ahhh I didn’t know there were logs there too 
thank you for the point-out!
lots going on there, seems it was renewing certificates with each rebuild? because there are a lot of renew things going on. And @helmi is right, I think this is the one you mean:
[Sat 25 Jan 2020 06:48:31 PM UTC] Create new order error. Le_OrderFinalize not found. {
“type”: “urn:ietf:params:acme:error:rateLimited”,
“detail”: "Error creating new order :: too many certificates already issued for exact set of domains: $
“status”: 429
so… how do I get past that?
edit: according to letsencrypt:
If you’ve hit a rate limit, we don’t have a way to temporarily reset it. You’ll need to wait until the rate limit expires after a week.
and then I found Rate Limits - Let's Encrypt
so… i think i’ll just have to wait a week then…
edit2: i checked on https://crt.sh/ and I only see 10 certificates for the past week? no 50…
question: when does it consider a certificate a renewal? only when a rebuild app I suppose?