Category Archives: Daniel

Catching Up: COVID Edition

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It was a nice 3 1/2 years avoiding COVID…

[+] After masking up, quarantining, and getting vaccinated, my turn for COVID finally came. I likely got it from Dad, who got it at a small family gathering. I knew I’d probably get it if someone in the house got it–my immune system is crappy. The test showed the COVID line almost immediately, and was brilliant red.

[+] We’ve been partaking of DoorDash and a local food delivery service since Dad got sick because quarantining while cooking is hard. Parishioners have promised food and chicken soup. I don’t really have an appetite though.

[+] What is this variant like? Well, it’s like a head cold, post-nasal drip, and a chest cold went speed-dating. I’m having to write down when I take meds so I don’t take anything that interacts. I’ve gotta say… if this is the mild version that vaxxed people get, I’d hate to have gotten the variant that was out there before the vaccines were developed!

[+] Just pray for me, y’all. I can’t sleep and it feels like I just tried to run through a brick wall.

Catching Up: Two and a Half Months Edition

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Wow… two-and-a-half months of silence.

[+] Work. My contract with the college ended on June 30th. I knew it was coming, and I spent last quarter working on my LinkedIn profile as well as creating ones on Glassdoor and Indeed. I’ve got a couple of stop-gap temporary measures in place until I can find a a more permanent remote job, but I’m still living pretty modestly and I am getting a little frustrated with the amount of scammers out there posting positions. There are some days when I honestly feel like I’m playing “Scam or No Scam”, and I have other friends in similar situations.

[+] Health. My appointment with gastroenterology is next week, and it cannot come soon enough. My stomach is angry and eating is unpleasant. I’m willing to deal with an endoscopy and colonoscopy at this point if they can figure out what is happening.

[+] Daniel. Kiddo is at least five inches taller than me, and he is in the middle of puberty. The mood swings are epic. School starts again in a little more than a month, and I think both Daniel and I will be excited for that to happen.

Catching Up: September 17, 2022

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It’s been a mentally tough few weeks since I posted. Summer Quarter burned me out to the point where I spent a few weeks just playing Cross-Stitch World on Facebook because I was so mentally drained.

Daniel started school, so I’ve had some guilt-free naptime after getting him on the bus. He also had an Audiology appointment this week which went well. He liked the audiologist we saw as well as her assistant, so we got a good hearing test. They’re repairing his hearing aids, so we’ll probably have them back next week.

I have my schedule for the quarter, and I will be on campus three days a week. I’m kind of stunned by this because I’m “getting my life back”, but it’s tinged with some bitterness because the last 2 1/2 years have shown me the utter selfishness of people who are angry because they’re being mildly inconvenienced by having to keep others safe. We could probably have been back to “normal” sooner if people had quarantined, worn masks, stayed home, and gotten vaccinated.

Catching Up: August 19, 2022 Edition

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It’s been hard to have something to write about because I’m literally working, watching YouTube, and sleeping.

[+] Kiddo had an ADHD appointment last week. He is now 5’3″ and has doubled his weight since his g-tube surgery 4 years ago. Unfortunately, he is really constipated, so life is full of suppositories and Miralax.

[+] Next week is finals week, and I’m actually looking forward to it. It’s been a bit of an intense summer, and I’m kind of burned out. Interpersonal Communication is a tiring class to tutor, and I’ve got three sections of it on my tutoring roster. None of the instructors teach it the same way either. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m having to answer every question with the words “I don’t know. Email your instructor.”

Catching Up: July 29, 2022 Edition

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TGIF…

[+] This week, I discovered Steel Magnificat, the blog of Mary Pezzulo. I had seen friends link up stories from her blog before, but I wish I had taken the time to read her blog before now. She is an amazing writer and an even more incredible person.

[+] We’re having a church picnic at a member’s farm on the 7th, and I spent this week arranging to *NOT* have to figure out how to put worship online that Sunday. I’ve been out there before and the part of the farm we’ll be at is kinda primitive. I would probably have to record worship and upload it later… and I don’t have the space on my phone to record a 90-minute service. Broadcasting it off of my laptop would require really dedicated Internet access, and I really don’t think they have it in that part of the property. Also… I haven’t had a service off from running things and doing Zoom (we’re talking Sundays, Holy Week, and funerals) since April 25, 2021. I think I (and everyone else on the committee who switches around from Sunday to Sunday) can use a Sunday off.

[+] Daniel had an ADHD appointment scheduled for Wednesday morning at 8. My alarm didn’t go off and Daniel woke me up at 8:22. I called them apologetically and rescheduled it. They were cold to me on the phone, and I don’t blame them one bit because I know how much of a headache it is from working in a clinic when people are no-shows.

[+] One of my new guilty pleasures is Code Blue Cam. It is videos from police body cams, and it’s interesting to see the job from that perspective. I am not an ACAB person by any stretch (as I have relatives in law enforcement), and I am absolutely in favor of police having body cams that are not allowed to be turned off. (A lot of jurisdictions have civil and criminal penalties for officers who do so.) The department that seems to have the majority of videos right now is the La Crosse Police Department, and one fo the things that surprised me is that they have to put their guns in a lockbox when they head into the station.

Catching Up: May 13, 2022 Edition

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I’m usually triskaidekaphobic, but we’ll try this tonight…

[+] I met with DDA this week by Microsoft Teams. I hate this meeting every year because it’s incredibly draining, but it’s important so that Daniel can get services. All I have left is the home visit.

[+] I had to make the decision to sit out the rest of the spring from choir because of my asthma and my drippy throat. It’s not COVID (I have tested myself and I’m consistently negative), but my breathing is screwy. It’s a pain because I miss choir and singing, but I don’t want to have coughing fits the whole time.

[+] I had to give up on my bullet journal as life got away from me in March. I ordered another one, and I’m going to probably make it a June to December one as I will have enough pages to do it. I ordered a blank journal off of Amazon tonight, and I’ll be starting to put it together when I get it and trying to get all of the month’s pages done early so that I don’t have to worry about drawing/numbering a new page daily.

[+] I had to give up on Learning to Pray by James Martin, S.J. because my heart and brain just weren’t in it. I love Fr. Jim’s books, but I’m needing something lighter these days. I just started Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, and it’s not amazing but is keeping my attention. (I think it was a free Kindle book?)

[+] For those who enjoy Wordle and are map nerds, check out Globle.

[+] So, this happened on Monday morning. Thankfully, campus is still pretty quiet because many classes are still online and enrollment is down overall, but it was not fun having my phone explode with emergency notifications.

Catching Up: April 30. 2022 Edition

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And it’s been six weeks since my last post. Go me.

[+] In my defense, I’ve been sick. I had a UTI over Spring Break that flattened me, my sleep schedule is completely knocked off kilter, my seasonal allergies have manifested as serious asthma so I spent Holy Week having serious asthma attacks, and I got hit with a respiratory infection the next week which spilled into this one. I’d like to be able to sleep without waking up coughing up a lung, and I’d like to not be taking Sudafed with a Robitussin DM chaser.

[+] We’re four weeks into the quarter, and I haven’t had a consistent schedule from week to week. Part of it has been having to cancel sessions due to asthma attacks and this stupid respiratory infection, but the other part of it is students being added and dropping tutoring or not showing up. I purposely scheduled my Fridays off this quarter to have a day where I could do doctor’s appointments or Daniel appointments, and I’ve also made it so that my students don’t send me work to look over on weekends. This is thanks to a student who completely burned me out during Summer Quarter and a student during Fall Quarter who made me ponder taking up rattlesnake cuddling. I can’t even begin to describe her shenanigans. Between the two of them, I could probably write an entire post of “tutoring don’ts” if it wouldn’t violate FERPA.

[+] Daniel turned 13 on April 7th. I’m still stunned that I now have a teenager.

[+] Doc is getting so much braver and friendlier. Mom is getting serious love time from him when she gives him his greenies. He’ll allow me to get closer to him, and I’m hoping I will eventually get to pet him. He is a very soft cat, and I would love to give him all the scritches that he could ever want.

[+] I spent a lot of time doing blogging/Facebook stuff for church during Holy Week. Five days of services was A LOT. The office of Tenebrae was a new one, and it was very dark. I’m kind of glad I was home doing church web stuff during that one because I wouldn’t have been doing a good job of focusing. By Easter Sunday, I couldn’t focus on anything, so I redid the header for Facebook and the church website. I still need to do the Facebook and church website posts for this weekend. I should probably get started on them…