COVID Blogging

Been meaning to write this tweet since I was sitting in the parking lot mid-morning on Sunday. When out of the doors walked a nurse in full-on Andromeda Strain/Outbreak/x-files contamination gear.  I would have taken a picture of the strange juxtaposition, but I was on hold with the people inside….looks like I've already extended myself past the threshold of a tweet, oh well, blog it is. 

But I will never forget that feeling, of having to tell myself, to remind myself this is reality. This is Lincoln, Nebraska, the town I grew up in, only a few blocks from where I used to get overpriced wings and play trivia. A woman in a yellow space suit was walking towards a car in the parking lot like she was one of those waitresses on rollerskates in the 50s. 

Soon it was my turn, the masks I brought, that my job provided me seemed stupid since the test invovled having what seemed like a tiny q-tip on a flimsy peice of plastic shoved to the back of both my nasal cavities. 

A lot sooner than I thought, it was all over and I was headed home. 

I had awoken in the middle of the night with fever, chills, body aches, a headache, my productive wet cough and accompanying wheeze had turned dry, unproductive and unfamiliar.

I took my temp; a slight fever, but all I cared about was how I couldn’t get warm.

I managed to get back to sleep after a round of Tylenol, but my temp had crept up since then.

I called my Asthma doctor in the morning, the same one I’ve seen since I was five years old. He was on call and I talked to him on speakerphone. He wanted to do a respiratory viral panel, but because of the world, as it is now, no one would do one without a COVID screen first.

That’s how I ended up in the parking lot staring at a nurse who looked like an alien stepping out of a spaceship. A glaring visual, I must be hallucinating against the backdrop of an otherwise beautiful spring day.

I’ve been working from home since approximately mid-March, but since the test on Sunday, I haven’t left my room except late at night and once while everyone else was asleep.

I told my wife where all I had been, what I had touched.

I laid here and binge-watched Westworld and finished Post Mortal both of which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone in today's circumstances.

I forced myself to discover Comedy Bang Bang which is good, but I’m not in the mood for it, like a child pushing away nasty tasting medicine. I know it’s what I need, but I don’t want it.

It’s amazing what comes back to me in times like this.

I’ve never had mono, but I think I might know what it’s like. I remember how I felt in high school when my pneumonia got bad enough I had to stay in the hospital.

Thanks to my increased steroid use and my, what I presume to be, pneumonia I am reminded of what it feels like to have eyelids heavy, but a body that wants to move so bad, and then to have the opposite. Eyelids that can’t close, but a body that can only lay in a weird flat position along the bottom of my bed staring at the ceiling and smelling my own BO.

I’m not painting a pretty picture here, but at least I’m painting.

Paintings can be beautiful, even if they are during someone's ‘blue’ period. Even if they depict a toddler being talked out of his dad's room despite his father's desire to embrace him; the child crying because he misses his dad. These are heavy times my fellow breathers and even under an ocean of Prozac. I cried about that painting yesterday. Tears and all.

My canvas is a smartphone, my brush an ergonomic keyboard I have positioned diagonally off my hip as I lay on my side.

About a week ago, I wrote a blog I thought would help people in these times, and I stand by those words. I’ll be surprised if the test comes back positive, but either way, I’m exhausted and wanted to send this out to the endless black void that is the internet... At some point, I’ll have to get up and email into work again. Even though work is really just at the end of the bed, I lack the energy to do anything more than this, and even this is taxing. It took everything I had to write the email that excused me from work today, to just sit and type.

Last Updated: 4/7/2020 7:24 PM

A Perfect Day For Guilt

I am not an outdoorsy person. Never have been never will be.

I write this on a park bench on a perfect mid-March day. A light breeze but otherwise room temperature out here, no mosquito's, really couldn't ask for much more in a spring day.

This is the kind of day that makes me think that football should be played in the spring.

Unable to recall the source or the exact number I am still reminded of a stat I once heard, something along the lines of there are only about a handful of these perfect room temperature day’s per year.

This blessing of a day coupled with my disinterest of the outdoors combines to create a perfect storm of guilt. I know, I know. Leave it to me to find something to complain about on a perfect day, but please allow me to explain.

The weather being so nice out I feel I must be outside. To not do so would be a waste of one of those “handful” of days. However being a not outdoors person, I grow bored very quickly.

I do some reading, walk the dog but both grow tiresome after awhile and in the case of my dog, he just plain gets tired.

After a light endorphin rush from the walk with my canine buddy wears off, the boredom, like this light breeze I’m feeling, returns.

At least once the breeze of boredom returns a small sense of accomplishment is felt. I walked the dog, he seemed to enjoy it, glad one of us is enjoying the day. A good thing too, as going by dog math, on average there would be less than one of these days per dog year on average.

Under normal circumstances when the weather isn't painfully gorgeous outside this sense of accomplishment is how normal boredom is combated.

When I’m in one of those moods where I’m depressed and/or bored I take on a task that needs to be done. Employing this strategy attacks my boredom/depression in three ways:

1. I hope that while doing something I’d rather not be doing, something I’d rather be doing and enjoy would come to mind. Then I’d not only have accomplished a chore but have something to look forward to after.
2. At the very least a chore would be complete so should I feel in better spirits at some other time I don’t have to waste them on a chore when I actually have something I’d rather be doing or something I’m interested in at the moment.
3. The act of checking anything off of a list and the accompanying sense of accomplishment normally pays its own dividends.

These tactics don’t seem to work outdoors though, as I’m not big on lawn care or gardening and really I can’t think of anything else that needs done outside. I guess I could just dig a WW1 style trench for the hell of it and begin a trench warfare campaign against my hated neighbors to the west. I’m totally picturing my Dachshund in the trench with me with one of those German helmets with the point on it.

As is the case this time of year though, I’m totally out of mustard gas and chlorine gas is at an all time high (thanks Obama).

I could dig a bomb shelter, I’d prolly hit a gas main though. Or I could build a mysterious tunnel to Canada…..they got found out though...damn Canadians.

Any indoor activity is bogged down with guilt and not enjoyable either.

I've unsuccessfully tried to combine the two by say, taking my laptop (an inside type thing) outside, but the glare is just bad enough that my inability to see the screen seems to say “Hey, you’re outside, you should be doing outside stuff, not staring at this screen”

This boredom makes for a long day. Perhaps that’s a good thing, perhaps I’m supposed to be bored. I do think in the age of smart phones being bored or alone with one's thoughts is a lost art.

I am of the opinion that I am better than most with my own thoughts, and I don’t own a smartphone, still even I have my limits.

The other benefit of boredom as anyone can recall watching the slow crawl of a clock at school or a boring job is time stands still. This makes the day, in this case a beautiful day last longer. Sort of a watched pot not boiling type deal, only for perfect weather.

After a day like this is over I end up feeling regretful anyway because I spent the whole day being bored or guilty to the point of depression. So I feel like I wasted a perfect day feeling sad.

Thus, going into a day like today I feel like guilt, regret and sadness await me no matter what I choose to do.

Not the best way to spend one of those room temperature days.  

Epilogue:

After the sun went down on this day of course I thought of a lot of outside stuff I could have been doing. Washing, cleaning out, vacuuming my car; fixing the mailbox; things like that. I’ll keep them in mind for the next time I’m staring down the barrel of a perfect day for guilt.