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beautiful day for having covid
Monday, May 9 2022
I took the day off of work, the first sick day I'd taken since March, 2020. That time, my symptoms were very similar to the symptoms I've been having with my current case of covid, renewing my suspicions that the sickness I'd had back then actually was covid (though it was then very early in the American phase of the pandemic).
I treated the day as yet another of my miserable weekend, though the day was beautiful, and I'd awaken between numerous naps and marvel and the sunshine, fresh green leaves, and enthusiastic birds (which included a pair of cardinals, who are likely nesting in the pines atop the septic field). I awoke from one such nap in the late morning to find myself drenched in sweat. I'd been sweating a little at night, but this was next-level, and something I've heard about as a covid symptom. It didn't appear to have anything to do with how warm or cold my body had actually been, because one of my bare arms that had been out of the covers was just as wet as everything else, and in fact the chill of all that sweat evaporating was what woke me up.
I awoke with a start at noon to Gretchen's irritated face at the greenhouse door. Evidently she'd signed me up for a covid test, but the communication had been so garbled over Facebook direct message that I'd thought she'd wanted to to cancel it (and had canceled it). Now I was assuming she'd set up another appointment. So she drove us quickly to the Walgreens in Uptown, and it was my job to move the car slowly forward in the drivethrough line while Gretchen went into the store to get things like cough drops, sleeping pills, and more pepto-bismol (or Walgreen's version of it). She was a little slow in coming back, and when I got to the window, I said two of us were there for covid tests, but that my wife was in the store. "You're not supposed to go into the store if you're here for a covid test," the woman inside admonished. It turned out that Gretchen thought she'd told me to cancel a failed covid test appointment I'd made, one that never actually became cancelable, and because the one I'd canceled was the one she'd set up, I had no appointment scheduled at all. But at least Gretchen's was still on, and she swabbed her nostrils and returned the kit like a professional covid test-taker.
Back home on Hurley Mountain, I was finally in the mood to eat some savory food, as my intestinal complaints seemed to have died away complete. I had some sort of vegetable-and-tofu Asian-style soup that Eva (I think) had made. It needed salt, but I was able to eat a fair amount of it and then most of a peanut butter sandwich, which gave my body hope that perhaps I wasn't starving myself to death. I ate it out on the east deck, and the weather was pleasant enough to make me feel happy despite all the unpleasantness in my body.
Despite my desire to mostly be horizontal, when I heard steam being vented from the solar hydronic panels, I knew I'd have to take action. So I climbed up on the solar deck and fed water in from the top using the custom funnel I built for this purpose. It's the easiest way to address this particular problem, and soon the system was collecting hot water once more. This allowed first Gretchen and then me to take baths. (The only other hot water heating system, the just-in-time electrical option, has been behaving erratically enough that Gretchen has complained of "no hot water.") [REDACTED]
A little after midnight, I returned to the house after numerous additional naps and heated up another bowl of that tofu-vegetable soup. I added a bit too much soy sauce to it, so I mostly avoided the broth and just ate the chunks. The salt did wonders on my throat, making it feel about 80% better for something like an hour afterwards. It reminded me that I need to be gargling with salt water.
Me in the greenhouse upstairs today.
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