I am still doing well. I am enjoying my forced stay in my room. There are inconveniences, yes, and things I would like to be able to do, and so forth. But overall I am very well suited to this. It reminds me a little of being in the hospital with Edward, but without the constant interruptions. I play Candy Crush. I mess around on my laptop. I read books. And here, unlike in the hospital room, I am in charge of the TV remote.
Kids still don’t seem to have caught it. (Though we’re going on only symptoms and rapid tests, and if I were going on only symptoms and rapid tests for myself, I still wouldn’t know I was positive, and would be at work every day potentially spreading it.) I am so glad that as soon as Paul tested positive, I wore a mask in the house and stayed out of rooms the kids were in, even though that was pretty uncomfortable and inconvenient. Really, each thing we did that seemed over-the-top and silly at the time, later seemed sort of bare-minimum.
Paul wondered if “we” were going to try to make tacos tonight as usual, and I said I didn’t know but I was not, and then he started asking a lot of questions, and after answering a few of them I said I ALSO was not planning to guide someone through the process step-by-step remotely from my room. Like, I don’t mind answering a few questions, but this was “Well, what needs to be thawed?” on a day it was too late to thaw anything so normally I would go to the store to get non-frozen meat instead, and I get THIS kind of ground beef and THIS kind of ground turkey and this much of each, and I start the rice at 4:15 with this much brown rice and this much white and this much water, and so on. No. Make them your own way or else skip ONE SINGLE TACO NIGHT JEEZ.
I heard yesterday that at least two other people at my work are out with Covid. I worry that they blame me: I WAS at work for two half-days while unknowingly positive. I wear a KN95 mask to work; a few coworkers, including the two who are now sick, wear cloth masks; most coworkers don’t mask. My job doesn’t bring me within 6 feet of anyone for more than a few seconds, let alone 15 minutes, let alone however long it takes if one/both are masked. But the timing works out for it to have been my fault, so I worry they think it was my fault. And who knows? Maybe it WAS my fault, maybe this variant spreads through a mask and at a great distance and in mere seconds. I have had to say to myself “This is nothing you can do anything about” one million times.
Paul hit the 10-day mark yesterday or actually probably the day before but we were being conservative, so he’s back out in the household; this morning he went back to work in person. [Edited to add: We should have made sure he had a negative rapid test before he came out of isolation; thanks to everyone who let me know this important detail I’d missed. Luckily, when he came home from work he DID test negative on a rapid test, but that was a tense time wondering if he’d spent the day infecting the kids and his co-workers.] The kids are still mostly staying in their rooms, especially Elizabeth, who seems to be taking this to extremes considering she sits in a room with a bunch of unmasked, back-in-school-5-days-after-testing-positive-even-if-still-symptomatic kids all day at school. But it can be different to feel unsafe in your own house, so I am not bothering her about it.
Rob has decided that he would like to live in Seattle, so he is sending out resumes and looking online at apartments. (He is hoping to find a roommate, so if you have a recent college graduate ALSO looking at Seattle, or already in Seattle, EMAIL ME.) I am very fretful about this entire thing. I keep having to remind myself that I never even went home after college, just launched right out and got a series of jobs and apartments and bank accounts and so forth. It’s just, he keeps giving me indicators that he has not done the equivalent of reading the instructions on the medication bottle. He was asking about someone being able to drive him to the airport, and I was like “THIS airport, right? Not THAT airport?” and he was like “…Oh.” Also, he seems to be doing things in the opposite order I would: FIRST, arrange ride to airport; SECOND, arrange flight; THIRD, find apartment; FOURTH, find job! Also, this is such different real estate circumstances than when I was looking for an apartment. And does he know how expensive it can be to live in a big city? Well. Well. Generations of new adults have launched, and made their own mistakes, and for the most part it has worked out fine in the long run.
We live outside of Seattle in a suburb. Rents here are very expensive so there are always people looking for roommates. I have a son graduating this year but isn’t moving out yet. He may have some connections to kids that are looking for roommates though. What kind of work is Rob looking for?
He has degrees in computer science and math, and is looking for something in computer programming.
My husband works for Oracle if Rob wanted to pass his resume along.
Thank you! I will tell him!!
Oh, I am right there with you. My son graduates in spring ’23 (with computer science and math) and has already, just last week , announced he will not be coming home… will be sending resumes all over the country and living on his own.
The spousal use of “we” to mean *you* and the assumption that you’d be fine with HEAVILY assisting with making dinner while confined to your bedroom with Covid (that he gave you) just really sums up so much about marriage.
I feel like at this point people are circulating about enough, and the current Covid strain is contagious enough, that your afflicted coworkers are not blaming you because they most likely know several people with Covid right now from whom they could have gotten it, and/or could not pinpoint it to a single, distant, masked interaction at work but rather could have picked it up from a schoolgoing kid or from church or WHATEVER. (You, on the other hand, have a clear and direct claim against Paul.)
My friend at work responds to that kind of WE with “what’s this WE business, weatherman?” and I try to remember to use it at home because it makes me smile.
Is Paul testing negative on rapid tests? So many people I know are testing positive 12-14 days later. Even the 10 day (to say nothing of 5!) estimate is often too quick. Just thinking that it would be horrible if Edward got it after all the precautions and care you’ve taken.
He was still testing positive on rapid tests at last check (several days ago), but everything we have been able to find indicates that people are not contagious after 5 days, even if tests are still coming back positive; we went with 10 days, because that was the cautious stance the CDC was taking before they decided capitalism was more important. If you’ve found anything that says different, it’s an understatement to say that I would be interested to see it. I would yank him back into isolation in a hot second.
Here’s an article that gets at this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/if-you-test-positive-on-a-rapid-covid-test-dont-stop-isolating-just-yet-virologists-say. One rule I’ve seen repeated is that it takes two negative rapids, two days in a row to feel good about being in the clear.
I also found this (the entire site is clear and helpful actually) https://dearpandemic.org/positive-test-contagious/
I used it to keep my daughter in isolation until she tested negative even when she was bored out of her mind.
Good stuff—I have emailed this to Paul.
THANK YOU—I have emailed this to Paul.
+1 that the infectious disease docs and other experts I follow all say a positive rapid test = potentially contagious. ALSO, there seem to be more reports with this subvariant of “rebound” positivity/symptoms a few days after negative tests begin, especially in people who’ve taken Paxlovid. My husband is one of those; he hasn’t tested negative yet, but once he does we’re going to keep testing him for a week or so. I don’t think we’ll stay in isolation during that time, but we’ll probably still mask, keep the windows open if we can, and keep the HEPA filters and humidifiers cranked.
I @ RT you a post/thread on Twitter from Michael Mina, he is an ep/imm MD/PhD, I find him a VERY reliable source and he basically says if a person’s rapid test comes out pos, they are contagious. Usually it’s neg by day 10 but there are plenty of times it isn’t, and people should isolate until they are neg on a rapid test. My oldest daughter wasn’t neg until day 13! My youngest was neg on day 9, my son day 10, me day 11. It can vary a lot! Not to mention the concerns about Paxlovid rebound (I don’t think Paul was taking Paxlovid?).
I am not the most cautious person in the world about covid (my husband and I have had many the spirited discussion about what reasonable precautions we, as a family, should be taking! I am almost always on the lesser side) but once a person HAS covid, I see no reason to mess around with putting that infectious person back into the world until they are well and truly covid negative.
Enjoy your time in covid jail! Hope the kids/Paul are continuing to bring you food.
This is all so helpful. As soon as Paul got home from work I made him come into our room and take a rapid test—and it was negative, thank goodness. (You’re right: he didn’t take Paxlovid.)
I have had the taco conversation so many times, about so many varieties of things (not just food) and it makes me so irritated. “But it’s not something I usually do/am used to” is not a great excuse in my opinion.
I am very glad things continue to be mild and that the kids are doing well.
Conversations like this are the reason that for years a couple of my friends and I have had a pact that if one of us dies suddenly, the others will make sure our kids have clothing that fits/occasionally get a haircut/get medical and dental appointments. Sure it seems grim, but it calms the worry that although our spouses will eventually figure these things out, there could be a pretty big gap before that happens.
Hahaha LOVE this. My spouse readily admits he will be a hot mess if I die first and even tells the kids they’d all be screwed. The final part of your comment is spot on “our spouses will eventually figure things out, but there could be a pretty big gap before that happens.” Need to give some friends a cheat sheet :-)
My husband used to say this until one day I said “You know the way I do this isn’t the only way, right? You can take care of these things anyway that gets them done.” It was such a revelation. It was like because I was the primary parent it had never occurred to him that other parents might go about bedtime or whatever differently. He still needs me to give him the schedule when I leave town, because that lives in my head not his, but that’s it. He can otherwise get them through their day just fine.
Good for you for not just getting out of bed and making the damn tacos yourself, which would have been a great temptation for me. So glad you’re not feeling sickly! You can enjoy your convalescence without the downside of actually feeling poorly.
I myself have a 23-year-old who went from college to living on her own, no roommates even, and she is doing just fine if that makes you feel a little better. I give advice from time to time but try hard not to ask if she has taken that advice. She got a job on her own, figured out how to deal with apartment leases and leaky showers and is now planning a move from one apartment to another, and the only thing I did to help with that is advise what size U-Haul she should rent. When we dropped her off at college my younger daughter described the feeling as “leaving behind a puppy,” so to see her grow up and figure out all this adult stuff has been kind of amazing. I am very sure that Rob will do just fine!
My oldest is planning to stay in the city where he went to college (not Seattle, alas), and he does have a job, but it is unclear to me how much prep he is doing for his life as a more-or-less independent adult. On the one hand, I am all for learning by doing (or by doing wrong), and on the other hand, he occasionally says something so wrong that I think he must be joking and he is not.
Anyway, I think I am currently doing a pretty good job of shutting up and letting him figure things out, and he is texting me with photos of what he’s making for dinner and commiseration about a drag it is to make dinner every night, so I hope I don’t screw this up.
So far my suggestions have been met with “Good idea,” rather than “Mom, I’ve got this.”
I think the pandemic really messed up the progress of turning kids into independent adults.
I think that must indeed be a factor (pandemic messing up their progress)! These kids! Fingers crossed for all of them.
I live outside Seattle. My adult children have needed my husband to co-sign their leases, most apartments want to see three times the monthly rent in salary and my kids (and I!) don’t make enough yet. Although a computer programmer might be in good shape there. That was a mental hurdle for me to get over.
At 23 I moved 3,000 miles away to where I live now to go to grad school sight unseen. In retrospect this seems completely nuts but I did it and thrived. And yet when I think about Oldest doing something similar I feel anxious. Fully 1/2 of my parenting of an older kid seems to be me telling myself that he will make mistakes and he will be fine and I have to let him do these things over and over until I believe it. It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be when my kids were little and I felt like they’d never be independent. Sigh.
Ok this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of your post and I don’t know why it struck me, but do most people secure a ride to the airport before they book the flight? I’ve always booked the flight first I get the route/airline i want maybe 3 weeks in advance, and than a day or so before I ask my spouse/neighbor/Uber for a lift to the airport. I’m curious to know which way is more common, and it is the way I would tell my kiddo to do it.
My GUESS is that 99.99999999999999% of people book the flight and then arrange the ride.
I was also confused having I read it the wrong way at first. Must have added a full stop in my head and heard .”I would : First …etc”, rather than “the opposite way that I would”.
Makes SO much more sense now!
Hi from Seattle! I live in the city and my husband works for a company that rhymes with blamazon and is always happy to chat with people looking to work there. This is the time of year to move here- summers are extraordinary. Happy to chat with you about any tiny weird questions you have about the city or neighborhoods or anything.
I live in Seattle and work in the tech industry. While I don’t know any grads looking for roommates, I’m happy to help if I can in any way (job connections, etc).
The Seattle Swistilians offering help feels like payment for all she has done for us over the years.
See if you can talk a kid into moving to DC, huh, Swistle? I will be all over everything they need, including a ride from the airport.
Seattle, yay! I grew up there and lived there until ’08 (we moved to Colorado at the very start of the Recession) to get away from the gray sky. It’s a myth that it rains all the time in Seattle, but the sky is pretty grey. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a very real thing . But having said that I also loved Seattle! I lived across the water from the city and took a Ferry every day to work, which looking back on was pretty cool. Yes rents are high, very high, but if he is willing to live out side of the city, not East but North South or West they are a little better. And roommates are common there as well.
I got married and moved 2,500 miles from home when I was 19 to go to school. I think my Mom and Dad were concerned, but my husband and I figured it out (we still are figuring it out). It’s actually a pretty good life experience if you have a good head on your shoulders and it does seem like Rob does for the most part. Although figuring out the job and the flight before the ride could be helpful, but then each to his own.
I grew up in Seattle, but haven’t lived there for 20 years (ie before tech took over the city) so I don’t have many up to date tips. However, my parents still live there, and according to my mom, several of the big tech companies cater to new graduates in part by offering private bus service to work. Now, I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing (they are poaching drivers from the city by offering them higher pay), but it is one thing that can make life easier for young workers.
When I was 21, I left home (in New Zealand) for the first time and moved to London – nothing organised at the other end except a place to stay for a week. Now I have adult children in their mid-20s and I worry about them crossing the road by themselves :-)
I wonder if Rob is sorting the ride to the airport first because that’s the thing that seems the easiest to tick off? I mean obviously the logic there is… well, absent! But I can also see how, when presented with a giant and scary to-do list, but also feeling the urge to GET SHIT DONE, he might start with the thing that feels easiest to accomplish.
He’ll be ok! Worst case scenario he’s sad or unsettled or too low on money and he bounces back home for a bit. My younger brother did a lot of that bouncing and clung to adult life in London with his fingernails for several years before eventually scoring a very secure job that pays more than mine, and that he seems to enjoy – at 30. Once he worked out exactly what he wanted, he did a masters degree at night school, and just kept applying and improving his applications again and again, while working first in a cafe and then eventually in a totally ok but not-right-for-him day job. It sucks to be poor in a big city like London or Seattle, but it taught him to budget, to cook really well with cheap ingredients, to find an inexpensive hobby (he plays field hockey) and use that as a basis for his social life. My mum worried endlessly but he’s gone from a pretty useless 22-year-old to a pretty capable 30-year-old so I think he did the right thing. And he did NOT have a super useful undergrad qualification like Rob.
This is making me feel so much better about not just my kid (who is a generally competent 22YO with a marketable-if-not-well-paying job skill) but my other kid and all the kids I know, basically.
Do you have reassuring tales for every topic? I have a lot of needs.
“Reassuring Tales for Every Topic” is a need of mine as well. I feel like this would be a good post feature. Like, “Soliciting Reassuring Tales for __________.” Swistle would tell hers (her tales are almost always reassuring) and then the comment thread would be restricted to Swistilians’ reassuring tales on the same topic. Fretful tales not allowed.
But we can still have posts to air our frets, right? I find those soothing as well, but for commiseration and in a “there are others in the same boat as me” way.
Haha! I’m one of those people who really listens to stories about other people. Even when it’s people I know talking about other people I’ve never met. So probably! Hit me up and I’ll see what I can do ;)
I have a 23yo with a degree in economics who got a very good job at an auto company in a management training program, moved a little ways away with no help, bought a brand new truck, got a very large dog, and handles it all well despite a lllooonnnggg history of anxiety. He’s also a delight to be around which makes me think I did something right despite a divorce just as he started college.
I also have a 25yo who graduated with an engineering degree just as the pandemic hit, and has struggled quite a lot. There is a history of mental health struggles that were definitely seriously impacted by the pandemic. He’s just now getting back on his feet with a new (real, as opposed to delivering pizzas or grub hub) job. Hopefully, he and his cat will be out of my house by mid-summer. Fingers crossed, worry ramped up, and trust in the greater good of the world all happening simultaneously.
All this to say it’s a crapshoot, but we all made it, hopefully, our offspring will have a few hiccups and end up on their feet.