Came in to an e-mail this morning from my colleague in the office next door: "Two in my family, including me, have tested positive for COVID"
She was requesting someone to cover her lab this afternoon (I couldn't, anyway, because I have my own lab), but I was talking to her yesterday and Monday - not for a long time, and 6' or so away (me standing in the door when she sat at her desk) but STILL
CDC guidelines for fully vaccinated people are to mask for 10 days and test on Day 5.
This....throws a monkey wrench in my baking cookies for the memorial service Saturday. If I develop any symptoms, I won't, and I'll test on Friday (must call the campus nurse to see if SHE can still do those - I trust her skill more than mine - or if I need to use one of the ones I have at home). If I'm negative, I'll bake the cookies but might just do a run-and-drop on the grounds that I'm worried about infecting vulnerable older people. Maybe by Sunday, if I'm symptom free it would be okay to go to church but wear a mask.
But yeah. I hate this. I hate this so much. Because of how I am, I feel like this is a cosmic punishment for DARING to try teaching unmasked (and it felt so good to). But now, I've masked back up, just out of an excess of caution. I mean, I will PROBABLY test negative but who knows? Who knows anything any more? We're all prey animals now and the predator isn't a majestic tiger or an amazing shark, it's a stupid freaking microscopic virus.
And of course, what does this mean for me painting my sewing room? I presume if I'm still symptom free it's not too horrible of me to go (masked) to Lowe's to buy the paint and stuff, and if I'm symptom-free it's probably safe for the mild extra exertion of moving stuff and painting, but if I don't do it this long weekend, I guess I don't do it at all, because I will NOT have time again until next summer, literally. And I have to move all my stuff back from the storage unit some time and that's contingent on either painting the room or going "okay it's going to be 20-year-old beige walls forever"
I won't lie: I feel angry and cheated after 2 1/2 years of being excessively careful, to the point where I've harmed my mental health (and probably lost some brain capacity due to stress, isolation, loneliness, and lack of new experiences) that I go a week and a half without a mask to teach classes and BAM I get exposed.
I don't know how to negotiate the world any more. I don't like what the world's become.
2 comments:
But you weren't teaching, right? You were talking to a colleague in the hallway.
Well, we've been damn careful. But my daughter (thrice vaxxed) got COVID from her bestie the day before going to college. Then my wife and I (four times vaxxed) got it from her. This variant is just trickier than most. I mean, I get your frustration. My daughter won't get to college until three days AFTER classes begin, and she's missed all of the orientation.
FAIR isn't always a real thing. Sometimes, it just IS.
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