Friday, June 10, 2022

COVID-19: Up, Up, Up | January 6 Hearings | Excessive Heat Warnings | San Diego's New Water Restrictions |

 

Golden Lion or Lion-Maned Tamarin at San Diego Zoo (Taken 6.9.22)

I don't know about your households, but mine feels so haywire these days. In March 2020, when everything came to a screeching halt, there was all of this ambiguity with what was going to happen. I don't need to recap how the past two years went, and it certainly wasn't the same for everyone, but for us, we went from so much time together, almost every meal cooked at home and eaten together, and learning how to orbit near and around each other while also trying to give each other personal space to like...woah. What even happened? I know it was a slow ramp up, but now it's full throttle - Nova went back to school, joined lacrosse, picked back up with derby, piano went back to in-person lessons instead of Zoom, and all of the sudden she's 15 and enjoys her free bus pass and spends almost every day after school at a youth center when she doesn't have some other obligation. Meanwhile, Darren went full throttle when hired at his job, with kinda crazy hours and a long commute, and is generally exhausted when he gets home after a full day in the sun. And then me, I'm doing what I've been doing for more than a decade, but trying to give myself more pockets of time, trying to stay in the routine of getting out of the house for some time every day, whereas the summer of 2020, I could literally stay within the confines of my yard without leaving for days or weeks on end, sitting on my laptop for 10, 12, 16 hours in a day. When we didn't know when or how it would end, we lived super cautiously. In retrospect, there are so many ways that we could've better spent that time. So many projects still left to do. 

All this to say, one would think with all this posting that I've done about COVID that I would know when the kid is too sick to go to school, yet on Thursday she was sent home by the school nurse for having a fever and a runny nose. Embarrassing. As I mentioned before, we were both sick last week, and both tested negative several times. We've now both tested this week, too, and are still negative, and she felt fine after being home, popping some cold medicine, eating, and drinking water, but she's not allowed back at school until symptoms completely resolve and she verifies again with another test. Problem is after today, they only have half days Monday and Tuesday and the year is over. So I guess we can say, she survived 9th grade, though not entirely unscathed. 

Meanwhile, we do actually try to have family time when we can, but the opportunities are fewer and farther between. I guess this is life with a teenager. We're gonna probably have to sit and make meal plans though, because this eating out all the time thing is not sustainable.      

This weekend there's an excessive heat warning and new water restrictions kick in for San Diego. My recent habit has been to go to the San Diego Zoo every weekday and find other stuff to do on weekends, but now that they're open until 9, maybe that is actually the coolest place to be. 

Stay safe out there. 



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