i did NOT plan on ringing in twenty twenty fucking two with a mask on…
…but then came omicron.
the tuesday before xmas i did the lawn. now, at this point, some of the family had been banned from gathering due to them falling for internet bullshit about vaccines being “the mark of the beast” and “what THEY want you to do” (ever notice those people never seem to be able to identify who “THEY” are?) and others had bailed due to similar health concerns, but my neighbor had his lawn guy come out so ours looked raggedy by comparison. PLUS, we now had a functioning gate in the fence for the first time in years so i wanted to take advantage of the fact that for once the mower could make the trip to the backyard and get stored in the new shed without having to track that fresh-cut-grass-allergy-inducing pollen into the house!
(but i had inhaled a shit ton of it and so when i had some drainage and a slight sore throat as a result i totally chalked it up to that)
it’s not unusual for an unusually spring like winter to set off my allergies, especially since mold is one of em and i had just discovered some black mold in a closet where my xmas tree was stored. so the combo of mold and grass pollen, i figured, had set off some winter allergies. i know shane can attest for a couple hockey seasons we split bags of vitamin c drops at hockey box offices due to my winter allergies and his winter smoker’s cough. and the feeling xmas week wasn’t even THAT bad. no drops needed!
no, fast forward to xmas night. i got a text from one of our guys saying he and his fiance (who also works for us) weren’t feeling well and wanted to skip the next day to do covid tests IF they could find em, which so far they couldn’t. i told him i’d check around here the next morning, which meant both lockhart in general AND my house since his place was on my way to the shop.
i found one test in our cabinet, and decided to take it myself for two reasons:
1. i was sure more could be found locally pretty easily (i was wrong)
2. i still had a bit of drainage and a light cough as a result, and i know myself well enough to know talking more (as i’d have to do to deal with the dozens of customers that would come through the shop door that day) meant it would get worse. nowadays a cough gets you looked at sideways, so i wanted to be able to say, “relax, kids – it’s allergies – i self-tested and got a negative this morning!”
except i didn’t get a negative.
the ufc and the boy were also feeling a bit worse for wear so they decided to set up test appointments for the next day since no more OTC tests could be had in town. i was 99.9% sure mine was a false positive, so i went ahead and went out (fully masked and gloved) the next day, never touched anything i didn’t buy, and scored four more OTC tests (after they had already had their appointment so they didn’t need them) and took a second:
so that’s when i had to start taking it a bit more seriously…but i still had to go out, as the ufc was far worse than i was and the kid can’t drive. at least a lot of laundry and dorsey should get caught up on (i sadly never finished his 2021 novel) so i’m gonna retest tomorrow morning (new cdc guidelines state that five days after diagnosis with a negative test and being asymptomatic is okay to go do shit) and see where it takes us.
to catch y’all up to the timeline, this is being written on the morning of wednesday, december 29th.
I read on the internet I can get the corona for hosting your site? FML.