COVID DIARIES: Entry No.1

    Second full day of being diagnosed and quarantined. My children can't really ask me to do anything for them. Well, they mostly can't. It sounds a bit more charming than it actually is. 

 I have a box of kleenex, a bottle of water, zinc, vitamin C and D at the ready. Also, cherry honey ricola, which most people in my family find disgusting. I have a kindle, my laptop, my phone. One of the problems of our degenerate age is the inclination to get on instagram or whatnot and scroll and scroll and scroll. My sick body isn't particularly grateful to the social scientists who have entrapped my brain so, and I hope to use this time to break some of that habit. Wish me luck. 

 I don't feel particularly terrible. I feel tired at the end of the day. My right nostril has been clogged non-stop for about 48 hours or so. I have a nose that occassionally drips, which is disconcerting and gross, considering how one passes their viral load onto someone else. But I have remained rather successfully isolated. No one else is showing symptoms. Ben has tested negative. May it every be so. 

I feel a bit achy and fluish and sniffy. And in the Autumn warmth of the October days, I have gone outside to sit in the sun. And do a teeny bit of yard work. Only the smallest bit. But when we left for a family reunion (place of infection) a hard freeze happened upon my garden and all of my cosmos and other orange and seasonally lovely flowers turned a gray-brown. What a pity. I had to clear them out! Also, I hear it's good to keep your lungs working a bit. 

I am completely skewing my Spotify end-of-year numbers right now, because the only song I am listening to is You Can Close Your Eyes with Carly Simon and her two children, Ben Taylor and Sally Taylor. It's the most magical lullabye. I used to listen to that album when we lived in NY and Ben was at NYU and I was home with my three babies and, eventually, the fourth on her way. Who knows why this song has come back to me now? I think you would truly be astonished at how many times in a row I can listen to a song. I suspect hundreds. And maybe thousands. 

As Spotify ends it's year-end wrap up in about a week, we shall see the impact Covid-19 on my musical choices. But hey, Carly Simon > Taylor Swift. Maybe even Sting, but only because it's Covid. Certainly more than Glass Animals. (My 17 year-old might disagree. But she can't come in here to do so.) 

Things I did not expect: to be a breakthrough case. to be the first in my family diagnosed with Covid. But now it's here, this virus responsible for millions of deaths the world over. Very strange. 

I am rushing, once again, through Emma M Lion. But only because I have read them many times and am a fast reader. I assure you I am reading them slow enough to laugh out loud at many instances. It alarmed my 11 year old. He thought I was crying. I need to pick up You Are Not Your Own- by Alan Noble; a book I started last week, that is a bit depressing as it lays out our current societal state, but I know will be ultimately hopeful. I have to decide if I want to think that much while sick. Maybe not. 

It might just be Emma, over and over again. Along with Carly Simon over and over. I mean, there is, for sure, a feeling of Groundhog's Day going on. (And which sentence only makes sense if you have seen the movie.) (Or are aware of it's premise.) (Look it up on IMBD if you want.) My temperature is slightly elevated. I think that is probably the result of being in a hot bath for and hour and a half. I know, I know. This account is riviting. And hopefully not too full of typos. -A