flexagon | Entries tagged with covid

Today the CDC considers me fully vaccinated, and I got a negative result back from my last PCR test and don't plan to get any more. Congratulations to me. I'm having the longest period in the world (surprise, the endometrium is part of the immune system!) but aside from that, all is well. I've changed my icon to "squirrel peeking out through a fence" because I guess I can go out but am not sure how life works now, and it seems like a good time to stop reflecting my state's one-dose vaccination stats in my subject lines too (though I'm still watching them).

As for actual policies: the bug and I are going to stop controlling each other so closely, with a lot more activities being "use your best judgement" -- including basically anything with fully-vaccinated people. That's a huge relief. I think we could both use some independence back. The only things we're definitely not doing yet are the gym, indoor dining, movie theaters, public transit. We'll keep watching the case counts... which are plummeting, along with Rt, for both state and county, and therefore fun to watch.

In the meantime, taking stock. Taking notes on what I want back and what I don't. Trying to figure out how many friends I actually lost in all that mess -- for inner-circle friends the answer is either 2 or 3, for ambient electron-cloud friends it's very hard to say. I think we're going to see a lot of people not coming back to all the same hobbies and places they used to.

I'm doing some acro with the Monk next weekend to see where that all stands.

I brought Helios into my house to look around and meet the cats and snuggle briefly on all the surfaces, and that was amazing.

Norwood has his first post-covid first date on Wednesday and is going to have a whole lot more, which I'm mostly feeling prepared for after a year of feeling bad that he couldn't date. And soon we're going to go back to weekly shorter dates instead of the biweekly longer ones. (Being allowed to get hotel rooms means we'll actually be able to have dates near me sometimes rather than always driving to his state, which will be easier on me. Although, strangely, I really enjoyed the drives both down and up this weekend -- I was wide awake, the roads were nice, the sun was out.)

Maybe to nobody's surprise, I'm not focusing on work very well right now. Meh. Work. Something will happen.

I need to post weekly-ish or I get the feeling of things building up in my head: things I want to remember or things that want to come out.

I went to a zoo for the first time ever, that I'm aware of. Norwood and I only went there because we needed to be on mask/oudoor protocol last weekend and it seemed like a decent outdoor date, but he found out I'd never been, and got all excited. :) Apparently this is a thing parents do? Take kids to zoos? I've recognized and purposely filled in some things that I think of as "missing" from my basically-missing childhood, but this one somehow was never on my radar. Rectified now. Although I still have never seen an elephant or a giraffe in real life, so Norwood wants to take me to at least one more.

Several new handstand records. I've been feeling strong. On Sunday I held a straight handstand for 1:07 (previous record was 1:04). Also in the last week: caught 5 kickups in a row on my bad side, pressed from 17" and succeeded at a weird little pike drill that I'd failed at before. And learned a whole new way of doing a straddle jump, which is interesting and different.

New realms of ridiculous delight at having a Short Boyfriend. It turns out that, with human wingspan usually being about the same as human height, if someone is shorter than me I can spread out my arms and just SPAN THEM FROM HEAD TO TOE and pet both ends of them. I don't remember ever doing this with Smitten, oddly, but it's my new favorite thing. (My other partners could presumably do this to me, and they ought to! It is really fun!)

Work is a writhing pile of ambiguity. More reorgs coming, but when? On the plus side, I got a random $2000 spot bonus for something I'd forgotten all about helping with; it's still that kind of place.

Several people in my life are having trouble. There are dying parents scattered around, and probably an exploding marriage (poly situation: the spouse said you need to pick her or me which is basically the poly nightmare).

Covid: I've been watching the case numbers fall. My county moved down into "high" risk on covidactnow.org this week, and my state seems likely to follow in 3-4 days. For myself I'm 8 days out from my 2nd mRNA shot, have had my last masked/distanced date with an existing partner (am soooo looking forward to seeing Norwood without all that on Sunday), and have sent in the last of my kits for weekly PCR testing today; by the next time I would have sent one, I'll be fully vaccinated. Amusingly, heisenbug and I talked over a lot of "will X be okay for me to do after we're both fully vaccinated" scenarios last week, and flat-out forgot to talk about the gym and the subway.

We did our taxes over the weekend, with the aid of drinks and takeout, so that's done.

I'm going to want a new default icon when I'm fully vaccinated and I think I just picked it. Next time.

Pun intended. Damn it. All my delicate, bespoke, artisanally-created, unfair-but-working covid arrangements are lying in smithereens because BOTH my non-marital partners have KIDS WHO ARE GOING BACK TO SCHOOL oh my god. So much for that.

I don't fault either of them, but I'm plenty angry with the world. All that planning, all the endless difficult conversations with their associated damage to friendships, were intended to create a structure that would hold through spring. But no. My calendar is now upsettingly covered in post-its just to track what's going on with kids, travel, vaccines. And in short: April is going to suck after the 3rd, and then much later there's one magical weekend that the stars align and I get to see everyone in approximately the way I have been, and then May is going to be bleak indefinitely until enough shots have happened to the right people.

(At least the bug and I are on the same page about allowing 1:1 unmasked contact between two vaccinated people. Vaccines won't give me Madonna concerts or group acro classes but they will let me hug some of my friends, and be physical with partners.)

I tried so hard to hold it together, but nothing can stand against children. Their cultural primacy gives them the destructive force of any number of trains jumping tracks, or sharks, or both. You got me good this time, kids, yes you did.

Current Mood: 2020

I just realized today that covid is the perfect chance to tease the living crap out of someone. "Sure we can get together, sure we can talk about sex, but no touchie! Six feet! Just in case you were thinking about it." Heh heh heh.

The interesting part is that I didn't think of that in March. All in all, I don't think I've had a solidly mischievous idea in... 6 months or so? I used to have those all the time. I used to be playful! I used to be a devilishly fun-loving creature inside my head -- that's why I even have the icon I used here. This is both a definite sign that I have been messed up, and a definite sign that I'm getting less messed up.

Weird.

Edited to add: on this day I was not actually a terrible tease. No, I was trying to be nice. Today, however, in my inbox there is email that's... well... flat-out porn about a mango. I am deeply amused. Perhaps this means war. I retreat, to consider tactics.

1) Despite having a boss I'd sometimes like to punch in the face (and who kept me up late on Thursday working on last-minute bullshit), and having just finished up spring calibration a few weeks ago, and losing half my org, etc... I don't really find myself desperate for the 3 weeks off I've taken for the last three summers. I haven't taken any days off since beginning to work from home. That doesn't make sense so I am going to take some time this week (scanning... two half-days?) and find more time further in the future too, but in the meantime it's just bizarre that I'm not dying for a longer break after how rough it's been. But usually the burnout is commensurate with feeling desperate for more time at home, isn't it...? And for the first time in my adult life, I am getting enough time at home.

This is fascinating and potentially huge, like "could change my career / retirement plan" huge.

2) My cycle. The length has been bouncing around between 24 and 27 days for a while now, which I can easily confirm because when I get my period I put an entry on my Health calendar that says something like "drip (actual, 25 days)" along with another one for the future that says "drip (predicted)". Anyway, I last got my period on April 4, making this my first full cycle at home; yesterday would have been 28 days and it's not here yet. I haven't had a 28-day cycle since Dec 2018, or a longer one since June 2017.

Both these things are obviously during a time when external factors are very stressful indeed, making them doubly of interest. I wouldn't have predicted either one. But here we are.

Kind of a messy week of stay-at-home. I did a bunch of stuff that wasn't quite routine (even New Normal routine), like the emergency vet, and walking to a fairly great outdoor market that did social distancing really carefully and had a lot of local foods. We also cleaned the house super well again, because the cleaners would have come on Wednesday -- having a checklist helps. I find dusting strangely satisfying since it's easy, fast and mindful. For me, it's ultimately about forgetting about what things actually do or are, and paying attention only to the spatial shape of a room and touching all the horizontal, hard surfaces. I imagine a hot, insubstantial rain of glowing blue droplets falling downward through every space.

Wrote a long, long email to someone who's a moderately good friend of mine and a very good, longstanding friend of Lion's. She didn't know the story of the last few months despite a few casual brushes against the edge of the storm -- so, after weeks of failing to set up a 6-feet-away walk together, I finally just wrote her the ENTIRE FUCKING STORY and then waited bleakly to see if she'd already heard a much worse version from someone else. I wanted to melt with relief when she wrote back with empathy and startlement. It turns out (less to my relief) that she felt used by her own one-time encounter with Lioness in a way that echoed my own themes of broken communication around sex. And she's now scheduled a good 1:1 catchup with Lion, which is a relief. He could use a friend, and he still doesn't want to "push it" by talking to me.

Easy to forget how fresh some of that hurt still is. Five or six weeks? And less than that since the corporate shenanigans that redefined my work role? Much of it feels like it happened in another world.

I finished reading Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. It's a dystopian fantasy set in post-apocalypse Africa (Sudan, we learn at the very end). It's much darker than her graphic novel LaGuardia, and is pretty heavy on both rape and body mutilation. Hmm, and also inescapable destinies, which aren't necessarily good when they involve important deaths. So as far as a recommendation, this one is conditional on content and what the reader is up for. However, this is an author to watch, and I'll mention it does contain one marvelously redeeming scene that would be a happy moment for any fan of the clitoris (really, who among us is not?). I'll probably read the Binti Trilogy.

And I ordered a 30lb BodyBar from bodybar.com, despite the money. Straddle pancake flexibility has been awful to work at home with no weight, and I was literally in the middle of such a thing when

apfelsingail told me about a 25% off special there (still running). I look forward to its arrival. I was also looking forward to the arrival of a kick scooter I ordered from Amazon in search of something less than a bike and more than walking, but, ugh, they claim it's been delivered! No scooter. I'll see what can be done.

The only place I think I'm cracking: feeding humans on a continuous basis is punishingly upsetting, and people keep offering me recipes and meal prep tips. Gah! No! That's a solution for a different problem than the one I have! This may be the one area that keeps getting worse for me instead of better.

Emergency vet visit on Tuesday night, the scariest Nala episode since sometime last year. This time she stopped being able to use her hind legs very well; suddenly one of them froze up, kind of in a forward position, and then she started yowling in the very unhappy way she does when she's having an Episode and then she went mostly non-responsive. We laid her down in the sun and petted her (she was conscious) while doing some web searches, then called the vet while she worked on being able to walk again. They wanted to see her, so I took her in and spent a lot of money to learn that... well... she is old. Nothing really new. We did an X-ray for something the vet felt in her abdomen, but it turned out just to be stool.

Thanks to covid-19, vets don't let you go in to the office anymore. The vets come out and take your pet in from the sidewalk, then take payment over the phone and bring the pet back out when they are done. I found myself thinking unhappily about euthanasia, how much it would suck to not be able to go in with her in that case, and wrote to a house call vet to see if that kind of service is still available.

In the meantime, the expensive little wobbler is TOTALLY FINE and is walking around like nothing happened, and is now curled up in front of the fireplace. Her birthday is soon; last year I celebrated on 4/6 so I guess that's her birthday, or close enough.

Covid living this week: being legitimately excited to get toilet & tile cleaning supplies in the mail from Amazon. Last time we cleaned we didn't have any, so it was water-wiping only.

I also turned my attention a bit to monetary aid. I don't give away money very often because of my own stupid issues, but investing in the businesses that matter to me somehow makes sense. So I threw a solid chunk at Local Circus school (now accepting donations), half a chunk at our local Friday night restaurant (which is closed, and running a gofundme to pay its employees), and saved my usual kiva.org re-loans for US-based businesses affected by covid-19. The restaurant does not appear to be meeting its goal.

ETA: this Friday we tried our best to make burgers like the restaurant. This led to beer-marinated burgers which got very wet and soppy -- who knew they would ABSORB the stuff -- apparently their "beer braising" is a step less intense than that. But too late, we've got beer-soaked patties in the freezer for next week already.

I find myself doing odd, almost Depression-era things due to not wanting to go to the store, like trying my hand at molding a new candle for the Nala's upcoming 22nd birthday and cutting the bug's hair. It would be more fun if the world weren't having such troubles around us and if inter-state visits (you know, like to see

norwoodbridge!) weren't a confusing mess of state regulations. It's kind of like the Depression and kind of like wartime, with shortages of things, but different.

Two interesting/good areas:

I was productive at work this week, full power. I generated stuff for people to read/review, caught up on a bunch of email and also got a lot of reorg-related tactical things out of the way, clearing my plate a bit more to go into strategy with my remaining two teams next week. I also met with my exec coach, which is always interesting and infurating at the same time. Maybe I'll write about her separately.

My circus costume arrived and it is awe-inspiring. It's a custom-fit catsuit with spikes, and fits like a dream: tight without giving me camel-toe, and super shiny. Just putting it on and experimenting with small motions in front of the mirror gave me choreography ideas. So I have several related projects to do there: figure out my makeup, do the choreography, and sew a matching headpiece for the catsuit out of the 2 extra yards of fabric I bought. I wound up at coraline's house yesterday, chatting at a properly distanced distance in the cold about both our nascent circus acts, and managed to get myself excited about the sewing part of all this; so the machine comes out soon.