, so about $500 a year. It makes me so mad.

There are few things I beat myself up more about that making dumb mistakes that waste money. And as an ADHD adult who loses shit and forgets shit constantly, I do a fair amount of dumb shit that wastes money.

I STILL beat myself up about not starting my life insurance policy after I had my first kid, when I could have said that I hadn’t taken any medication in the past year, because I hadn’t! Instead I bought the policy three months after I started taking my ADHD meds again, which meant my policy would cost $25K more than it would have otherwise. I had no idea my ADHD meds would make my life insurance policy so much more expensive. I am so mad at myself for not figuring that out in time to make a more informed choice.

That happened 10 years ago and I’m STILL get fuming mad about it if I let myself.

So my question is, how do you forgive yourself when you do something dumb that costs you money? How do you learn the lesson and let it go? Because I can’t seem to manage it. A part of me feels like I should use this relatively minor monetary loss to help myself practice self-compassion and forgiveness under these circumstances. No one was hurt and the damage was as minimal as it could have been; it’s a perfect opportunity to practice learning the lesson (be more alert while driving) and let it go.

But I’m really struggling. I’m stewing in the fumes of the life insurance decision and iPhone I ran through the laundry and the iPad I left on the bus in Mexico and all the other dumb mistakes I’ve made that cost me money.

If anyone has any words of wisdom, I’d really love to hear them.

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Ping Pong Thoughts on a Friday

Posted on by noemikjames / 8 Comments

I can’t believe my mental health day was just a week ago. This has been a loooooong week.

A loooooong week with some shiiiiiitty sleep. My kingdom for 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep! (Clearly the sleep powers that be do not think my kingdom is worth that much shut eye).

I’m teaching absolutely NOTHING today and it feels marvelous. My students are catching up on work and I’m checking in with a bunch of them, but I’m not standing in front of the room at all. It’s a lovely way to spend a Friday.

I got some new kn95s from MASKC and I really like them. I think we now have enough quality masks to get us through our summer travel. I have to admit that I almost want us to get Covid before the end of June, so that we don’t have to worry so much about it derailing our plans. I know that is a horrible way to think, but it’s where my head is at these days.

There is a lot of Covid going around at my school again. I never really stopped wearing a mask so it hasn’t been hard to go back to wearing a mask. I do look forward to the summer when I don’t have to wear one for most of every day.

The fact that neither of my kids has gotten Covid yet is totally crazy. I really can’t understand how that is the case.

I am so, so tired. And there is really nothing I can do to try to improve the situation. I already take vitamins, and workout, and practice good sleep hygiene (no screens before bed, dark, cool room, sound machine, etc). I’ve even been listening to guided meditations! It sucks to feel like something so important is so totally out of my control, but I guess that is what perimenopause is all about!

We’re getting our daughter an Apple watch (with service) for her birthday next month. She’s shown she can handle one with the Gizmo she had this year, and while we do not plan on getting her a phone before 8th grade we think an Apple watch is a nice next step especially since Apple has ways add parental protections. I have to admit, looking at them makes me want to get one. I already wear a watch every day, and it would be pretty nice to have one that does some cool stuff. But I also don’t need one. At all. My current watch is also on the fritz though so that is not helping.

{I don’t actually plan to get an Apple watch, but I’m annoyed that after all these years of not caring, I’m now interested in one.}

The Apple watch is all we have planned for our daughter’s 12th birthday – it’s in exactly one month – and it’s starting to freak me out. I need to start planning.

And that’s all the time I got so I’m going to post this as is.

Happy Friday!

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Bummer

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

Yesterday was a bummer day. I got into a fender bender on the way to work, and even though the other car barely had a line on the bumper, the guy asked for my insurance info. The front of our car was cracked (it’s made out of plastic) but I will probably not fix it if insurance doesn’t get involved. I really, really hope insurance doesn’t get involved.

It was hot down by work and my run sucked. I didn’t have time to make it to the coast, which was a disappointment.

The news cycle right now is at turns infuriating and terrifying. I really do not have the words for how disappointed I am in this country. I feel like everything I was taught as a child was a bald faced lie. I really do not know how to engage with any of it anymore.

I also spent a bunch of money on teacher appreciate gifts. I really hate this week (and weekend) because I feel like as a parent and a daughter I put in way more effort toward my kids’ teachers and my mom than my own students’ families and my kids/husband put toward me. I don’t need someone to specifically appreciate me for Teacher Appreciation Week or Mother’s Day, but it’s hard when I feel obligated to do so myself and others clearly don’t feel obligated to do so towards me. Obviously, I can stop feeling obligated, but that isn’t who I want to be. It’s just not a week (or day) that I very much appreciate.

I didn’t get much sleep on Sunday and Monday nights, and I was determined to make up some of that last night. I took a sleep aid and even listened to a 20 minutes “sleep tight” meditation at 10pn when I went to bed, but I was still awake 11:30pm when my husband came in, climbed under the covers and immediately started snoring. It was a really frustrating two hours trying to fall asleep, and now I’m more exhausted than I was before.

Today is a rough day at work, and now I’m really tired and have far less patience than I need to get through my five classes with no prep. The only silver lining is that I don’t have to ferry any kids anywhere this afternoon.

Some days are just bummers and you have to stand up and dust yourself off. Yesterday was one of those days. Today probably won’t be much better. I just hope I can get some better sleep tonight and that tomorrow is finally a relief.

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Why not take all the Fridays?

Posted on by noemikjames / 1 Comment

Well this is why…

I’m home with my son right now, because he has a cold. I went to work and taught my three morning classes, but I left during my prep so my husband could get some work done during the afternoon.

My husband has A LOT more flexibility than I do, and 95% of the time he stays with the kids when they are sick. But sometimes that is not possible, or not preferable, because he also has a job and things to do.

One of the reasons I have not taken any days since early September is because I was terrified of Covid making its way slowly through our family, requiring I quarantine at home for two weeks or more. Now I wouldn’t have to stay home if one of my kids tested positive, so that takes some of the pressure off. We still haven’t had Covid yet, which is part of why all those days are still banked, and I want to keep some days banked in case I do get Covid before the school year ends.

I also want to keep some days banked so I don’t have to go back to the scarcity mentality around sick days in the future. It sucked tracking my every hour away from work and I don’t want to go back to that.

Finally, substitutes remain incredibly hard to find. My colleague also took a mental health day on Friday but there was no sub for her, so other teachers had to give up their prep to take her classes. I, personally, do not feel comfortable with that arrangement. When I’m sick, there isn’t anything I can do about it and if someone needs to cover for me it sucks, but I don’t feel guilty. I would, however, feel very bad about someone giving up their prep time so I could go see a movie with my husband. That does NOT feel okay to me. So as long as there aren’t enough subs (which will probably be for as long as I’m teaching), I will not feel comfortable taking numerous days off just to give myself a break.

I know it’s really hard for lots of people to call in sick, but teachers have to be on the high end of the taking-a-day-requires-crazy-work spectrum. The amount of time spent planning for your absence, and then scoring the work the kids did while you’re gone, is usually equal to the amount of time you were away. It’s just an insane amount of work. This is why it’s good that teachers have so many breaks built into the year!

Do you have to do a lot of work to take a day off? Is harder to prepare before hand, or catch up after?

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May

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

Well the weekend is over. And now it’s May.

May is always a crazy month. The weather has been kind of cold, and very windy, but I can still sense summer coming. It’s really just around the corner, but its a very long, busy corner indeed.

My kids have 4.5 weeks left of school. I have six. That is crazy to type out. I actually just went and checked my calendar app to make sure I was right about that. But I am. We are definitely in the home stretch.

In a couple weeks my son has his red belt test and the weekend after that I’m going to Portland for a martial arts retreat. My thoughts will be directed at those two events, and by the time they happen the school year will officially be coming to a close.

My daughter turns 12 in early June. I really can’t believe that.

The long weekend was lovely. I’m so glad it worked out for my husband and I to take Friday off. Wednesday and Thursday we were very short on subs and I was starting to freak out that they would poach my substitute from me on Friday. This is the main reason I never take a day off – because we never have enough subs and I can’t enjoy a day off knowing my colleagues have to give up their prep periods covering my classes. But they didn’t poach my sub, so all was well. I have to admit, knowing my friend is around makes it hard not to take every Friday off… I mean I have the days…

But obviously I will not be doing that. And that’s okay because I don’t need to do that. I can get through these next six weeks.

I can do it. It’s only six weeks. It will be over before I know it.