I had decided I wanted to get the Moderna version of the new Covid booster, for the same reasons various like-minded commenters mentioned: I’ve heard it’s best to mix, and I like balance; so if I have two Pfizer and one Moderna it would be nice to get another Moderna; and apparently the Moderna is a slightly larger dose, which, who knows if that matters, but more seems better. But I kept checking and the Moderna kept not being available anywhere near me, so finally I seized my moment: I was available Tuesday afternoon; the nearby pharmacy had a walk-in day for the new Pfizer booster; and I had Wednesday off from work so I could recover if necessary.
Tuesday I felt fine! No issues. In the middle of the night I rolled over and noticed my booster arm was sore. In the morning when I woke up, it was still sore, but I had no other symptoms. I went for a walk, and when I came home I was doing some stretches for my knees, and I thought “Whoa, my legs and knees are weirdly sore; some of these stretches don’t feel good. Did I overdo the stretches yesterday or something?” Then I was sitting at my computer and I thought “What did I do to my poor neck and shoulders, they’re so sore!” And then I started feeling chillier and chillier, and my whole body hurt, and then I took a nap with the cat.
If I had NOT just gotten a booster shot, and I thought I were getting sick, then this would feel pretty ominous. But because I DID get a booster shot, it feels good: just enough miserable to feel like the booster is probably working its booster magic.
My to-do list has gotten formidable, and I have been checking things off—the booster shot is one example. I am doing the pell-mell method, which is to do whatever strikes me as doable, even if it is not The Most Important Thing—because getting ANYTHING off the to-do list is helpful, and because Getting Things Done seems to lead to Getting More Things Done. Adrenaline also helped me to prioritize a couple of moderately urgent car-related things, which was a relief; the car is now all set for awhile, one hopes.
It feels as if just as I am getting things ticked off my to-do list, the house is falling apart. The wifi has been slow/intermittent; the bathroom fan is getting really loud; the outdoor temperature sensor has stopped transmitting to the indoor receiver despite a battery change. The other day we turned on the living room light, which has been flickering despite having the bulbs changed, and we lost power to the entire house for a few seconds. That doesn’t seem good. We’ve taped down that lightswitch with masking tape so we won’t accidentally use it as we attempt to lure an electrician to our house someday in the future. Meanwhile the living room is dark, and we got rid of most of our floor lamps when we moved to a house with overhead lighting, so there was a problem to solve.
I thought I would see if I could solve the problem Swistle-Style—like, what if I were living alone, what would I do THEN? I don’t have to FIX-IT-fix-it to make it BETTER. I thought about collecting the floor/table lamps from the few places that do still have them—but then those places would be dark. I went into the barn to see if maybe I had kept a few floor/table lamps after all, because that seems like something I would do, but no. My eyes fell upon the extra Christmas lights we bought two years ago during our first pandemic Christmas, when Elizabeth asked if she could have a turn decorating the Christmas tree: we tend to do a tree with colored lights and a hodge-podge of miscellaneous ornaments, but Elizabeth likes white lights and matching ornaments. I didn’t see why not, and so she chose the usual white lights but also accented with these inexpensive $10 globe lights:
(image from Target.com)
After I attempted to use them to light the living room, I went to read the reviews, and if you go read them too you can probably see why I found them so soothing: I was not the only one finding the lights to be…sub-par. I was in possession of three strings, and after reading the reviews I gave up on the string that had lit up for 10 seconds and then failed, and instead used that string as a source of replacement bulbs for the other two strings, which each stayed lit but with 4-5 bulbs out and/or burning-so-bright-they-were-definitely-about-to-burn-out. And now the living room looks lovely, considering.
(It was hard to get a photo that showed the loveliness of the lights without the clutter of the living room)
Great problem solving!
I like that you recognize that you will need to lure an electrician to your home. They are a cagey bunch, skittish, and easily frightened.
Wow, that does seem ominous! Good luck with the electrician. I think the lights look very pretty (although, wow, frustrating).
I relate to all of this so much. The lights look lovely, and good luck with the electrician. I have been having such a hard time with service people this summer – everyone is so busy it does feel like you have to lure!
And yay for boosters! Hopefully you feel all better today.
Good luck with luring the electrician, have beverages and snacks and it will be easier to lure them back for next time.
The string lights look lovely.
I’m glad you got the booster and that it is displaying its efficacy.
It’s been my experience that temperature sensors just go bad.
Ugh. Comments reminded me that I’m having a hell of a time getting people to give roof replacement estimates. Some don’t return calls or show up, some DO show up and then ghost on the estimate? WHAT? One super duper highballed it.
Anyone in Northeastern MA have a roofer, do tell.
So frustrating, houses. Randomly I figure out how much it costs to live here/month for emergency purposes and UGH. Just taxes, condo fee, insurance is like $550/month. And it’s SMALL and CHEAP, allegedly.
We’re in Western MA, and I’m not sure if their service area extends to wherever you are in Northeastern, but we had our roof replaced back in April by NextGen Roofing and thought they did a great job.
Gracias. I’ll be looking for quotes again in the spring and will make a note.
That is a lot of things to go wrong at once. I like your Christmas light solution, though it does kind of make me think of Stranger Things.
We remodeled our kitchen thus summer. Or, I should say, we remodeled our kitchen beginning May 1 and ending…soon. We had bought our new appliances during Black Friday sales last November and stashed them in the garage, fearing supply chain issues, but the supply shortage turned out to be human. Scheduling our contractor, electricians, flooring and countertop installers, and plumbers added months to the process. And this is in a small town where most of the craftsmen are clients of my husband, the CPA, who continued to churn out their quarterly reports and tax estimates on time. If I had been cooking for four teenaged boys I would have gone mad. Fortunately (?), I broke my arm at the end of May so I wouldn’t have been cooking anyway. Also fortunately, the results are gorgeous and I love it.
Girl SAME with the boosters. My local grocery chain seems to only have the new Pfizer, and I also need to be strategic about when I get it. I don’t WANT to feel crappy, but history suggests should plan on it.
Love the string lights!
Your caption of the last photo about clutter makes me wish we were neighbors. We could come over to each other’s home, ignore each other’s clutter and have coffee and a treat.
I have an electrician 3 doors down.. He carefully avoids eye contact when driving down the street because he says he has had people basically kidnap him out off his driveway on his way home from work. Good luck.
YES. Just enough miserable to be confident that my immune system is in fact responding properly to the shot: perfect.
Also yes on getting things done even if they are not the most important ones; momentum is so valuable and so easy to lose recently.
I got my booster yesterday afternoon, then woke up this morning feeling pretty good aside from some arm soreness, and was in the middle of debating whether I even needed a WFH day or could go into the office after all when I read this post. And oof, my 1 PM self is very glad my 8 AM self read this post and decided to take the WFH day in the end. (FWIW I’ve had all Moderna until now, but Pfizer was much more readily available, and I didn’t want to wait around for Moderna, so Pfizer it was this time).
I personally prefer xmas/fairy lights to real lights in nearly all circumstances, so I commend this problem-solving heartily. (I’m sorry about the mounting need for problem-solving, though…)
I love the trim around your ceiling!
I am seriously contemplating dragging my kids across the border for their bivalent boosters since they’re not available to those under 18 here yet. My mother can get hers but hasn’t, and this weekend my sister in-law brought her family to visit us and my mother Friday night to Saturday night, and of course her son INSISTS on hugging people hello and goodbye and on Sunday he started to feel sick and he tested positive on Monday morning and my son who was with him for the entire visit is self-isolating now and last night my mother started to get symptoms and accidentally (because of her poor eyesight) took 2x the maximum recommended dose of Claritin and also didn’t notice it was the non-drowsy type so she couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night and did I mention she’s 73 and fighting recurrent bladder cancer? *pant pant*
YIKES. I’m so sorry.
Thanks!
Update: My mom is still sick with a nasty cough/cold (as far as we know – all her rapid tests have been negative), but I was successful and got my kids boosted! I felt kind of icky following the advice of fellow Canadians and giving the address of a hotel in the States, so I fessed up and was happy to hear that the pharmacy’s policy was to give doses that would otherwise have to be thrown out because they’d been open too long to use the next day to Canadians rather than tossing them at the end of the day. So I was lucky and they had 2 such doses left at the end of the day and that was just enough for both my kids to be vaccinated with the new bivalent booster! It would have been great for me to get one too, but at least there’s a bivalent up here for people 18+, even if it is for the B1 sub-variant instead of the currently-circulating B4 and B5.
I am so glad that you got the boosters for your kids! (but sorry they didn’t have three spare doses, sigh.) And also glad that your mom has something-hopefully-less-problematic-than-covid and hope she recovers from both that and the bladder cancer soon.
I hope things improve vastly for you. Hugs from over the internet.
Shawna, thanks for coming back and updating us, I’ve been thinking of you and your mom. Hope everyone’s doing OK. And I’m glad you were able to get boosters for your kids!
Everything ok?