Sunday Post with Berls | The one with the breakdowns

The one with the breakdowns

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kim @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

News at Home

Sunday – Wednesday

The first part of this week is a blur. I’ve just been struggling so much emotionally with this new COVID surge. I happen to live in Dallas, one of the areas that is being hit really hard. And while I’m thankful for my job, it’s a hard one to have right now. I have TOO MUCH information – COVID is in my face 90% of the work day. And we’re seeing our children’s hospitals hit max capacity – due to RSV actually more than COVID, although COVID is certainly nothing to ignore. When you have a 23 month old, seeing these numbers and having to work with them all day is overwhelming. I feel so helpless to protect Dante.

We tried keeping him home with me on Monday to see if, on days I work from home (WFH), if I could watch him like I did last year. The verdict: no. He needs so much more socializing now than he used too  – which is a good thing, but hard. I only got work done when Kiko came home for lunch and when Dante napped, which worked today but isn’t sustainable.

Tuesday I tried working early so I could pick him up early – thus lessening the number of hours he’s at daycare. That backfired. He was moody and basically mad at me for picking him up early. He enjoys school. So I’m not doing that.

Wednesday we had an update from work – due to Delta, people in positions like mine that are not ESSENTIAL on site full time are pulling back to 2 days at the hospital and 3 days WFH. We have to coordinate our days to make sure as few people as possible in shared spaces. BUT unlike before, they cannot allow people who are WFH to care for children, sick family members, etc. So that option wasn’t actually an option after all. It’s frustrating, but also I’m glad because I don’t have to feel AS guilty about sending Dante to daycare when I’m home.

His daycare is doing a good job – they NEVER got rid of their masking requirements and they just posted new signs to reinforce the expectation. And THANKFULLY our County Judge is going against Governor Abbott and putting a mask mandate in place. I’m so relieved and hopeful that the courts will uphold his orders when Abbott takes it to court. They already granted Jenkins a stay of the order, so I’m hopeful. What really pisses me off is that the hospitals are full of unvaccinated adults. If you don’t trust medicine enough to get the vaccine, then why do you trust them to risk their lives to save your selfish ass? Stay home if you couldn’t be bothered to get the vaccine.

Sorry if that seems unfeeling, but I’m feeling so hopeless. I was so excited for a vaccine to end this pandemic. But now that we’ve seen so much resistance due to politics, I feel little hope that we’ll ever get past this. I know COVID is here to stay, but at pandemic levels? I was hoping not. I swear, if ANY previous president but Trump had been president when COVID hit our country would be united against the virus instead of divided politically. I mean that regardless of party – Bush, Obama, Clinton, Bush, etc… they all would have done 100% better.

Thursday

I am exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally tonight. This morning I had to be at work by 7:30, just in case we had a survey. Our admin, who I’m back up for, had a COVID exposure and won’t be cleared to return to work until tomorrow. Technically I wasn’t supposed to return until next week, but I have emergency clearance and she can’t even have that yet. Which meant getting Dante up at 6:40 and dropping him off at daycare an hour early. I got to wok at 7:25 and waited in the car to see if The Joint Commission was coming (they have to post on the website by 7:30 if they are coming.) When nothing had been posted at 7:35, I turned back around and headed to Dante’s daycare so we could do his 8am therapy session. His therapist said she could work with him without me, but I prefer to be there if I can.

I had a busy-ish day of work after that. And I also had my nutritionist today. I swear, she should be a therapist or a life coach or something, I always feel better after talking to her. I cried a lot and I think I really needed to get those tears out. She helped me to celebrate what I’m doing well (which is a lot actually) and to make a plan for things that I’m struggling with – mainly exercise, now that I don’t have my gym membership, and routine, now that I’m WFH so much more again but with Dante at daycare.

I planned out my day tomorrow to really use my at home time smarter and to get in some walks during the day. I think that will help.

Friday

I’m feeling a lot better emotionally today. I’m still struggling with a lot of fear and anxiety about keeping Dante safe, but I also know that I am doing everything I possibly can. I pretty much cry everyday after I drop him off at daycare – I feel like I’m dropping him off in danger and then going home where I’m safe. When I’m vaccinated and can wear a mask, but I get to be safe at home. But there’s really not other option. I’m trying to stop obsessing about what I can’t control. I got in a walk this morning and I plan to go on another this afternoon (in a few minutes). Thanks to scheduling out my day more carefully, I have been more productive with blogging this morning and I think I’ll be back to full steam by next week.

This evening was good, we had Thai take out for dinner and watched some TV. Then I took Dante out for about 30 minutes to run around outside. And I’m getting to bed a little early, so hopefully I’ll get a good night’s sleep.

Saturday

What a day! Dante let me sleep in until almost 8:30, so yay! And then we had breakfast – where he had a complete meltdown over a pink bowl and spoon. It’s hilarious now, since switching his oatmeal to the blue bowl and spoon was all it took to have him eating happily. But in the moment, it was not at all funny. We took a walk and it started to rain so we rushed home, just in time to beat a downpour that lasted about 1 hour. Then we headed out to Royce City to check out some rims we wanted to get for my car – mine has hub caps instead of rims and they have been stolen repeatedly. So we’re upgrading. We were able to find a set original to my car for only $400 and they’re in really good condition. Since we were closer to Franky, we ended up driving out to visit with the family.

We had a nice time, as always. Before we left I changed Dante so he’d be ready for bed and we could just put him in his crib when we got home. Well, 10 minutes after I changed his diaper, he took a big poo and I had just put him in his last diaper! I had 1 diaper that I had changed before it was really dirty to get him ready for bed, so we elected to put him back in that one. But we use the 360s meaning there’s no elastic sitcky tabs and once you tear the diaper off, it’s off. So we used a combination of packing tape, his pants (he had gotten his pj shorts with poo too), and since it wasn’t too sturdy, we wrapped him in a dog pee-pee-pad with tape. I took pictures because that’s something to save for when he’s grown. We got home super late – it’s almost midnight – and I’m exhausted. But it was good to see family and worth the late homecoming for sure.

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Last week on Because Reading

• [13 Aug] You're My Little Baby: A Touch-and-Feel Book by Eric Carle ★★★★★
• [13 Aug] Ten Twinkly Stars by Russell Julian ★★★★½
• [13 Aug] Hooray for Little Fingers! by Tristan Mory ★★★★
• [14 Aug] #MyTBRL ~ Winner of 448 Pages ~ August TBR 2021
• [15 Aug] Sunday Post with Berls | The one with the breakdowns
• [15 Aug] The Sunday Post ~ A week off ~ Week in READview! 2021

How was your week? What are you Reading?

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