Where has the summer gone?

Two weeks from Monday the boys are back in school. Three weeks after that is my event. The time is flying way too fast.

Despite my ambitions to the contrary, we ended up having an incredibly lazy week of staying in pyjamas and playing video games or watching cartoons. We went in the pool one day…and that was it. My covid exhaustion just wouldn’t allow for any outings, and the kids didn’t want to do anything, either, so I thought, what the heck? They have already stated that this has been their favorite week of the summer. Is it so terrible to have one week of just being complete lazy slobs? When I was a kid entire summers were spent like this. So, that’s how it went down. I cooked three meals a day, cleaned the kitchen, made sure everyone brushed teeth, occasionally showered, did customer service all day, and tried to recover. Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t feel like getting out of bed was a huge burden. Which says to me that I am finally on the road to recovery after this covid nightmare.

I’m very worried about long term effects, especially heart damage. I’m thinking at my next check up in two months I should ask about it, maybe run some kind of scan? I’ve just heard too many stories of perfectly healthy people dropping dead of heart attacks shortly after covid, and apparently BA5 is tough on hearts (not that I know I had BA5, but it’s likely). It’s my worst fear to become incapacitated due to stroke or die leaving these boys motherless. It haunts my dreams. My father has had heart issues since he was about my age, maybe a little older. I’m worried. Are my days of long hikes and physical activity officially over? I definitely still don’t feel normal - I still have a nagging dry cough that surfaces every time I try to talk (I have to sing Sunday and am very concerned about it), still feel pretty out of sorts and tired. I’ve been told this can drag on for weeks. Sigh.

I feel like things can get back to kind-of normal next week when the kids are back at camp. I’ll have to get up earlier, I’ll have the house to myself which automatically makes me more productive, and it’ll be August which will light a fire under me as far as really getting things in order for my event which is so close I can taste it. I’ve already ordered the boys new back packs for the year, I’m just waiting on supply lists. I’m guessing the week before school is when we’ll get their class lists and teachers. It’s exciting - I love the beginning of a new school year. I only wish they shared my enthusiasm!

Recovery

It was a truly awful week. I was afraid to exert myself, so I lay I bed all week, but I felt like lying in bed was only making me sicker. I never had a fever again past Saturday, but just felt tired and out of sorts with a dry cough and raspy voice. The kids were at camp and the H worked until 2 AM every night, so I basically just lived like I did before 2012 - all alone in this house with nothing to do except work. I don’t know how the week went by. I tested every two days and as of Thursday was still getting very dark negatives. It was very frustrating.

I finally left the house yesterday to pick up the boys from camp. There’s no way I’m still contagious at this point. They seemed to enjoy it - we of course could barely drag any information about it out of them, but they both said they’d like to go again. Bobby said he got really good at archery, and they sang us some camp songs. I’m glad it was a success. They will definitely be back next year. 

Now I face the gauntlet of taking care of them full time this entire week. For how exhausted I still feel, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, really. Just take it one day at a time I guess. Today we’re just lying around in PJs doing laundry and cleaning up from both our trips. School is only three weeks away (I can’t believe how fast the summer has flown by) and I want things around here to be neat and organized for back to school. This week if I can manage it we’ll go to the beach, go on some light hikes, some playgrounds, etc. Then they have two weeks of the rec center camp and then school starts. Then my event happens. 

I keep reminding myself what hell I was in this time last year trying to decide whether to cancel my event or not - it was just awful. At least this year the event will go on. I’m trying to get myself psyched up for it. There’s not a huge attendance, and I don’t know if things will pick up next month or not. Maybe? Or is once again news of a new variant going to scare people off? I haven’t made a decision about requiring masks or not; I’m sort of hoping LA County will make the decision for me, but it’s touch and go at the moment. I feel like everyone I know that goes on a trip right now comes home with covid. The cat is out of the bag at this point. The messed up thing is this infection won’t even protect me against catching it again before my event in seven weeks. I mean it’s unlikely I’ll catch it again, especially if I get the booster I’m now eligible for, but there’s still a chance so I still have to be cautious in the days leading up to it. I wonder how many times we’re all going to catch covid in our lives?? Multiple, unfortunately. Finally tested negative today but the symptoms still linger. I don’t know when I’m going to feel normal again. 

Knockin on Heaven’s Door

I don’t know quite how to begin with the story of our honeymoon, so I’ll just start with the fact that it began well. My sister and brother-in-law arrived from Florida for childcare duties on time and in good spirits, we all remained covid-free, and we got on the plane and went to Fiji. The H had commented that morning that he got a text that most of his coworkers had just tested positive after going on a family trip the weekend before - I asked him if he’d worn a mask at work like I’d asked in the days before the trip, and he sheepishly said no. We still had to pass a covid test at the hotel or face a seven day quarantine. So I started the trip on edge.

I also got served a disgusting greasy steak burrito labeled vegetarian at the airport, which I unfortunately ate about 1/4 of before I bit into a huge piece of gristle and realized this was no “beyond meat”. This made me very sick on the plane which made the 11 1/2 hour flight torture. 

Still, we got there, got our rental car, drove on the wrong side of the road and made it to the hotel, and they even got us into our room hours before we were allowed to check in. I discovered much to my disappointment that the all inclusive deal I’d bought was only applicable to one restaurant on the property; then found out later that at that restaurant the dinners were buffet only, and there was only one vegetarian option, so I basically had a choice of one thing to eat every night (for this I paid an extra $1000). Also that restaurant was basically like a loud chaotic middle school cafeteria, with screaming children falling out of chairs and cutlery clattering to the floor every five seconds and tons of people bustling around. I hated it. Total opposite of my Cancún all inclusive experience.

We had three perfect days. Sunday we took our only trip in the car to visit The Valley of the Sleeping Giant (a so-so botanical garden) and the Sabeto Mud Baths (which was fun until a puppy started stalking me and attacking my ankles). GPS didn’t work there and neither did the cell service I’d paid extra for - thankfully Waze did so we were at least able to get around. The next day we did a snorkel tour to a couple of islands. The first snorkel spot we all got the shit bitten out of us by sea lice - we thought we were being stung by jellyfish but an Australian traveler told us otherwise. Still, it was a nice trip that involved lots of jumping off the boat. 

The day after we did a similar tour but just to one small island where we spent the day. That morning we had managed to finagle our covid tests after we’d shown up for our appointment the night before only to find everything closed, and had tested negative, so I felt like I could finally relax and really enjoy this trip. 

Then early Wednesday morning I started having pretty bad diarrhea. I got up multiple times in the dark of night, and since the first review I’d read of that days’ tour was that someone had gotten food poisoning there, I assumed I was in for a bout of that as well. We’d eaten a lunch cooked out on the island and I’d had lots of raw vegetables and water of questionable provenance, so, I figured, here we go. Unfortunately the nausea started soon after and I spent about eight hours in agony before finally throwing up. That day’s tour - a cultural trip to another island with dinner - was off. I moved the next day’s River tubing tour to Friday assuming I’d need a recovery day. I took a covid test. Negative.

We took Thursday as a day to recover from my miserable bout of stomach upset, but I didn’t feel much better - I couldn’t stomach hardly any food, everything looked unappealing, and I just wanted to stay in bed. By Friday morning - the day of our river tubing tour where I had to get up at 5AM - I felt shaky and sweaty and miserable from not having eaten in two days. Despite getting up and getting dressed I just didn’t feel like going, but I hated the thought of canceling yet another thing when I was sure the sickness was behind me, I just needed to start eating. I took another covid test.

Positive.

I couldn’t believe it and yet I could believe it. Obviously the illness hadn’t made it to my nose and throat yet on the previous tests. And it’s rare to have gastrointestinal issues but not unheard of. The H was - and still is - inexplicably negative. Which means one of two things - either he caught it from his coworkers, was asymptomatic and passed it to me, where the virus went nuts (he had his booster two months ago - I wouldn’t be eligible until I got home), OR his booster just protected him from wherever I caught it (the plane, the resort, who knows). 

At this point I was feverish and coughing. We were set to fly out the next day. It was the worst nightmare I could have imagined. Do I stay in a third world country alone with covid for a full week, on my dime? Or do I try to make it home? For the next 24 hours we did nothing but helplessly debate this while I repeatedly took my temperature and translated Celsius to Fahrenheit - I was averaging 101-102°. Also, I was starving, and there was no way to get any food I could stomach, since there were no stores to speak of and the stupid buffet restaurant wouldn’t let the H take anything back for me (he finally smuggled some bananas and dinner rolls in his pants). I googled that the Fiji airport would be doing temperature checks at check in and threw up my hands in despair. 

But by the next morning my fever was gone. And I had aleve on hand in case it returned. We decided considering the stakes that I should try to make the trip, as awful as that felt on multiple levels. We checked out in the morning and then had an interminable six hour wait sitting around the pool until we could finally leave. I also got my period during this time. Thanks, I hate it.

When we got to the airport nobody did any temperature checks, after all that. And we did make it home, although of course I didn’t eat or sleep a wink, and the trip was absolute torture. I kept my mask glued to my face until the backs of my ears were red and raw. 

Upon arrival home, I immediately shuffled myself up to the attic and spoke to the kids & relatives in the pool from the attic window - later they made a little party for me since the next day was my birthday. 

The relatives left that night and I slept alone in the attic so as not to infect the kids. In the evening my fever suddenly returned with a vengeance, though - almost 103 - and I panicked and made an appointment for the next day to try to get paxlovid. I dragged my ass out of bed early in the morning and drove a half hour to the clinic only to be told I was a day too late for the drug and was sent home empty handed. 

This was where it really all fell apart for me.

The reality that this was how I was spending my fucking 50th birthday - after just having had this fucking virus RUIN the honeymoon I’d been planning for a year, ruin getting to hug my kids or properly see them off to their first ever sleepaway camp experience I’d been planning for ten years, do god knows what to my internal organs, this is how I turn 50?!? This?!? Infected with The Scary Death Thing?!?

Dylan’s “Knockin on Heaven’s Door” came on my iPhone shuffle and I just collapsed into sobs. This is it. I finally have covid after 2 1/2 years of dodging it and being the lucky one. And it’s been horrible. It has not been “mild” or “just a cold” or “just a couple of days”. Right now I’m going on about a week of feeling like shit and all the disruption and chaos that’s brought. I didn’t get to see my kids off to camp. And my entire birthday went by in a blur - I have not looked at the FB birthday greetings because everything about my birthday this year I find intensely depressing. I feel very angry and frustrated. All of the fun things I’d booked for myself this week while the kids are at camp are of course now canceled. I don’t know when I’ll feel better, I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick up the kids on Saturday or not. I hope so, but I don’t know. 

And in the middle of all this I still have fucking anti-vaxxers emailing me practically every day trying to argue with my covid policy for my event. I want to shoot them all in the fucking face.

So, this is it. This is what my honeymoon was like, this is what my 50th birthday was like. The worst possible outcome, really. And the worst, most laughable thing is I can’t even relax and not worry about being infected right before my event, because with this variant you can be reinfected just weeks later.

I hate everything. 

*I’ve received some very negative feedback on this post about the fact that I traveled home knowing I was sick. I get that many of you will have some opinions about that, but I’m telling you right now, you have no business judging me unless you’ve found yourself in my same position. So basically I’m trapped in a third world country with little to no health care system, at 50 years old, with no idea of what’s going to happen to me or how much this is all going to cost - how long are they going to keep me there? They say seven days, but what if I keep testing positive? What if I get very sick and need to go to the hospital? What if I can’t get a flight back when I’m in the clear to go home and am trapped there for days or weeks more? I’ve got two little kids at home with no available childcare - what if they test positive and can’t go to their camp for the week? What if I’m still trapped there when the week is up and can’t get home and we have no childcare? The H doesn’t get sick days or paid days off. I have a business to run and didn’t have my computer with me. What if I have to spend thousands on a flight just to get out of there? This was a very agonizing decision and I was terrified. I glued my mask on my face and held my breath and went. Do I feel good about it? No. But again unless you’ve been faced with that horrible scenario you have no business judging me, period.*

Going, going…

I don’t know how far into this parenting thing I have to be before I remember that you cannot have unplanned days with kids. What typically happens around here - Bobby stares at his iPad all day; Theo tears the entire house apart and pronounces he’s bored every three and a half minutes. It’s…not fun. Thankfully my seemingly endless stint at entertaining children without summer camp ends tomorrow, and the week at the end of the month that I have with them I’ll make sure is full of beach days, hikes and pool. I’ll have the energy for that, then. Assuming all goes to plan, we’ll have spent ten days away and then the boys will have spent seven days at sleep away camp, so I’ll be up for the task of leaning into parenthood. Right now I’ve got too many distractions to be up for it.

As of now, it *seems* like none of us has covid and we’ll be able to successfully make it to Fiji tomorrow night. Of course there’s still: none of us waking up tomorrow feeling sick; my sister and brother-in-law’s flight from Florida not being canceled (they’re on the airline with the most cancellations - ugh); our flight not being canceled or having any other issues just getting there. Then we have to pass the covid test at the resort on Sunday. I’m not sure what happens if we have covid in Fiji - do we get locked in the hotel room for ten days? What if we don’t make it back in time? Can my sister & brother-in-law take the kids to sleepaway camp? Will they have to miss sleepaway camp? Also, they get tested on the way into camp. What if they pop up positive and can’t go? Do we get a refund? Ugh! I fucking hate covid!! It’s seriously sucking the joy out of everything and none of us have even caught it yet!

Odds are it will all work out. But with everything that could go wrong…it’s a lot of anxiety. I’ll feel much better when (if) we’re on that plane. Just making it to that point will be a huge accomplishment. 

It’s crazy to think that if all these things come to pass, by the time the kids get back from camp it’ll only be three more weeks until school. The summer is flying by already.

I can’t say I’m not enjoying it on many levels, though. I’m enjoying the warmer weather and the less structured days (despite my opening paragraph). There’s something nice about not having to be too strict about bed times (mine included), not having to be responsible to anyone (school), and the feeling of holidays and freedom and fun everywhere. I love summer. 

I do miss the cabin and the desert, though. Temps out there are about 108° all week, and if it’s anything like last year, it’ll be that and higher for the next two months. I doubt we’ll make it out there before end of September when I’ve bought us tickets to a “night sky festival” being held by a local observatory. I’m itching for our neighbor to return and be able to do more work for us…but that’s not going to be for a long time, possibly into next year. There’s also the problem of my possibly not having any money to pay him. I imagine I’m in for at least another $10,000-$20,000 on that place just to make it somewhat livable and able to have furniture in it. Every once in a while I watch it on the security cameras. So far despite being notified nearly every day that someone is detected, we’ve only had two incidents of people actually out there - one during the wedding that looked like just hikers walking by, and a far more sinister one of a pickup truck arriving at 2 AM one night and then pulling away very quickly. Is this the person that stole our stove coming back for more, only to see we’ve secured the place? Someone who was lost? Or a new crook? Either way whatever we did out there seems to have scared them off, so that’s something I guess. I’m just glad it’s not an endless parade of thieves. I honestly thought it’d be worse. 

We all went to see Kraftwerk as a family last night. I’m pleased to say both kids handled it well and didn’t get too antsy. Bobby of course saw them years ago with us, but this was Theo’s first. We kept our masks glued on our faces. 

So far, so good

I leaned heavily into event prep last week, and it felt good. I will be able to (hopefully) leave on Thursday feeling like the event is well in hand and where it should be to take off for ten days. In fact, the event is more set up now than it was a month later last year. I did the class schedule, have started the judging schedule, bought all but one or two flights, booked the hotel rooms, started the t shirts, ordered awards and wristbands and contest numbers, ordered the piano rental. I have to admit a smaller event makes for A LOT less work. Attendance is not great at the moment, but I’m still hopeful that last minute sign ups will kick in in August and flesh the event out decently. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to ask for 400 people in the next two months. I think that’s attainable. I keep thinking back to last year and how good things looked at this time - there were whispers of Delta, sure, but we were all still pretty confident. Then by mid-July rising numbers, plus the shock of discovering vaccinated people could still catch and spread covid, and indoor mask mandates, all were the death knell for me. By end of July it was over. In just 2-3 weeks everything did a 180. Of course, this could still happen. We could still see a scary new variant, or numbers could skyrocket. LA is in bad shape at the moment, and I read an article yesterday that said we’re in for a big surge at the end of summer again. You’d think with numbers going up now they’d be headed down in two months’ time. But who knows. I will say, though, that with all other events going on despite everything, I’m very confident we’ll go on. And it’s night and day working on an event you know will actually happen vs one that has a good chance of being canceled.

Tonight I have one last gig - one that involves long hours and fireworks, ugh - and then it’s just a three day stint of getting ready for our trip and praying none of us suddenly wakes up “with symptoms”. I had a high risk gig last night indoors and kept my mask glued to my face, kept away from everyone, and spent breaks outdoors. Let’s hope it held. I’m so sick of this.