Life

Happy January 2nd?

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

Happy New Year. Sorry I’m a bit late to the party. And the after party too.

I’m not quite sure why I didn’t write for the last few days. I just… didn’t.

And now it’s Sunday. Tomorrow is Monday, which brings with it a supposed return to “normal” life. And so far, no institution in our lives has indicated that we won’t be returning to our “normal” routines. So I guess tomorrow mornings my kids will head off to school and I will head off to work, just like we have since mid-August. Except numbers are soaring and the previous mitigation strategies (masking, keeping windows and doors open (despite very chilly temperatures), and high vaccination rates) might not be very effective against this new, highly transmissible variant. But what can we do except show up and hope for the best?

It feels like we’re hobbling toward the end of this break, even though I know that’s not true. We’ve had a lovely couple of days. The weather has been wonderful – chilly, but sunny and dry. On Thursday the kids and I spent a final afternoon with my sister at Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park. We rented a pedal boat and hiked to the top of Strawberry Hill. We had lunch next to the lake. It was a great day.

Then my parents picked up my kids and our friends came over for the evening. We were able to snag a reservation at a popular restaurant that has a great outside dining area and very effective outdoor heaters. We felt relatively safe and weren’t even freezing! We went home for more drinks and discussion and stayed up pretty late. It was a wonderful evening.

Friday we had brunch outside. Then they went on to their New Years Eve plans and I picked up my sister for a final hike in my favorite park. I was so happy she got to experience the views before she left. It was also really nice to get a couple of hours of alone time with her.

I dropped my sister back with my parents and picked up my kids. We picked up In-n-Out on the way home and then did absolutely nothing to ring in the new year. I spend New Years Eve watching TV alone, just like I spent almost every night of the break; if it hadn’t been for the neighborhood fireworks I would have missed the big moment entirely.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the zoo. My husband hasn’t joined us there in years, so it was fun to go with him, but he was clearly feeling pretty wiped by the end of the trip. Still, he was willing to walk with me from his parents’ house to the light installation in Golden Gate Park when we dropped our daughter off for a spend-the-night. Last night we finished the five hour long Japanese movie Happy Hour – which was very good. It was nice to finally get to spend an evening with him. I do think he’s finally feeling better, a full two weeks after he got whatever gnarly virus he’s had.

Today we don’t have much on the docket. Soon I’m going to run, which I’m very much looking forward to. My daughter will spend most of the day with her grandparents which means we need to keep her brother engaged. Tonight we’ll probably all watch a movie.

Tomorrow my kids have regular days of school, but I have a professional development day. I’m not sure if I’m going to attend. I have literally NEVER missed a professional development day in 18 years of teaching, but this year I may just indulge. Having said that, it would make sense to go into my classroom and “listen” to a bunch of stuff on zoom, while planning for the coming month. I could probably get a lot done and not surrender the hours on my time sheet. So I will probably do that. I scored a bunch of assessments at the beginning of the break but otherwise have done NOTHING work related for two weeks. Which has been lovely, but is a situation that now has to be reckoned with. I’m not so much stressed about it, as resigned. I also recognize that all my plans require contingency plans and then more contingency plans on top of that. I need to have all sorts of possibilities waiting in the wings for the next few weeks. It feels like literally anything could happen.

In the meantime…

My sister made it home yesterday and she’s very happy to be back with her boyfriend and dog in London.

My friend and her daughter are still stuck in NYC, quarantining in a room of her mom’s house. The daughter can not hang out with her grandparents at least, but my friend has been sick with Covid and didn’t want to fly with symptoms. She’s on the mend now and hoping they can fly home mid-week. Their one week holiday visit turned into a 2.5 week Covid quarantine.

My other good friend, whose husband tested positive earlier this week thinks she and her kids didn’t end up getting it. She’s still waiting on their second test results, and can’t find anywhere to even walk up today to get tested again. But her mom, who flew home right after Christmas, ended up testing positive after she got home. So far she’s doing fine – just mild symptoms.

Another friend, who is supposed to finally take her trip to Hawaii that was cancelled in mid-March of 2020, is isolating at home until they leave on January 7th in hopes of ensuring none of them test positive before they go.

How as your New Years weekend? How do you feel about January 2022?

Life

Positives Everywhere

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

Have I mentioned that I got this far in the pandemic without anyone in our small social circles getting Covid? No one that we’ve seen regularly this past year has ever tested positive. Well they hadn’t before this week.

My daughter’s friend has it. And her mom, who has been quarantining with her in one room of her mother’s apartment in NYC) finally tested positive too. My friend’s husband just tested positive. My close friend’s son and his girlfriend tested positive on Christmas Eve. And everyone I know knows 3-5 other people who’ve tested positive recently. So many people I know have gotten Covid in this past week. So many.

So many people in this country got Covid last week. And so many more are getting it this week.

I think the chance of my family making it through January without getting it is very, very small.

But so far we’re okay. My husband still doesn’t feel better but I think he’s turning a corner. We’re still supposed to see our friends tomorrow and for the first time I think it might actually happen. It’s not even supposed to rain tomorrow!

We shall see. I’m trying to let myself hope that the next three days might be finally, finally, what I really need. Some actual connection with others. Some rest. Some exhalation.

Crossing my fingers.

Identity/Life

The Valley of Meh

Posted on by noemikjames / 3 Comments

It looks like I’m in for a long walk through the valley of meh. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise – what with this Christmas hangover being topped with the crushing weight of the omicron wave ahead. Of course I’m feeling blah about things.

A part of me is trying to revel in the slowness of this week. I need the respite from real life, and I’m privileged enough to get one. And there are days when I luxuriate in an hour or two spent on the couch. But we have kids at home. And my husband is still sick. And all of the sudden it’s Tuesday. I have a lot to do before Thursday night.

Yesterday and today I packed up Christmas and put it away. When I looked at my twinkling tree all I saw was a chore that had to be accomplished. And honestly, it was easier to start there than on all the other cleaning I have to do.

I really hate cleaning. And I’m so bad at it. It’s honestly embarrassing. At this point I need someone to come over to feel motivated to do it. If we didn’t have friends coming to spend the night on Thursday I would have let this break pass me by like I did Thanksgiving. It’s shameful.

I really should just get a house cleaner. I was going to, before I saw the price tag for after care. Maybe when my son is old enough to not need after care… Just 3.5 more years.

{And no, my daughter cannot provide it because my son gets out at 2:50pm and my daughter doesn’t get out until 4pm and it would take her at least 30 minutes to get to his school. I can generally pick up my son by 4:30, and I do most days to get him to martial arts.}

But tonight I get to have dinner at my parents with some friends. A few blissful hours of adult conversation without kids to interrupt. I’m spending the night there too, so I can sleep without my husband’s coughing waking me up.

It’s been nine days and he’s still as sick as he was in the beginning. We are both so over it. I really, REALLY hope he’s feeling a little better by Thursday, but at this point I don’t have high expectations.

I find it kind of hilarious that he didn’t get Covid and he’s still so, so sick. I bet a bout of Covid, after his booster shot, would have been a lot better than this. His cough is horrible.

I know the gray skies are not helping my mood. Or the cold. We keep our house at 63* and these days that feels cold. We still don’t have a working heater downstairs but I did pull out both space heaters because it was 55* down there this morning and my husband had to attend some meetings on zoom. Only one of the space heaters even works anymore – I’m so glad we had two. It’s supposed to hit the mid-30s this week, with highs in the 40s some days. We went to a museum yesterday and we tried to hit up the playground afterward but we weren’t dressed warmly enough so we had to leave. It was really frustrating because we just haven’t had many patches of dry weather so we’ve been inside a lot.

I never thought of myself as someone who is really affected by the weather but clearly I was able to avoid learning this about myself only because I live in an area with some of the best weather in the world. It’s so weird that I am only just figuring this out! (or that I figure it out and then forget!)! ::face palm:: I guess I have to be more grateful to live where I do.

Sorry for the series of downer posts. It’s just where my head is at these days. Maybe, on Friday, after my house is clean and I’ve spent some quality time with friends I haven’t seen in ages, I’ll feel better. I sure hope so.

How are you spending this weird week between Christmas and New Years?

Life/Writing

Hard to articulate

Posted on by noemikjames / 3 Comments

Today was a… meh day. It was fine actually. I can’t complain. But I feel… I’m not sure really. It’s hard to articulate. Antsy is one word. There is a lot of pent up energy inside. A lot of anxiety about January and the rest of the school year. A lot of anxiety about this week, frankly.

The rain probably isn’t helping. I know we need it, and I’m not mad it’s finally here. But it’s hard to feel cooped up. I’d really like to get outside. Being outside is really important to me. More important than I ever realized.

I have so much to do. Around the house mostly but in other areas of my life. We have people coming over and my house is not guest-ready. And I worry it won’t be. I know I won’t be ready for next Monday. It’s hard to know you won’t be ready.

I’m also a little lonely. My husband is still sick. He doesn’t feel well at all. He’s around, and participating during the day, but he goes to sleep right after the kids every night. It sucks that we don’t get to hang out at all. We have so few weeks like this to do that. And now that we do, it can’t happen.

I just keep reminding myself to be thankful that none of us got it. And that it’s not Covid. It’s definitely a gnarly respiratory virus. His cough sounds horrible. His sinuses are super congested. His voice is hoarse. It’s been over a week and he doesn’t seem to be getting better. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s nasty. I don’t really understand how none of us got it. I’m really glad we didn’t.

I feel like I’m back in that place where I have to be thankful just to be healthy. And I am! But there has to be room for other feelings to. I’m trying to make room for those feelings. Feelings of frustration. And fear. And fatigue. So much fatigue.

I don’t know how to brace myself for what’s coming. Even the mundane shit in my own life feels like too much. And getting stuff done doesn’t seem to take the weight off. Today I cleaned the inside of the car. The seat covers are still hanging to dry but it’s all vacuumed and wiped down. I’ve been wanting to clean it out for a long time – it needed it. But now that it’s done all I can think is how it will get dirty again and I’ll have to spend a day doing what I just did. And also how I didn’t get much picked up around the house because I spent so much time on the car.

But I also hung out with my kids. We made resin jewelry and played Exploding Kittens. My daughter and I gave each other make overs with the Ulta Beauty bag she got for Christmas. I got most of the Christmas presents put away. It was a fine day, and it’s okay if sometimes it feels that way and it sometimes feels heavier.

These are crazy times. I know we acknowledge that again and again but sometimes I still need to say it. None of us knows what we are doing. Few of us are prepared for this kind of disruption to our daily lives. It’s okay if it feels hard. It’s okay if our feelings are complicated. It’s okay if we struggle to articulate. It’s all okay.

I mean it’s not. But it has to be. Tomorrow is another day.

{Sorry if this post feels like it’s from out of left field. I did not sit down to write it but it’s what I wrote. And I feel like I should post it because I’m sure I’m not the only person in a weird head space right now. If your all over the emotional map right now, I hope you know you’re not alone.}

Life/Parenting & Family

Grateful for this holiday (and looking forward)

Posted on by noemikjames / 7 Comments

Well, we had a really nice holiday. And I am aware of how many people did not get to have a really nice holiday for a whole host of reasons. I am incredibly grateful that our expectations were met, and relatively unscathed!

I won’t lie. The first 2/3rds of yesterday were rough. Not knowing if we were going to get my husband’s results, or what those results were going to be, was hard. We were supposed to spend the whole day with my in-laws, but we kept pushing back our possible arrival time. It wasn’t until we had decided that they would come to us and we’d celebrate in our garage with the door up (and the air filters running and my husband in a mask), that his test results finally arrived. I had actually set up the entire garage – I even added some holiday touches – before he finally got the email around 3:30.

But we got to spend the afternoon with my in-laws. Last year we didn’t even see them at all so spending 4.5 hours over there felt like a major win. We even got to watch Encanto, which we all loved. It was a really nice day.

Opening presents at their house on Christmas Eve also helped release a lot of the pressure for today’s festivities. Instead of leaving at the crack of dawn for my in-law’s (and then driving down to my parents’ at lunch), this year we enjoyed a leisurely morning of new video games and reheated cinnamon rolls (the ones we had missed on Christmas Eve morning) before heading down to my parents’ house around 10am. I got to stay in bed until 8:30! We are never going back to our old way of celebrating ever again.

Today was a low key day. We opened presents and played Exploding Kittens and built LEGO sets and learned magic tricks and played an escape room that my sister got us. We also ate, and ate, and ate. We were going to watch the Muppets Christmas Carole but ended up leaving a little early for more video games at home (definitely the right call). Now it’s 7pm and I’m working out on the elliptical while my daughter reads and my son plays his new game with his dad. I hope my husband and I can manage to make it through a movie tonight before we head to bed.

Tomorrow we have nothing planned. It rained all day today, which was great because we wouldn’t have made it outside (although the down pour made for a slow drive down to my parents’ house), and it’s supposed to rain a lot tomorrow which is fine. There is a part of me that wants to start taking down the Christmas decorations but another part of me thinks that is crazy. I did put them up early this year, so it makes sense that I’m ready to take them down. We also are back on January 3rd, which means there won’t be much time later. I think I’ll do everything but the tree tomorrow and take the tree down later in the week.

I have lots of other stuff to get done tomorrow, like laundry and picking up and finding places for the kids’ new stuff and actually cleaning our bedroom in the downstairs unit. My sister is going to spend some night there later in the week and she’s allergic to cats so I have to make sure the little bit of cat dander down there (the cat does not spend much time in that area) is eradicated. On a related note, I have a new shower curtain and I can’t wait to just throw out the old one instead of trying to clean it. I HATE cleaning the shower curtain. (I’ve used the current shower curtain for a full two years so I feel okay getting rid of it. It’s just so, so gross).

We don’t have a ton planned for this coming week. My sister will be in the city and we have some outside stuff planned (hoping the weather cooperates). And some friends will be in town for a night later in the week. We were going to actually go out, but now we all think just ordering in and mixing our own cocktails makes the most sense. I guess people generally just take off their masks at restaurants and bars and after my husband’s testing fiasco I’m not ready to put myself in that kind of situation. Luckily our friends seem totally fine with our change of heart; they have been very cautious as well, and are taking the new variant seriously.

It’s been good to see the absence of a horrible spike in hospital cases, at least in places like SF where vaccine levels are high. I know it’s still too early to be more than cautiously optimistic that omicron actually leads to milder illness, but I have read that we’re far enough out from omicrons arrival (and subsequent take over) that we’d have seen the start of a spike in hospitalizations if this were delta. So that is encouraging.

Having said that, I still think we’re in for a logistical nightmare in January. If a bunch of vaccinated people are going to end up getting Covid now, and they and/or their family members have to isolate for 7-10 days, that is going to be a lot of people calling in sick. I will be really surprised if there isn’t some kind of large scale disruption at my district that we just can’t absorb without drastic measures (like a couple of weeks back in distance learning). Truly, if we can avoid that it will be a miracle. I’m definitely going to be making Plans A, B, C and D for my own classes for at least four weeks after we get back. Maybe longer.

I know how lucky we are that my husband’s test came back negative. I was actually starting to think it was positive, and that Kaiser calling us was what was gumming up the works on his results. He said that people were absolutely just taking masks off at the door at the holiday party he went to on Wednesday, and while he stayed strong earlier in the evening, by the end he was keeping his mask off while he completed entire drinks, not just pulling it down between sips. The fact that he just got a cold, and not covid, is a miracle.

We’ll see if our Dave and Busters visits come back to bite us in the ass. The kids did wear their heavy duty natural latex respirator masks in there, and we never took our masks off for anything (I even made them step outside to drink water from the bottles I brought). But we were in there for 3-4 hours both times and statistically speaking we can be sure quite a few people in there had omicron and didn’t realize it. I plan on making them test appointments before we return to school regardless. I hope other families do the same (doubtful – and if they all did there would be a testing availability crisis anyway). Again, there is no way we can avoid major disruptions in January. No way.

I think the most frustrating thing right now, is the lack of infrastructure available for the people that do want to be cautious and considerate. How can we ask families to test before they return to school if we know they would have to test 2-3 times before and during the first week to actually catch an asymptomatic infection? There is a real feeling of, anything I can do is not enough anyway, and it will be a major pain in my ass to actually do it, so I might as well just wait for symptoms and hope for the best.

In the meantime, we have decide to suspend indoor, unmasked play dates indefinitely. We are lucky enough to live somewhere with temperate weather and plenty of opportunities for safer, outdoor socializing. We’ll probably still wear masks outside (we never really stopped doing that, I think because then we didn’t have to worry if the kids got really close to each other, but honestly I don’t know, we just never made that transition, at least not in San Francisco). This is not because we are worried about getting sick necessarily, but more to avoid the ramifications of positives to our daily lives. We’re still doing things that are important to us, like practicing martial arts at the dojo and letting our daughter start swimming lessons in January (it seems highly likely she will get covid from this as it’s inside without masks and they have to crown around at the end of the lane for directions pretty frequently), and I don’t think we’d still be doing these things if they weren’t vaccinated, so it’s not like they were for nothing. I have to keep telling myself that when I feel down in the dumps about being right back where we started.

And here’s the part where I apologize for this crazy long post. I guess I had some stuff to say. I didn’t expect to spend my entire 45 minutes on the elliptical writing, but the timer just went off. I appreciate getting to process, and find perspective.

And to say that I’m grateful. Because I really, really am.

Uncategorized

Waiting on PCR results

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

Today we’re supposed to be celebrating Christmas with my in-laws, but we can’t go over until we get my husband’s PCR results. He took the test on Wednesday at 3:40pm so he should be getting the results back soon.

Our daughter’s best friend is in New York visiting family and she just tested positive. Well, her rapid PCR came back positive but her at-home antigen test came back negative. We’re a lot less trusting of the two negatives we’ve gotten for my husband since we heard that. I thought they were supposed to pick up positives when symptoms are present pretty consistently. Now I don’t know what to think.

It will suck if my husband is positive and we have to cancel our Christmas. The kids will really be bummed out. But eventually it will be okay. Mostly I’m worried about not seeing my sister for the end of her trip. That would really bum me out.

We shall see. My husband is pretty miserable with whatever he has, and I’m really hoping I don’t get it because I don’t want to spend the next week as sick as he’s been this week. He’s had this for five days now and no one else has gotten it yet. I hope that holds.

I can’t believe we didn’t get one week between our kids being fully vaccinated and omicron taking over. Not one week. The timing really was impecable. I feel like I was robbed of something I didn’t even realize I needed. But now it’s gone, and I have to manage all these complicated feelings of grief when it’s hard to recognize what exactly I’m grieving the loss of, since I never really had the thing I feel like I lost. Of course I appreciate not having to be as concerned about what now feels like my kids inevitable exposure and contraction of the virus. Very appreciative. But still, we were promised a respite in the form of fully vaccinated kids and we got the opposite and I’m so tired. So, so tired.

Blerg. I’m ready for this holiday to be over. It feels like it will be a miracle if we make it make it through the next two weeks without getting Covid. This is not what I expected for this holiday season, or for the new year.

UPDATE: We’re still in limbo, waiting for a test result we may not get before even tomorrow. I feel stupid for having faith in a system that has so far worked, but that I know is primed to break down in the coming month, and this weekend especially. Of course results are taking longer. Of course we should have expected as much. And so we’re wasting an entire day waiting for an email that might never arrive. I feel horrible for my husband and his parents, who graciously offered my side of the family Christmas Day. Now they will get nothing for themselves but this interminable wait. Thank god for video games or my kids would be on their third meltdown of the day.

UPDATED UPDATE: He got his test results back! NEGATIVE! We’re heading over to spend a couple hours with my in-laws. So glad we can be there for a bit today.

Uncategorized

What I learned hate reading blogs

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

I stay off social media for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that it makes me unhappy. I’m not good at refraining from judging my real life against the highlight reels of others.

But I will admit that I do read the occasional blog that pushes some of the same buttons (in me) that social media would – blogs by very successful people that write like they have it all figured out. At a certain point I was kind of “hate reading” those blogs, but eventually, as I tried to answer the question for myself of why I kept them in my RSS feed, I started engaging with them with curiosity. Surely I wasn’t just a straight up masochist. There must be a reason I was still following some of these people, even though their posts generally irritated me, or left me feeling wanting (usually both).

So I kept reading them, trying to remain curious as to why they rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of times I landed on their inability (or unwillingness) to incorporate their privilege into the narrative they were presenting. A couple bloggers would use the word every once in a while (usually in the personal finance skewed spaces) but it never felt meaningful, or enough. And I chalked that frustration with them in general to the absence of privilege recognition in their spaces, and my OWN guilt about my inability or unwillingness to tackle my own privilege regularly here. You know what they say, we hate the most in others that which we hate in ourselves (there is a more elegant way to say that), so I figured I was annoyed by them because I was really annoyed at myself. It didn’t help me to do much about it in my own space, so I should have just stopped reading, but I never did.

Now I think I had something more to learn from these bloggers, and I kept hate reading them because subconsciously I realized all the pertinent lessons had not been learned.

Because what I’m realizing now, all these years later, is that I don’t actually want the lives these people are living. I feel like I am SUPPOSED to want their lives. Their blog spaces certainly present their life as an ideal. You can have enough money no matter how much you make! You can do everything in every sphere of your life, and do it well! You can excel professionally and as a parent! You can lean in! TO EVERYTHING! You can always feel like you have enough time, and energy, and money, for everything you want to do in life. These are enticing claims, even when they are made only subtly (or not so subtly). I think I kept reading because it seemed like they were happier than I was, and I wanted some of that happiness too.

But I’m realizing that these women live lives that would never make me happy. I recognized early on that I didn’t want some of these women’s lives. But I did WANT to want them. I wanted to be the kind of person that could be happy in these scenarios, because if I could be then I would just be able to follow their advice and find myself where they are (and only my immense privilege would make that possible). I mean I was never going to make the money some of these people (or their husbands) made, but I knew I could make enough to have a version of their reality. And our culture definitely suggests (if not out right declares) that I SHOULD want their realities, so I guess it’s not surprising I thought I did.

What took me so long to recognize is that I don’t actually want what they have. I would not be happy optimizing every cent I make, or every minute of every day. I am just not that kind of person. Some people are happy doing that (this post is not meant to suggest that these women are not happy living their lives, only that I would not be happy living their lives), I just don’t have the disposition to enjoy that myself.

AND THAT IS OKAY!

And you know why I finally realized that?

For one, I think I’m finally pretty happy in my own life. It’s certainly not perfect and there are plenty of nights where I lie awake in bed and wonder what I was thinking. (So many nights when I lie awake in bed these days – curse you perimenopause!) But enough is working well that I can recognize that there isn’t much I could hope to be going better (minus, well, pretty much everything in the news, of course). I’m making enough money and I don’t hate my job. I’m happy enough in my marriage. I feel like I’m doing a decent enough job as a parent. I have friends! Who care about me! I’m relatively healthy (perimenopause problems aside) and injury free. My ADHD is effectively medicated. I’m doing pretty good.

So yeah, finding happiness in my own life definitely helped me realize I wouldn’t be happy living theirs. But it was something else that helped me actually recognize that.

What happened was, these bloggers started to show a little vulnerability. It has never been much, just a little one-off sentence here or there about feeling run down or overwhelmed. It was never the topic of a post, always just an aside to an otherwise positive diatribe. But I saw those little glimpses of authenticity. I perceived the possible exhaustion that might be lurking behind a relatively benign declaration of frustration. I admitted to myself a simple truth, that things really weren’t going as well as they made it seem, or at the very least, I would not think they were going all that well if I were living their lives.

And think that is the point of it. These women are probably very happy living their lives. I don’t actually think people can paint such a complete picture of success when they don’t actually feel successful (not for many, many years and hundreds of verbose blog posts). I just know that *I* would NOT be happy living their lives. That is not the kind of person I am.

Maybe I am just content enough to recognize what was obvious to others all along. Maybe they have been dropping tidbits of vulnerability the whole time and I just never noticed because I was so overwhelmed myself that those small suggestions of imperfection were too small for me to perceive. I mean I always knew that these women curate their lives to support a narrative, I guess I just didn’t understand what the discontent underneath might look like. Maybe I needed to be “happy” myself, and see how the daily frustrations of life can coexist with that happiness, for me to understand how it might in these bloggers lives.

So I maybe it is all about being happier myself. Or maybe they are offering a little more authenticity. Who knows. All I know is that I’m glad I kept reading them, because now I feel absolutely sure that striving for their lives would not make me happy. It would probably make me miserable.

So I can let that all go. And I keep reading them, and continue to bring curiosity to the experience. It really does take all kinds! And that’s okay.

Uncategorized

This may be the end of daily posting

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

I technically did not post on December 20th. And maybe that is a good thing. Maybe I need to end the streak and that was just done for me.

I’m tired. It’s really late. My husband, who was out for most of Wednesday, Friday and Saturday is now sick. We’re fairly certain it’s not Covid (he’s taken two at home antigen tests and both were negative but he had an appointment for a PCR test on Wednesday to be more sure), but he still feels bad and is not participating much on the parenting front. I’m tired and need a break and one is definitely not coming.

I also don’t want to get sick myself but feel it might already be coming. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

But today was a decent day. My son got his Dave & Busters trip and he had a fabulous time. I hated it – it was truly an assault on the sense – but I’m glad he enjoyed it as much as he was hoping he would. I’m also glad it’s over.

Tomorrow I get to see my sister. This is assuming I don’t wake up sick. Here’s hoping. (insert multiple crossed finger emojis here)

Uncategorized

Brrrr

Posted on by noemikjames / 1 Comment

It’s been a chilly December. Again, I’m refraining from the use of “cold” because I know it’s not actually cold but man oh man does it feel cold. Today’s high was in the 40s. For us, that is cold.

Our downstairs unit remains incredibly cold. I think it’s time to have someone fix the wall heater. Especially since our Covid-positive contingency plan is for the person(s) to quarantine in the downstairs unit. Right now it would be miserable down there for an entire day, let alone 10+ days. I guess I’ll see who I can call tomorrow.

Today was… meh. Our kids were bickering non-stop and getting them out of the house was incredibly unpleasant. It was cold and gray out and I didn’t really want to be outside either but it’s supposed to rain all week so it felt like we needed to take advantage of the dry. Tomorrow is actually supposed to be dry too, but earlier the forecast showed rain on Monday so I planned for inside activities and I can’t really reschedule them so that also made outside time today feel more pertinent.

Once we were outside they were fine, but man the transition SUCKED. My husband was very negatively affected by it, and he sulked for the first hour of our time at the park. This made me really frustrated because I had told him he should just stay home, but he insisted on coming. At one point I straight up told him that if he couldn’t shake off the sulk I was going to ask him to please walk home. He turned his attitude around not long after that, but the whole outing had already been sullied.

I fear it’s going to be a LOOOOONG break.

Tomorrow I’m taking my son and his friend to Dave & Busters. I loath the place but he loves it and this is his “thing he can do now that he’s fully vaccinated.” My daughter got her sleep over and he gets Dave & Busters. I’m going to feel better once it’s over, and I’m glad we’re doing it before numbers here sky rocket. I’m also hoping it will be pretty empty at noon on a Monday.

I gotta go now. I’m trying to submit all the paper work necessary to get back my dependent child care FSA money back. I’m really unsure how I’m going to get the mere $300 (of $500) of medical back. I hate the medical. I didn’t even sign up for it next year because it always stresses me out. Blerg.

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A good day

Posted on by noemikjames / 3 Comments

Today was a good day. My daughter’s sleep over was a huge success. The girls had a ton of fun and my daughter was over the moon. I was asleep by 12:30am and got to sleep until 8:45am! No one needed anything in the night.

This morning was low key. The girls played some MarioKart and Nerf wars. They got picked up at around noon and I left to run at 1pm. It was beautiful out and my run felt great. I was so happy to be out in the sunshine. I felt like I could run forever.

When I got home my husband left to see a friend. He’s been out three of the last four evenings. I’m so happy he’s joining the world again. He seems happy too. I mean he’s concerned. And confused. But we keep reminding ourselves that our kids are fully vaccinated. We waited all this time for that, to start living our lives again, and it finally happen. And yes, there is a new variant, and things are about to get really crazy again, but if we keep ourselves sequestered away, there will truly be no end in sight for us. At least no end we can articulate.

We are still being cautious. We are still avoiding really risky situations. But we are also engaging with people again. We are making meaningful connections with friends we care about in ways that might expose use to Covid. And that’s okay.

My kids and I watched 8-Bit Christmas together tonight. It’s kind of a modern remake of A Christmas Story. It’s certainly not the best movie ever made, but neither is it the worst. I enjoyed it. My daughter and I cried.

And then my son had his annual meltdown before Christmas. It’s a whole week away! How will I make it! I have to admit, I don’t love when Christmas is a whole week into the break. I don’t love when we go back right after New Years either. It’s not the ideal timing, and this week will likely feel looong around this house. But I hope we (::cough:: my son ::cough::) can find a way to enjoy it. To revel in the anticipation instead of dread it. We shall see.

But today was a good day. I want to hold on to the good days. One thing about omicron is that it all feels incredibly tenuous. Who knows what tomorrow will hold. Who knows when a positive test in our family, or even the family and friends that orbit us, will turn everything upside down. I find myself wondering if everything we have planned for the next week will come to pass. The week after Christmas feels very far away. So much could happen before then.

So I’m going to hold on to the good days. And today was one of them.