January 11

$ 260  Dentist

$ 331 Groceries

Dinner: Spaghetti

Both MH and DL had dentist appointments Monday. 

MH had mostly settled on 'every 10 days' grocery runs but with the Holidays and surge is now on a "once every two weeks" buying cycle.  It was a big grocery run, but the way the timing of the runs work out this month I think it will be a low grocery month.  $330 x 2 would be $660, or well below our $850 grocery budget.  Which pretty much never happens and is why I think it's somewhat just timing.  Will see...

I glanced at 2020 and we did have a $556 month in September 2020.  I guess it happens, once in a blue moon. 

Bay Are ICU capacity dropped to about 0% on this day.  We are in hell.  Between that and planned riots in our city.  I expect the next 10 days or so to just be some sort of crazy hell.  We have way too many loved ones in the Bay Area who are not in good health.  This has always been the most obviously concering part of the pandemic.  & so here we are at rock bottom.  (Lord forbid if they need any medical care whatsoever).

Silver lining:  GMIL should be able to get her vaccine any day now.  

I think COVID hit our circles (thus far) the hardest last winter when we had no idea what was going on.  I think it's likely I had COVID in Nov 2019.  That one is a little more out there and iffy.  (I think this mostly because of the pure look of confusion on my Doctor's face.  I had also never been so sick before, and it was attacking my lungs).  For reference, we were never really that concerned when GMIL likely had COVID last January (Hindsight 20/20, very likely COVID).  I overheard MH tell her that, "Monkey Mama was 1,000 times more sick than you are right now."  We were concerned because of her age, but at the time were both kind of, "Pfffft, she will be fine."  & we appreciated that reference because MH's family is 100 miles away and they were being crazy hysterical.  It was one look at her (on skype) and kind of, "She doesn't seem THAT sick."  The hospitals were full at the time and though the plan initially was to admit her, they weren't able to.  I think that could have saved her life.  If that wasn't COVID, she most definitely would have picke up COVID (or anything else) in the hospital.  There was nothing normal about that whole thing. 

At the same time, a family friend of ours (my age) randomly dropped dead.  Hindsight 20/20, obviously COVID.   A very young (early 20s) co-worker was also deathly ill at that time, they had no idea what was wrong with her.  I didn't know if she would make it.  Everyone just presumed she had what I had, though I had literally stayed home for 3 weeks and probably was another 2-3 weeks after that before she started getting ill.  But...  Of course now we know that it COVID spreads like crazy and is mostly asymptomatic, so I suppose it could have been what I had.  

I share because what I had been thinking was that maybe that was the *worst* of it, when we had no idea what on earth is going on and how to treat it.  Things have seemed to get a lot better over the past year.  But...  Now that we are in hell, it is a reminder that winter and flu season is just going to be the worst of it.  It's unfortunately Round 2.