Tomorrow: better, hopefully

 * Came in to a student e-mail: "Oh hey I tested positive for COVID." This was someone in class YESTERDAY. Yes, I was 15' from them and we were both masked so I'm going to assume I am okay (though if the campus nurse tells me to quarantine or get tested, I will. Testing is not easy to arrange here...)

I passed the student's info on, they had NOT notified the right people, and I sent the names of their nearby seatmates for track-and-trace. But yeah, it's too early for this.

I guess I can still go to Sherman Saturday? I mean, if I get an e-mail from the nurse tomorrow saying I really should be tested, I will not, but....I feel like that was ALL I had to look forward to, and after 10 months of near total isolation, I get maybe-exposed doing my job? NOT. FAIR.

And please don't @ me and tell me not to go; I've probably walked past exposed people in the grocery. Yes I feel bad about the whole thing and there's more than a 50% chance I feel too guilty on Saturday and I don't go and wind up trying to arrange for grocery pickup instead :(

* My lab is split between two rooms. But they aren't next door to each other. They are about 100' apart, and around a corner from each other. I don't have a TA - they're "working" on getting me one, which means I might not get one. So today, it was assessment testing, I wound up running back and forth between the rooms. When we actually do labs this will NOT be sustainable. I cannot even have a camera and Zoom set up and do the pre-lab in one room and broadcast it to the other because neither room has a projector and I'm sorry, i am NOT going to carry the departmental laptop and portable projector and set it up every week.

NOTHING about this semester feels sustainable now.

* The county my mom lives in opened up a "sign up online to get an appointment" portal through their health department. For over-65s. So I tried to sign her up. Guess what? They only communicate over e-mail, and while she technically has an address, she doesn't use it. She gave me her password and permission but Gmail will NOT let me access it without third party verification - either sending a text to my brother's phone (which he set up as the smartphone connection) or using a "recovery" e-mail address, which she does not have.

Now I'm terrified I've screwed it up and she won't be able to get vaccinated. She says her doctor claims he will get it but I am not confident as they had no date given - and my doctor says SHE is not getting them here, because she has no cold storage.

I feel bad, because I tried to help but probably made things worse.

 (Update: my brother called; he got the code on his phone to access the .gmail account and he talked her through looking it up - so she is in the system and will just need to check periodically. Maybe THIS finally gets her using e-mail, at least minimally. But EVERYTHING surrounding trying to fight this virus has just been such a mess)

* And then finally, rushing to fix dinner? I didn't see one of my favorite little plastic lunch containers (it had the My Little Ponies on it!) was close to the burner and it partially melted. So that's spoiled.

 Photo evidence. And I hunted around online to see if I could replace it but I guess it's been too many years and it's no longer made. I couldn't even find ANY kinds of cartoon themed lunch kit things so I guess I just have to get plain ones? I guess? Because adulthood has to be plain?

 

 

I know I see too many patterns in things when I should not, but it feels kind of like everything is going to crud, and maybe I should just go to bed early and hope for tomorrow to be better. But there are too many things to do and too many things to worry about and I am REALLY concerned that I should not do my "mental health" outing to JoAnn's now that I had a student who tested COVID positive in my class. I don't know. I try to do the right thing but the rules are so changeable and conflicting and I also feel like I have given up so many things I wanted in the name of doing the "right" thing, and just when I was set to relax a bit....THIS. 

I dunno. I really wish I just had someone to tell me "No, it's okay, put your mask on and go, you haven't really been exposed to COVID" but I don't know. No one knows. And I hate that.