New Year, New Mess

So, 2022 is off to quite the start. 

Our friends' older son ("Olderfriend", who's just a bit younger than Firstborn) came down with COVID, and while it hasn't been life-threatening apparently he's pretty miserable. They've been keeping him isolated, getting tested themselves, etc. but now their younger son is also testing positive -- but probably not from his brother, probably from an exposure at school. (You may remember these boys from a special D&D episode a couple of years back.) 

On top of that, it's at least possible Beautiful Wife and I were exposed, despite the fact that our last interactions were outdoors. No real symptoms so far (we've both been a bit tired and stuffy, but that's normal for this time of year) and we haven't tested positive. Of course, that doesn't tell us much: this particular variant of COVID doesn't seem to show up on the tests very well. Olderfriend tested negative on the home tests for three days before they got a positive read off one of the slower-response tests from a testing center. Meanwhile, our boys went back to school last week and started their first full week of school yesterday; this isn't stressful at all, obviously. Oh! And I spent a decent portion of the weekend trying to sort out the nightmare farce of refilling Secondborn's meds; ADHD meds and antidepressants are both subject to very strict scrutiny, which means things have to get prescribed in very particular ways and there's lots of opportunities for things to go wrong even before the insurance companies get involved. Whee! Definitely not stressful.

And, weirdly, my sleep schedule is just off. Like, trying to go off the rails. Pretty sure that's not a symptom of anything except that we've been spending a lot of time isolated and stressed out, but I was up pretty much all of Saturday night and then slept until like two o'clock Sunday afternoon. I made myself go back to sleep at ten o'clock that night and work up a bit after four-thirty. So that's something I'm trying to work on.(It's not just me, either: Secondborn was up pretty much all of Sunday night, which made Monday at school kind of interesting.)

No word back from work on either the job reclassification or the application for the new position, which means that it's time to move on to step three: looking elsewhere. That's probably not fair, since we're just coming out of the holidays and pretty much everything is trying to come back online after grinding to a halt; but that's also why this is precisely the moment when I need to be applying for things. And at this point in my work history -- and history in general, for that matter -- fair can basically go fuck itself. Fair would have been reclassifying my job years ago, after they effectively tripled my responsibilities. Fair would have been having that additional income for the last couple of years to put towards college costs and now medical bills. 

All of which means that this week is devoted to getting my shit together. Sleep? Need to get that together. Writing? Get it together. Job applications? Put 'em together. Keeping boys on schedule? That's actually the one thing I haven't let slip, despite Secondborn's issues with falling asleep, but this would be the wrong time to let it fall apart. The mess on my desk at work? Get it together. Studying German and Spanish? Get back to it. Finishing current projects at work? Already in process, so just get it done. All of this is possible, it's just a matter of sitting down and sorting through it. 

...Which is exactly what I usually say just before something completely unexpected blows up in my face and throws my rhythm off completely. We'll see.