Thank you all for the kind comments yesterday. It was so nice to “talk” to some other adults during what was otherwise a pretty tough slog. Isolation has been, well, isolating.
Yesterday was a hard day. My daughter felt awful. She had a fever and mostly slept on the couch bed all day. My son felt pretty much fine and had a ton of energy and wanted to do ALL THE THINGS! Free reign on the video game console was not enough to keep him occupied. I was feeling okay, my husband was feeling rough. It was a loooong day.
My son crashed in the evening and fell asleep early. But he woke up at 2am and came to sleep with me on the couch bed. I had finally fallen asleep after midnight, so being up again less than two hours later was a real bummer. Luckily it didn’t take as along to get back asleep.
My son went back to his bed (of his own accord) around 5am and slept there until 7am. Which was better than the 6am wake up the day before.
I hope my husband slept well last night.
It’s so hard to be away from work all week. I’ve spent HOURS getting sub plans ready every night, and checking the work my students are doing online. Today they start watching movies, so all of this – the planning and scoring – will get a lot easier. I’m so thankful for that.
Yesterday I missed our Open House. It’s the first time I have not been at Back-to-School Night or Open House in my 18 years of teaching. It felt really weird to miss it.
I definitely can’t smell. I can kinda taste. I can taste that something is sweet or salty or bitter. The first bite I can even taste some more of the flavor. But by the end of the bite its mostly paste – a saliva tasting paste. It sucks, and when I read it generally takes 4-6 weeks to resolve I had a bit of a melt down. I’m just trying to be accepting of it and not dwell on it too much.
In many ways I won the logistical Covid lottery. I got my positive on a Saturday morning. I got 48 hours of isolation to rest before the rest of my family went down. We have a unit where I could isolate when I was the only one positive and where my husband could stay when he was the only one negative. My kids’ isolation times started soon enough after mine that they won’t be at home after I go back (pending negative rapid tests of course). Now we can all be together, so no one parent is stuck doing all the parenting. So far, nobody’s very sick. We’re getting it close enough to summer that we should be more protected from the current variant during our travels (this is HUGE). We have friends willing to grab us some groceries when we need it. My friend was able to sub for 4 of the 5 days (this is INCREDIBLY helpful to my piece of mind and what my students actually accomplish while I’m gone). So much of this is logistically amazing!
And yet, it’s hard.
I missed my martial arts retreat. My kids missed really cool field trips. We’re missing half of their cousins’ visit. (We haven’t even met one of their cousins (she’s two) and the other one was 6 months old when we met him. I am really bummed to miss so much of their time here.) Being away from work is hard and requires a TON of work; now I won’t get done with important stuff before the school year ends. I guess my point is, that even when you win the logistical covid lottery, it’s still really hard logistically! Being stuck at home for a week, with no warning it’s going to happen, is hard. This is why Covid causes so much anxiety – because we all know it might upend our lives at any moment.
I know I’m going to look back on this, and be grateful it happened when and how it did. When we’re flying to St. Louis to see family, I’m going to heave a big sigh of relief on the plane (through my kn95 mask) knowing we have some extra protection. I do not want to downplay how lucky, in many respects, we are. But we can be lucky and it can still be hard.
Both can be true.
Thank you again for all the comments yesterday. They REALLY brightened my day.
I keep hoping everyone in your family will be feeling better and getting good solid sleep at night. Thank you for keeping the updates coming. Reassuring. And in a funny way it is nice to know you are capable of working so hard on your classes while not being there in person because that underlines that you are not sleeping 23 of 24 hours or running terrible fevers. On the other hand it is terrible that you need to be working while sick and in need of peace and rest.
I think what I have read implies you may get back to normal taste sensations faster than average as you have not 100% lost all taste/smell. Hope so, it must be very disconcerting to have taste/smell be off.
Keep resting and know good wishes are sent your way!
“Good solid sleep” is not being had. By any of us. At least not yet. But hopefully soon! My daughter ran a pretty high fever on Tuesday but was fine yesterday. I had a mild fever on Sunday but it was gone by Monday. We all have coughs but we’re not coughing a lot. It just sounds gross when we do (and it’s worse at night).
Okay nobody but Purple and Rose has commented ( who on a side note I love all of her or his comments), So I will comment. I am still reading! In fact checked your blog 3x today until you posted because I wanted to make sure you all were hanging in there…I am still here and reading. I love all your thought and musings…I just don’t comment sometimes because I wonder what others will think of me…even though I don’t know them?? Like me saying, “the worst part of Covid is the unknowing and unexpected” That is the voice of privilege… okay off to bed. I am like “theshubox” in bed early, and up at 5am…but I dont get done half of what she does in the morning! Just letting you know we are out here, reading/listening and you are heard.
Ah thanks for commenting again. You don’t need to comment if you don’t want to. I think I just haven’t been writing many comment worthy posts of late (before this I mean) which is on me. It was nice to hear from so many people on Tuesday, but please don’t feel pressured to comment! I don’t want that for my readers.