So covid has been… interesting? Relentless. Exhausting. Lingering. I’m finished with the 4th week of symptoms still lingering. I can see if I can get through my own frustrations that each week is slightly better. I worry that my voice will never be the same again (I got the kind that came with laryngitis and “powered through” because my company is cheap af on time off and 70% of my job is talking on an easy week). I worry that I’ll get a habit of coughing again (that’s a real thing and it’s annoying and exhausting af). I worry that my lung capacity will remain diminished.1 And that I’ll stay exhausted. But. If I squint and focus really hard on presence and symptoms, yes, they are SLIGHTLY better than last week. So fine. I’ll be patient and hope for continued, very gradual improvement and try not to let my mind that is so prone to dancing in the worry glen do it’s thing.
Image of tired-looking pug dog, wrapped in a beige blanket on a white bed.
I told my kid yesterday? Maybe the day before that I had two silver linings from the experience. 1 – She and I stopped fighting. I mean – we didn’t really take care of the root of it – we both just got the perspective that one day I won’t be here, so maybe we should stop being assholes to each other generally. Magically, that helped. I say that all flippantly, but we played the do I or don’t I go to the hospital game for several days that I mostly don’t remember. And, it changes how you look at things.
Image of two kangaroos fighting on some grass
The root of why we fight so much is as simple as, she’s 19 and done a year of school away and came home and feeling like an independent adult who hasn’t had to worry about her comings and goings or “contributions” to a household. And I’m the parent who adjusted MUCH MORE QUICKLY than I ever thought I would to empty nesting and, um, really loved it. Just like she hasn’t had to worry about her comings or goings around anyone else, neither had I, and together with that was that I could meal plan, grocery shop, and do whatever appealed to me. And if that was popcorn for dinner, cool. My brain went back to ok, ask her what she wants to eat in the week and plan for that. I have mental whiplash from how quickly I went from excitement to have her with me to resentment about how much that changes the way I live, plan, eat, and even how often and how heavily I need to clean house. And covid dialed that resentment way back. I’ll have to use the time she’s at school before the hols break to figure out how we do the transition back better. I’m quite certain me changing everything for her return will be something I don’t do again – and it might make us both feel less pressured. We’ll see.
Second silver lining from having no choice but to lay around with the plague – perspective on this move, the house, the changes. A couple of posts I mentioned it’s been hard. What I hadn’t mentioned is that the house is, um, full of problems. Like the electrician and plumber are my best buds these days. And the bug and rodent guy 🙂 ew. And the carpenter. And I’m going to need a handyman. It’s awfully hard to get energized about making a house a home when it felt like the house was giving me the middle finger every time I tried to do anything. And my brain hated it – and danced frenetically in that worry glen and just spiraled. When you lay in bed looking at the leaves in the trees out your window and how beautiful the morning sun is as it lights them up and how they look almost black against the pink and purple sky at sunset, well, it can’t be all that bad.
in the foreground and purple and pink bands of color in the sky.
The house will get fixed over time. Everything (that I’m aware of anyway) that needed urgent fixing has been done except for my stairs in the basement. Those will be sometime in the next month probably. I hope. The rest will be done over the long winter I think. Including my painting the rest of the rooms, redoing the paint I didn’t like in my bedroom. Now I’m going to focus on enjoying the sunshine and beach after work. I’ve gone several days right after work, and I’ve got to say – excellent way to wash away the BS of the day. And having that beach rejuvenation2 is an excellent way to be more zen when I come home on a non-windy day and see that a piece of siding has seemingly randomly fallen off, for example.
My nonwork goals right now are to 1) enjoy the ocean as much as possible and 2) to be slow in it and everything else so I can continue to get over covid. That sounds good enough to me.
Image from POV of being in the ocean water with small waves around you.
1–Habit cough is a real thing. My parents smoked like trains in our homes when I was growing up and didn’t believe in opening windows, so I’ve always had not awesome lungs. When someone else gets a light cough, I get bronchitis… for months. And evidently your body can and will start to cough even if it doesn’t need to if you have a cough for long enough. So fun. At least I know how to work on getting over it now (instead of the first time it happened and 5 specialists later… someone said, could just be habit–try these three things to fuck with your mind and see if it works. They worked.
2–I need to remember to do a post here on why I have an intense love of the water. Must do.
glowingwanderer.com 