Yep, sure enough. My sister tested positive for Covid on Sunday and my mom tested positive on Monday. However, while the whole house now has it, my dad's feeling a lot better and my mom & sister are responding to the Paxlovid too, so apparently it really does work. Good to know for when I inevitably get it at some point, since Covid is an endemic disease at this point.

I made the Thai mushroom-butternut squash soup for them on Sunday (with toned down spice since my dad doesn't like it too spicy), dropped it off, and since my mom and I both had masks on and didn't touch I doubt I'll catch it. But cooking for them was the only thing I could do, so at least I accomplished that. 

Hopefully by this weekend they'll all be on the mend and I can see them the first weekend of November. God, how time flies; it's almost November!

Well, it's certainly been quite a month already. My dad has Covid, he tested positive on Friday and is now on Paxlovid. He's been vaccinated and boosted twice, but not since last year.

Ironically, when we got together on Oct. 8th for my mom's birthday I mentioned that I had gotten my flu & Covid shot on Oct. 2nd. He was adamant that he thinks the vaccine caused a dropped heartbeat (doubtful, it's more probably because his dad died of a heart attack, and his sister has had a heart attack, so obviously heart problems run in his family and he is 78), so he was going to not get the vaccine anymore. I said ok, because it's his decision and now this *sigh*.

So far he's not close to hospitalization that I know of, and my mom and sister haven't tested positive, but it's absolutely possible they could get it too. It's only a 2 bedroom ranch house so it's not exactly like they can go live in another wing or anything. Also considering my sister is a HUGE hypochondriac this could be very interesting and hopefully she'll learn it's not the end of the world being exposed to germs (my mom and sister are vaccinated as well, although I don't think they've gotten the new booster).

I'm crossing my fingers that the Paxlovid will work, he'll just have a mild case, and no one else in the house catches it. That's all I can do other than making soup tomorrow to bring to them.

I just checked around my usual sign-off time (even though I work past it most days). There are 11 requests waiting even though they have our part-time employee working my shift tonight. That's it. They either hire another person for the night shift or my night partner starts doing his job outside of his regional office. Maybe this is my quiet quitting, once I've recovered from my PTSD breakdown. I know I'll be on the losing end of this fight from literally telling my third-last, second-last, and last boss at LIB that I feel like Sisyphus, and having nothing happen but more work, but I have to at least try.

Furniture was delivered, and that was great.

But then I was watching TV and there was an ad for RWJ Barnabas hospitals. They happened to show a cardiovascular patient hugging a heart shaped pillow to their chest and holy shit, PTSD kicked in. After my botched surgeries in 2000 that hospital (not RWJ Barnabas) gave one to me to hold to my abdomen to help the horrible pain when I coughed. Which I would do on the regular because I'd been on a ventilator for 13 hours which impacted my lungs to the point where they had a respiratory therapist come in to do albutorol treatments (also because I almost died from blood loss which didn't help since my body had just had enough at that point).

I haven't visualized that in years, since I try to put it out of my mind. I really wish there was something that would let me forget that, but it hasn't happened yet. I've told my therapists about it but none of them have had training in medical PTSD since it's a fairly specific area. But I was back there. And reliving it. And I came out of it shaking and crying. And it's been 23 years but still I have that memory and feeling which will probably stay with me forever, along with the other trauma from those health crises that I Just. Can't. Shake.

What do you do with trauma that won't go away? I don't know. But I wish I did. And I hate that is all happened over an image of a stupid heart pillow.

My furniture is arriving tomorrow finally! I bought it over Labor Day weekend but it was delayed, and coincidentally I have tomorrow off (which was planned pre-delivery notice). I'm still disturbed by the response of my colleague to back off everything because I've had to fix her mistakes quite a few times. And not mistakes like it was hard to find the correct company, but where it was run incorrectly. She also has never asked me to help out even though it's been demonstrated many times that I know what the hell I'm doing in our M&A database.

I don't want to start a fight. I also know my boss has worked with her for about 20 years so I wouldn't win that fight if it escalated, but I also don't want to quiet quit. I don't think I'm actually capable of quiet quitting as long experience has shown since I was always an overachiever. And even though I've tried to wait, to push back, to not take on everything I'm capable of for fears of getting told off again, I just can't. Things are still better than they were at LIB, but the fact that I have more strife within my department at SIB makes it difficult. Especially when I'm covering the work of about three people again. *sigh*

I need to focus on positives. I need to focus on delivery tomorrow and the good things that this job has allowed me to have for the first time in my adult life. But honestly? Still angry about the stupid note and the fact that today I had to clean up another one of her mistakes, while pleading with the banker to stay silent and not officially log the job so my colleague wouldn't come at me again.

You would think that after a year and a half in the job, and demonstrating that I can stack up with the rest of my colleagues there would be more trust. I know I'm coming in as the underdog since our other newest researcher has been there about 6 years, but I don't get it. I ask for knowledge everywhere and anywhere I can, I know that there is ALWAYS more to be learned. Why wouldn't you ask for help instead of getting salty about it?

Yes, it bothers me. Deeply. I just...don't get it. And I need to find a way to get over it because I can't change it.

One of my pet peeves at work is that I have to be careful not to step on my colleagues’ toes, which I’ve done multiple times since it was always all hands on deck, do what you can, at LIB.

SIB is fiercely protective of their requests. Recently I picked up something where they were asking for information on list of tickers that a quick Google could answer and got this reply on Teams:

"I asked her to provide the full names to make sure the search was for the correct firms and to avoid re-dos. It makes me look incompetent to the banker when you work on a request I’ve asked feedback for."

Ok. Never picking up her requests on hold again, even if I can figure it out and complete it. But damn it, I hate that this is a limitation. I always try to do my best and my philosophy is that getting the bankers something is better than no reply at all, but I've had to step back from 5 of the 9 people since they are territorial.

I do understand that getting the right information is important, but if the bankers can't put together a coherent request, it's up to us to interpret it considering we have years of experience, and if we mis-interpret, then we fix it. There are legit reasons to put things on hold, but if Google can give guidance, don't wait, just do it.

This weekend has been a catch up on sleep one. I'm totally exhausted and only just getting to a place where I can feel like I'm not pushing myself way too hard just to do minimal things. On Wednesday I woke up late for work, which has never happened in the almost two years I've been at SIB. I'm ashamed it occurred, but took it as a sign that I really need to rest. 

Last weekend was all about my Mom's birthday, I drove down on Sunday, let her drive my car to the Wheaton Village, got a gorgeous blue glass pumpkin with white stripes, and we had great family time! However, this weekend had to be devoted to me to allow recovery time.

I've never had much stamina, and as I age it's only decreased. When I was in middle school/high school my mom would give me a day off just to sleep every once in a while as I needed recovery time even then. Since working full time I've found again that I am not meant for this grind. The idea of having a "side hustle" terrifies me since I know that I wouldn't have the energy to do so. 

This is not to say that I haven't tried. I've given 110% at all of my jobs until I couldn't anymore, and each time it eats me up to know that my best and more than that aren't enough. I've learned to back off, and take time when necessary, although sometimes I'm blindsided and run out of energy, like on Wednesday.

So I screwed up on Wed since I expended too much energy for my Mom's birthday. I need to forgive myself, move forward, and do the best I can given my limitations.

When I finally moved into my apartment everything broke, since everything I owned was about 10 years old, give or take a few years. My hair brush, toothbrush, shoes, socks, etc all gave up the ghost. I took it as a sign that it was time to move on from my old life.

I hold on to things until they literally cannot be fixed any more, and always have. I've never spent much money on furniture or other adult things until I moved here where I can actually fit furniture that doesn't fold up.

And yet, I woke up to a flood in my bathroom yesterday. I know these apartments were built in the late 1960s, but I've had to work around various appliances breaking in under a year here. The shower rod came crashing down one day, the toilet arm leading to the handle snapped (it was plastic, thank god they replaced it with a metal one), and now the float valve was leaking, leading to the flood. I've had the fan working for the past 2 days to dry everything out properly, but I'm disappointed that they didn't see fit to check these things before I moved in.

On the positive side, I haven't had to deal with vermin minus an unfortunate fruit fly infestation at one point. But I haven't seen any small roaches or had mice in the apartment, so that's a plus compared to NYC apartments. I'm always working on the lower end of the scale when it comes to apartments since I will never make that much money, but I've found that having no infestations is a decent indicator of overall care for the building/complex. 

Hopefully things will stop breaking for a while and I can just get on with doing a deep clean of the bathroom at some point. It won't fix any brewing problems, but it will make me feel better when the super comes to take care of them and it's clean for him to fix.

October is here, which makes me very happy because there's usually a horror movie on at any given time. When I was younger I couldn't stand them, but a friend in grad school introduced me to Evil Dead 2, Jason vs. Freddy, and Cabin Fever (which is still rather disgusting, tbh. I'm not much into the torture porn). From then on I was hooked on the classics, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, etc. While the quality does suffer as you go through the series, I think I've seen every single one in those franchises.

Even the newer movies like Final Destination, Sinister, and Ready or Not hold their own as being infinitely watchable. I'm not saying they're winning any Oscars, but for horror fans they're just good fun. Maybe it's because in college I worked in jobs that would have sent most students screaming for the door, but I became acclimatized to blood, scalpels, and ronguers. I also got used to the fact that I was using these instruments on the type of hamsters that were my pets growing up.

The fact that my major was animal science also contributed. In Animal Science 101, the first time we went back to the teaching barns, there was half of a skinned calf waiting for us. We could see where the tendons, ligaments, and muscles all connected and it was simultaneously disgusting and cool.

Maybe it makes me sick, maybe it's not the "correct" response, but I think that also had a lot to do with my slow acceptance of horror movies. Either way, I look forward to October to see if there are any new movies that have made the rotation.