Positive

37 Replies

This morning, Saturday, I got an email with my PCR Covid-19 test results from Thursday: positive. I also took a rapid test this morning: negative.

 

Would it be useful to review the timeline?

Last Thursday: Paul, negative PCR test (test and results on the same day through a workplace program; he had an additional negative PCR test earlier in the week; he was, as we were notified later, a close contact on Thursday to someone who tested positive Friday)

Last Friday: Paul and me in the car for 8 hours, Paul feeling fine

Last Saturday: Paul and me sharing a hotel room, Paul feeling fine

Sunday: Paul and Rob and me in the car for 8 hours; Paul feeling bad; Paul positive rapid test; Swistle negative rapid test

Monday: Swistle negative rapid test

Tuesday: Swistle negative rapid test

Wednesday: (no test, because not going anywhere and no symptoms, and three negative rapid tests in a row)

Thursday: Swistle weirdish throat/ears, like maybe allergies or maybe coming down with a cold; little bit of a cough; PCR test midday

Friday: Swistle’s symptoms do not worsen; Elizabeth goes to prom, wearing a mask, after five days’ worth of negative rapid tests and staying in her room and wearing a mask in the house when she had to come out to fetch food to bring back to her room

Saturday morning (today): Swistle PCR test results come back positive; Swistle rapid test still negative

 

Paul, incidentally, is still testing positive on rapid tests. (He used the other one in the 2-pack I opened this morning.) He was Fairly Sick (fever, just dozing and watching TV, didn’t even touch his phone/laptop) on Sunday evening and Monday, sort of middling sick on Tuesday, and mostly better on Wednesday, I think, though already I am losing track. He has felt pretty okay since then, though still napping and coughing—but basically he’s in the bored stage of isolation now.

I am now isolating with Paul, and I don’t know if that is the right thing to do. Should I instead be isolating at a motel? But that seems silly: it seems like positive members of the family would isolate together. It IS nice to have normal access to my stuff again, instead of camping out downstairs; it IS nice not to wear a mask all day every day. Other than that, it is sub par. I am new to isolation and still settling in, and also Still Pissed and so was enjoying some Time Apart despite the inconvenience; so I feel like I am just trying to put my stuff away and get organized and figure out how to manage this, and he keeps TALKING and EXISTING and BEING RESTLESS in my vicinity.

It’s too late now, but what we COULD have done is gotten PAUL a motel room near his workplace. They think he should come back 5 days after a positive test, so they could have him. Then I could have this room/bathroom to myself. Plus, what if by some fluke the PCR test is wrong (like by swapped results or notification error, if false positive results are pretty much impossible) and the negative tests are right, and now I’m positively STEEPING in the air I’ve been vigilantly avoiding since Sunday? But we’ve already been sharing air in here for 8 hours, so. And also, I am not keen on the idea of spending so much money for him to stay in a motel and eat takeout for a week or whatever, while I am here, possibly getting sicker and trying to manage the household from isolation.

So far I have NOT gotten sicker. I have a mild irritated cough that sometimes gets caught in a little cough loop where I need to cough for a little while, but no worse/different than I have with seasonal allergies or with the tail-end of a cold or even with my reflux; “endless nagging cough” is historically one of my most common illness symptoms. I’ve also had very little appetite the past few days, though I had chalked that up to (1) lingering rage, (2) adrenaline, and (3) wearing a mask in the house and being reluctant to take it off even to eat—and those all still could have been contributors. I haven’t lost taste or smell yet; no fever yet; no unusual tiredness yet. (I was up past midnight waiting for Elizabeth to get home from prom, so I am a little tired today and that keeps catching my alarm: “Wait!! I feel tired!! …Oh, right.”)

I’m feeling very uncomfortable with being so unavailable to the kids, and so unable to do things in the house. We’re lucky the kids are all older, and in fact the oldest four ALL have driver’s licenses and can do things such as grocery shopping. Really, they are basically adults, and in earlier times would all be married off by now and running their own farms. But without SEEING what needs to be done, it’s a little difficult even to remember everything I do, so that I can delegate it. I’m also feeling very sad to be positive. Just, really sad about it.

It seems as if we should take the kids for PCR tests, since my rapid tests were negative and my PCR test was positive. But for the younger three, they have to have a parent/guardian with them. We COULD go, in a car with the windows all open, wearing masks; but right now we are just going to take a minute to think it through. No one has anywhere to be until Monday anyway.

I let work know that I’d had a positive test result. I’ve been so focused on AVOIDING Covid, I don’t actually know what the work protocol is now that I’ve gotten it. I don’t know how many days I’m supposed to be out, or what the requirements are for coming back. I might have it in an email somewhere. I THINK we’re supposed to stay out for 10 days, but it’s changed a few times and may now be something else.

Covid in the House

88 Replies

This was originally going to be a post titled What It Was Like To Attend a Child’s College Graduation (long, boring, and uncomfortable, with about 10 seconds of huge excitement), but on our way home from that, spending 7-8 hours in the car together after spending another 7-8 hours in the car together two days before, Paul said he was feeling a little carsick (he never gets carsick) and wanted some of my little motion sickness patches. (I would never have bought these except that Chrissy Teigen said they worked, and other people replied that they’d tried them and also found them effective, and I don’t really believe that they COULD work, except that they seem to, and what am I to make of that?) By the time we arrived home, he felt Very Off, and took a Covid-19 rapid test, which immediately turned positive. I had not even had a chance to PEE AT HOME yet, and Paul was texting me a picture of the positive results.

I went to find him, and he was sitting, unmasked, in the indoor air of our house, looking glum. I did not scream “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?? ISOLATE YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY!!!” but I did say, calmly and pleasantly, that he should perhaps do that, perhaps right this second. I preceded him up to our room/bathroom (he was so glum it took him a minute to heave himself up), got my not-yet-unpacked weekend bag, took the dirty laundry out of it, repacked it with a bunch of fresh shirts/socks/undies, got my towel and pillow, and skedaddled.

It has taken me a few days to tell you about this development at our house, because I have been so angry at him. It turned out he had stopped wearing a mask at work, without informing me of that decision, let alone consulting with me about it. He still would not have told me about that decision, even after testing positive, but he accidentally dropped a context clue while telling a work anecdote, and I asked him about it, and he took a long pause while presumably considering lying about it. [Edited to add: I feel the need to clarify that I do not KNOW he was considering lying about it. Perhaps his brain just got stuck on the puzzle of figuring out how I would have known to ask the question.] He knew the kids and I were all masking at work/school and in all public indoor places. I had told him I didn’t want him coming to stores with me unless he wore a mask. He knew how I felt, he knows he has an immunocompromised child, and he made two choices: (1) to not wear a mask, and (2) to withhold that information from the rest of his household, so that we didn’t have the information we needed to keep ourselves safe. Now I am wearing a mask in my own house, because he wouldn’t wear one at his desk job. Prom is this weekend, and if Elizabeth tests positive and can’t go, you should expect unseasonable storms to sweep the region/nation. We have made other risk decisions (whether the kids should go back to school, whether I should go back to work, whether we should attend Rob’s college graduation) together, often with the involvement of the kids, but this one he made on his own and it belongs entirely to him. If Covid had spread through our house as a result of one of our shared decisions, I would have accepted that statistical consequence of our statistical accepted risk, but what happened here is different.

I wish to communicate to you how serious this is to me. If I or one of my children experiences Dire Consequences because of this secret deliberate choice of Paul’s, my feeling is that it would lead to divorce. I am reminded of the book The Poisonwood Bible, in which (and it’s been a very long time since I’ve read it, so I am aiming only for the gist here) a woman puts up with her husband’s decisions (which, granted, are more dramatic than Not Wearing a Mask at Work), even though she feels they are bad decisions and tells him so, until one of his choices means something bad happens to one of their children, at which point she packs it all up and leaves instantly. Just: crosses that decision line, exactly at that moment, simple and clear and Done.

In the meantime, I am doing almost zero sickroom care: this risk of illness was his own private decision, made with ONLY himself in mind, and so presumably he was prepared to also deal privately/personally with the consequences, as I attempt to run the rest of the household and prepare for the rest of us also dealing with those consequences. (I will OF COURSE modify this policy if he truly needs care. But right now he is the type of sick where he would like me to check him solicitously for fever, and listen to him talk in detail about his symptoms and how they have changed since he last told me, and run up and down the stairs fetching him the foods his mother used to bring him when he was sick, and all of those options are OFF THE TABLE.) (I did BUY saltines and soup and applesauce and little yogurts and so forth when I was at the store, but I did not imbue that service with love, and in fact withheld it.)

Besides: it is better for his overall health and well-being if I am not in his vicinity right now. My rage diminishes a little bit with each day that goes by with no additional positive tests or symptoms, but it is in no way gone. And we are not in the clear yet, and I don’t actually know when we ARE in the clear. I tried to look it up, and found that a test will be positive 2 or 3 or 5 or 7 or 14 days after a successful exposure/transmission—so at what point could I conclude that I have NOT gotten it? Weighing risks/benefits as best I can, which is not very well, I think I might stop wearing a mask in the house after prom (assuming I still have no symptoms and am still testing negative), though I’ll consult with the kids about that. Not only is prom the current highest-priority event to anyone in our household, but by then it will have been 5 days since Paul tested positive, and presumably I was well-exposed before then.

And we can hope that the fact that we were away for the weekend at Rob’s graduation, leaving the other kids home, is what will spare the other kids. Paul would have been at home Friday and all weekend, breathing out air, but instead we left Friday morning and weren’t back until Sunday afternoon. And Rob had Covid at college a few weeks ago, so it is likely he is not yet vulnerable to it again. It may be that only I was exposed. And I am wearing a mask, staying out of rooms where other people are, testing regularly, and sleeping on the sunporch. I have had three negative rapid tests so far (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday), and have a PCR test scheduled for tomorrow. I keep thinking my throat is getting sore and that I have a cough, but it’s allergy season and the sunporch is full of drafts bringing salutations from the trees/shrubs/grass outside.

If you are interested, here is what the kids have decided to do. (The youngest turns 15 this month, and all of them can do some basic cooking, so it’s pretty different from the way we might have made decisions when they were little and needed more active parental care.) Rob and William are not masking in the house, and they would mostly be staying in their room / away from other people anyway, so not much change there; they are not very worried about catching it, I think in part because they have both recently come home from college experiences where “vaccinated young people getting Covid but recovering quickly and without much fuss” was common. Elizabeth, Edward, and Henry are all wearing masks except when in their rooms, and staying in their rooms as much as possible, except Edward will sometimes hang out by himself on his favorite couch spot in the living room. Elizabeth in particular, I have seen only out of the corner of my eye since Sunday; Edward and Henry are more casual, and I think are mostly wearing masks because Elizabeth and I are wearing them.

Collecting Opinions on Minor Purchases

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I wonder if we could compare notes on a few minor purchases. And do feel free to ask about your OWN minor purchases in the comments section, for others to weigh in.

1. Body wash. I was using Love Beauty & Planet’s Argon Oil & Lavender body wash, which is more than I’d usually spend but I really liked the scent and it frequently goes on various “buy 4 get a $5 gift card” or whatever sales at Target. I used up the last of my bottle, went to re-order—and it NO LONGER EXISTS. Which I then remembered discovering when I TOOK OUT this bottle, because I re-order when I take the last one. And that explains why I also have Olay Birch Water & Lavender body wash, which is…fine. But not as birchy or as lavendery as I’d prefer. It’s more…body-wash-scented.

I would like to know what body washes you like. It’s fine to mention the ones you use without really thinking about it (I have felt this way about Ivory body wash, or any of the St. Ives or Suave ones), or the ones that feel kind of special to you (like my Love Beauty & Planet). But I am especially interested in the ones that feel a little extra special, and have a nice scent.

 

2. Ear plugs. I thought I would just Buy Some, but as soon as I put in the search term and saw the results, I thought “THIS looks like the kind of thing where an ear-plug novice thinks you would just Buy Some, but anyone who has USED ear plugs has AN OPINION.” So I request your opinion.

Keto Bread / Cereal / Ice Cream / Candy / Etc.

15 Replies

This morning on Life of a Doctor’s Wife, she did a post called Keto Favorites. I began to leave a comment with my own favorites. By the time I started the fifth paragraph, I was wondering if perhaps this was a “Get your own blog” type of situation. Remember a long time ago, in earlier blogging times, when a bunch of bloggers would all do a post on the same topic? Let’s pretend this is in that era, and so I am writing on THE SAME TOPIC as Suzanne, with at least some of the same headings! Those of you who ARE interested in keto foods will have TWO recommendations to look at for each category! And those of you who are not interested in keto stuff can click gratefully away, because there isn’t going to be anything else in this post.

I would like to lead off by saying that most of the following items are Startling Expenses. (I just re-read that post and am enjoying this line: “The annoying thing about my late mother-in-law is not that she’d spend $100 more on sheets while not wanting to pay 15 cents more on tomato sauce; the annoying thing is that she would think everyone who didn’t make the same set of decisions must be an idiot.”) I think it’s safe to assume most of us have participated in Restricted Eating of one kind or another and, at least for me, the thing about Restricted Eating is that at first I hear recommendations for treats that fall within those restrictions, and I add them to the shopping list, and then I find them and I think “TWO DOLLARS PER SAD SERVING????” and I absolutely HUFF OFF. And then X amount of time later, there I am trying them anyway, because I am so desperate to find a substitute for whatever it is the particular restricted-eating plan doesn’t allow. And then I get used to paying that price, and I forget it was so startling, and I go right ahead and recommend it to others for when they reach that breaking point.

Okay, let’s see—Suzanne began with YOGURT, which I had nothing to say about in the comment I was originally writing, but now I feel compelled to match. I did eat some yogurt for awhile, when I was feeling rather ill, but I can’t remember the circumstances, and it’s puzzling because normally if I were ill I would not want dairy. Maybe it was when I was going back on keto after a long absence? I’ll bet that was it. I’m sorry, this is already such a boring story, I will try to get us out of it as quickly as possible. All I remember is that it was a plain unsweetened whole-milk Greek yogurt that had very few grams of carbohydrates per serving, and I put a few mashed blackberries into it, along with some artificial sweetener, and it was nice.

Next: BREAD! My favorite keto bread (1 gram net carbohydrates per slice) requires a financial leap of faith unless you live in the small area of the country where it is sold in stores; otherwise it has to be ordered online in a 2-pack or 3-pack. Also: it involves wheat gluten, which is apparently Very Controversial! (Some people say REAL keto involves NO WHEAT PRODUCTS, but that segment has not managed to make their view universal.) Also, it is white bread, which might not be satisfying. Still: I make grilled cheese sandwiches with this bread and a lot of butter and cheese, and I have waking stress dreams that I am accidentally eating actual bread. (It is not as good as actual bread. But it is CLOSE, especially if you have not had actual bread for awhile.) It is Franz Keto bread, and I buy it on Amazon, and they also have hot dog buns and hamburger buns which makes eating hot dogs and hamburgers WAY, WAY MORE LIKE EATING HOT DOGS AND HAMBURGERS (I buy the one-pack-of-each option, because I don’t go through the buns anywhere near as quickly as I go through the bread) (I am on my THIRD 3-pack of the bread, while still on my FIRST pack each of buns). [Update: I have now tried the Keto Culture bread, which looks very much like the Franz Keto bread, enough that I assume the intent is deception, and is sold at Walmart—and it is good, indistinguishable from Franz Keto, and I can get it for $6-something per loaf.]

(image from Amazon.com)

I have also tried the Kiss My Keto variety pack breads. These would be an option if you want heartier, less-white breads—but be forewarned that the slices are SO SMALL. Like, when I first saw the size of the slices, I felt I’d been ripped off. I did adjust, especially when I resentfully made TWO tiny sandwiches because the slices were SO TINY, and found I actually only wanted one sandwich: the bread may be tiny, but it is nice and filling.

Next Suzanne covers PIZZA and TORTILLAS. I share her feelings about keto pizzas. There are some that are even pretty okay, but you can only have such a small amount. What I do now is wait for my days off, and eat pizza then. (We have a place near us that sells pizza by the slice, which is perfect for this.) Or I’ll budget for half of a Quest Supreme pizza (I add more pepperoni and cheese). Or I make a pizza omelet. Or I make pizza on a tortilla, like she does. I don’t have any strong opinions about tortillas, and am planning to try the ones she mentions.

(image from Target.com)

CEREAL! For awhile I was CRAVING cereal, and at that time I went through quite a bit of Schoolyard Snacks cereal (I apologize in advance for their website, which is OBNOXIOUS and has a very scammy vibe), especially the peanut butter flavor. I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and added a bit of artificial sweetener, and found it delicious once I got past the initial adjustment to it (at first it seemed kind of disappointing and sad). However, now I’ve been OFF my cereal kick, and/or willing to wait until the next day off so I can eat regular cereal.

ICE CREAM! My FAR AND AWAY favorite is the Rebel brand, if you can find it in your area. I especially appreciate that they put the number of carbs PER PINT rather than PER SERVING; I feel lovingly seen. I love most of the flavors I’ve tried (mint chip, cherry chip, triple chocolate, butter pecan, coconut almond swirl; the final two have lots of little nut pieces in them, so they’re nice and filling if you want sweet AND you’re hungry), and I keep a pint of each of my favorites in the freezer so I can pick what I’m in the mood for at the particular moment. By the way, the Coconut Almond Swirl means CHOCOLATE swirl!! They should make a bigger deal out of that! I would not have thought there’d be chocolate in it! CHOCOLATE MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT I THOUGHT THE FLAVOR WOULD BE. It has lots of little bits of almond in it, plus a CHOCOLATE swirl.

(image from rebelcreamery.com)

CANDY! My current favorites are: Reese’s Zero Sugar Miniatures, York Zero Sugar Peppermint Patties, and Atkins Caramel Nut Chew Bars.

(image from Target.com)

SAUCES! Paul makes me a sauce of mayonnaise, mustard, creamy horseradish sauce, and sriracha. I use it on tons of stuff but especially with chicken and pork chops and steak. He deliberately makes it so that it’s a little different each time, which is nice. I have made it myself, but I am struggling to remember even the basic proportions. It is SOMETHING LIKE: quite a bit more mayo than you might think; about as much mustard as mayo; smallish amounts of horseradish and sriracha. Mix it all together in an empty mustard bottle. Make sure you get the CREAMY horseradish or it will keep clogging up the mustard bottle’s spout.

I also pretty frequently use Ken’s Creamy Caesar dressing as a sauce.

DRINKS! Suzanne mentions having Bubly water instead of wine. I would have gin or vodka or bourbon or tequila, all of which have zero carbohydrates, thinned out with diet Coke or diet Sunkist or diet root beer or something, I’m not picky. But I also do drink a fair number of flavored seltzers. Oh also! Speaking of Pitiful Treats, I will buy the Sparkling Ice brand of highly-flavored, artificially-sweetened sodas (they call themselves “naturally-flavored sparkling water,” and I am not sure when something ceases to be sparkling water and becomes soda, but I’d say these have crossed that line). They’re like a dollar each, which makes them feel Special.

(image from Target.com)

CHIPS! Suzanne mentions not being able to find a good tortilla chip, and I have not been looking for tortilla chips, but thought I would comment on chips in general. For side-dish chips (especially alongside a grilled-cheese sandwich), I like the Quest chips, especially the Nacho flavor—but they are 4g per bag, so then I tend to eat just half a bag, which is okay, because they are so expensive. Another expensive option is the aforementioned Schoolyard Snacks, which in addition to cereal makes cheeto-like puffs, which are 2g per bag. (Again, apologies in advance for their DREADFUL site, which is so flashy and distracting and scammy-looking I can barely focus long enough to place an order; honestly, I have been there several times this week trying to order more cheese puffs, and I just can’t get past the flashing and pop-up videos and the “Are you still there?” that scrolls across the tab. I would not have originally been willing to order from them except that I did, and it all worked out fine. And don’t be swayed by their “free $10 gift card with order!!” thing: unless things have changed since my last order, the card expires at the end of the same month you placed your order, even if you ordered on, say, the 26th—but even if you ordered on the 3rd, would you really be placing another order so soon? Just pretend the gift card doesn’t exist. Anyway I wish Quest or someone would make something similar so I could buy that instead.)

Sick

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I had not forgotten what it was like to be sick, or at least hadn’t forgotten any more than I ALWAYS forget what it’s like to be sick (a fresh surprise every single time: how minor a cold seems when you DON’T have one, and how major and miserable it feels when you DO), but it had been such a long time. Two years without anything more than seasonal allergies and political stress hives!

I don’t know how I got whatever it is I have, but probably at work. I touch a lot of things that other people have recently touched. And I wear a mask at work, but there has been such a long stretch of focusing on an illness that spreads through the AIR (and feeling exasperated at measures designed to carefully wipe down surfaces instead), and so I may not have been as vigilant as I should have been about, say, not rubbing the corner of my eye when it was itchy, or whatever.

Anyway, I am sick. Sore throat, cough, sneezing, runny nose; a mild fever (highest was 100.5) yesterday and the day before, but gone today. My hope is that I am on the upswing, because yesterday I didn’t feel like sitting upright for very long, let alone having thoughts or typing words, and today I have had several lie-downs but am also up for typing some words. I took a rapid Covid test on Saturday morning: negative. Another rapid test Sunday morning: negative. I went for a PCR test yesterday [update: negative]. [Update: rapid test Thursday morning negative.]

I don’t know anymore when to go to the doctor. Before the pandemic, my feeling was that when you get sick, you stay sick for awhile, and unless something is Very Alarming and/or Very Specific (a fever of 104F, for example, or a very painful ear), you wait for it to go away; if it won’t go away in what feels like a normal amount of time, or if it BECOMES Alarming, then you go to the doctor. But this worldview also involved going to work while sick, of course. Which, at my current workplace, finally, finally, FINALLY is at least CURRENTLY actively discouraged. When I called in, my supervisor thanked me for not coming into work. (Compare this to my bakery job, when I called in because I was throwing up, and my supervisor asked me to come in anyway. To work with food. Or my in-home eldercare job, when I was coughing and running a low fever, and they told me they really needed me to come to work anyway. To work closely with elderly people.) But still, even in a supportive environment: I don’t know how many days a person can miss work before they go to the doctor and get told it’s just a virus.

I also don’t know how our new “People should stay home when they’re sick!!” idea goes with jobs that have no sick pay, and no available staff to cover the positions. It seems like without support (sick pay, available staff), this is just scolding people for doing what everyone knows they need to do. I know this is not a new thought; it’s just that we are over two years into this and I haven’t seen any action, even at my workplace that has theoretically shifted its view. I don’t have sick pay. We don’t have anyone to cover for me when I’m gone, so my co-workers, who already have their own jobs to do, have to do my work as well as their own; this obviously puts pressure on me to return as quickly as possible. But I don’t know what the solution is, since it also doesn’t make sense to have extra employees hanging around just in case someone calls in sick.

Pandemic Update

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I just realized I have ALREADY SENT my LAST college care package to Rob, because I sent an Easter package to him a couple weeks ago, and he graduates college in a few weeks.

Does that seem soon? I mentioned something about his graduation recently, and someone asked if he’d done an accelerated program; but actually he did a 5-year program with co-ops and a double major, so it ought to feel rather LONGER than usual. I think (1) other people’s kids always grow up faster, and (2) I have so many children, it’s hard to keep track, and (3) the pandemic warped everything.

Speaking of which, Rob just emailed us to let us know he tested positive for Covid. He said he was sick for about three days, and that he wouldn’t have tested except a professor asked him to do so and brought him a test. I bless that professor long-distance, because I think it’s good to know When, for all of our Long Covid tracking, which apparently we will be doing for quite some time, as an estimated 5-10% of us (and that includes people who were vaccinated) cope with it for the rest of our lives. I remember when Edward was diagnosed with Crohn’s, how I lay on the bed and cried about it, in large part because this was not just Temporary, or Until He Was Done with the Treatment, but FOR HIS ENTIRE LIFE. It was going to be something he would deal with HIS ENTIRE LIFE; it would ALWAYS be a part of him and there was no escape from it.

Meanwhile, I don’t know about your school systems, but in our school system the cases have gone up EXPONENTIALLY this week. It feels as if everyone has it. Which is not super surprising, since our school system was one of the ones that decided the pandemic was over, because if the pandemic was NOT over they’d have to deal with angry parents, and no one wants that! So they abandoned all of the minimal precautions they’d taken in the first place.

A week ago, we found out that two of Elizabeth’s close friends, friends she sits next to in her classes, were both positive for Covid. (Elizabeth wears a mask, but the friends do not.) The school did not tell us, even though we know the school knows. The school was instead pressuring both of those friends to come back five days after the positive tests, telling them they “only had so many sick days,” and that THE STATE WOULD NEED TO GET INVOLVED if they didn’t return to school. This is while both friends were still actively symptomatic. Also: Edward has missed MANY WEEKS of school this year for Crohn’s-related things, as well as for a lengthy stint with pneumonia, and we have never been threatened with The State Getting Involved. One of Elizabeth’s friends came back to school on Thursday, because she thought she had to, and then missed Friday because she was still so sick. But at least the school got ONE EXTRA DAY of her breathing on her classmates!

Anyway, the school never told us that Elizabeth was the close contact of these two known cases, even though the school has a policy of notifying close contacts. They also did not tell us that another of Elizabeth’s classmates-who-sits-next-to-her-in-class-and-works-closely-with-her-on-projects had tested positive; we only know it, again, because the classmate told Elizabeth. Like, in case you are thinking, “Well, my school system seems fine!” You could ask yourself if your child’s classmates (or their parents) would tell you, if the school for some utterly baffling, and perhaps self-protecting/justifying reason, did not tell you.

Also, one of Elizabeth’s teachers was out with a positive Covid test, and then was back, telling the class that she was still testing positive but that the school said she had to come back after five days. The school did not tell us. Perhaps there was no need to tell us! But again: in case you are thinking your own school seems fine: this is another example of something I would not know unless the teacher told my child and my child told me.

Our school system DID tell us that Edward, who is immunosuppressed, was the close contact of someone who tested positive on Monday. They told us this on Thursday. Edward thinks he knows who it is, because someone who sits next to him in one class has been out since Monday; so have two other kids in that class; so has the teacher. (Edward wears a mask; the classmates and teacher do not.)

I feel as if everything is collapsing, and also that this was entirely predictable and entirely preventable. The United States, as a country, did it this way on purpose. This wasn’t something that could be dealt with on an individual basis; it was in fact one of the BEST POSSIBLE MOTIVATIONS/REASONS for having a government to guide/assist. I am so looking forward to the spin they put on this in the history books.

Books and a Giveaway: Eternal Life; Belong to Me; The Art of Magic

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(image from Target.com)

Eternal Life, by Dara Horn (Target link) (Amazon link).

This is a book about a woman who is 2,000 years old and can’t die but can only regenerate. I liked it while I was reading it (though I thought it was weird how often she shuddered/snarled/panicked while talking with her family members on tricky topics such as her age—after 2,000 years, wouldn’t she be better at this?), but felt the ending was unsatisfying, in a “But…wouldn’t it make more sense if…?” sort of way. I liked it enough to be interested in trying another book by this author. (I went to make a note on my To Read list, and found I already have another book by Dara Horn on that list: The World to Come.)

 

(image from Target.com)

Belong to Me, by Marisa de los Santos (Target link) (Amazon link). I wrote about the first book in this series here. It continues to surprise me how a book that doesn’t seem like it would be my thing (chummy cool-girl narrator speaking to the reader, including telling us pretty often how tiny and beautiful she is) is VERY MUCH MY THING. It’s as if the author is TRYING to write fluffy, lightweight, silly books but keeps accidentally failing. Like, she INTENDS to write a Classic One-Dimensional Mean Girl, and accidentally writes a multi-layered sympathetic character you want to be friends with. I thought the first book had an uneven, first-novel feel to it; I thought this one was much better. My main complaint is that the author keeps trying to write characters who are exceptionally funny or exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally good at witty dialog—but then, since it is the author herself writing those characters’ jokes/thoughts/remarks, it comes off wrong, because she’s essentially praising HER OWN writing. That’s an area where I’d suggest telling rather than showing, or else showing without telling, but not doing BOTH. I ordered a used copy of this book from EBay so I’d have it later; my library doesn’t have it anymore, and I know I’m going to want to re-read.

 

Someone very dear to me has a new book coming out next month, if you would like to pre-order it and/or get on your library’s hold list!

(image from Target.com)

The Art of Magic (Target link) (Amazon link).

It’s categorized for kids 8-12, grades 4-7. I don’t normally read books in this age category anymore, but of course I did read this one, and I genuinely enjoyed it. There are a lot of books my kids liked that I could not tolerate reading to them, but this is one I would have liked reading to them.

I am going to do a giveaway, and I’ll pre-order so you should receive it on or near its release date. (U.S. addresses only—but if you KNOW someone in the U.S., I can send it to them with a note that it’s from you.) To enter, tell me one of your favorite books from when you were this age/grade. I loved the Anastasia Krupnik books, and also pretty much any of those books where A Girl Has a Problem (eating disorder, periods, unrequited crush, parents divorcing, unpopular, summer camp, scoliosis). I’ll pick three winners on Saturday, April 23rd.

[Update: I ordered the winners’ books from Target, to avoid using Amazon. And today, on the release date, I got a bunch of notifications that there was a “new estimated delivery update,” which would be May 17th. This is…frustrating. One of the POINTS of pre-ordering is to get it on or very near the release date, not LITERALLY TWO WEEKS LATER. I’m trying to decide whether to switch all the orders to Amazon (which delivered one of the copies I ordered from them YESTERDAY), or whether to hope Target will soon send a NEW batch of delivery-update emails and deliver the books at a reasonable time.] [Update: Target still says out of stock, so I switched to Amazon. I try to avoid them, but…they have the books, and they will ship them now, and they will do it for free. So they win.]

Prom Outfit

50 Replies

Elizabeth is going to prom. (So far the plan is to go with a friend group, not with a date.) She’s the first of my kids to go, and the selection of her outfit was causing me some stress: she is a busy kid with work and various clubs, and I didn’t know when we could find time to shop. But we did find a couple of times, and she found something she liked. It was missing its price tag, and I was thinking “Please not $300, please not $300…,” and then I found another one on the rack that did have its tag, and it was on clearance for $9.96. It felt like a decimal was wrong: if it had been on clearance for $99.60 I would have been delighted. But I looked through all the others on the rack, and they were all $9.96. The clerk warned us that it was not returnable, and we were both like “THAT IS FINE, AT THIS PRICE WE COULD BUY IT TO CUT UP FOR ART PROJECTS.”

I looked online for a photo, but could not find one, so I will attempt a description. What she wanted was the GIST of a dress, all one piece, but with the skirt portion divided into pants. I was afraid we would not find anything like that, but luckily she is the one who knows what’s In, and there were plenty to try on. She was hoping for black, and tried on many in black, but the one she ended up choosing is a cranberry color. It has spaghetti straps, and the bodice part is like thick lace; the lace is lined at the bust but unlined beneath, so skin shows through; the pants portion is high-waisted and solid, not lace.

[Edited to add: Okay, I took two terrible photos, but terrible is better than nothing:

Imagine this with her very short hair, which retains the remaining cranberry-esque tint of her Valentine’s Day dark pink hair-dye.

I was relieved, too, because one of her other finalist options was to wear flowy trousers with a STRAPLESS BEADED CROPPED CORSET. I was doing the when-do-I-as-a-parent-step-in math: she’s almost 17; she is not busty, which makes the look less Scandalous, more Red Carpet (like when a non-busty actress has a v-neck down to her waist); it DOES look really cool on her, especially with her extremely short hair; if the prom has a dress code I guess they can be the ones to deal with her; etc. But it was nice she found another option.

One thing she and I had to discuss afterward is whether or not it was Okay that the sales clerks (three of them, all the exact same Older Lady with Lots of Make-Up and Jewelry, Teased Hair, Long Highly-Decorated Fingernails, and Strong Regional Accents) KEPT MENTIONING Elizabeth’s size. “She’s nice and slim, she can wear anything,” one said. “Nice to see that outfit on someone who fits it!,” another said. “With her figure, she could model,” said the third. I raised the subject tentatively in the car, and Elizabeth immediately joined in, saying that she couldn’t put a finger on why it seemed Okay when it should have been Wrong, but it just WAS Okay. We agreed that a large part of it was that all three clerks seemed to be talking almost entirely from a Fashion point of view—like, pleased to have a good mannequin shape for their dresses to fit well on. Another part was something about the clerks themselves: their age, their extreme self-decor, their loud frank voices, their utterly lack of awareness that anyone could be anything less than glad to have their body remarked upon.

Next we have to shop for shoes and accessories. She wants SPARKLY, which should be fun.

Edited to add: Commenter Anna suggested we talk about our OWN prom outfits, and I think that’s a fun idea. My dress was tea-length, fit-and-flare, royal purple “satin” with a sequined bodice. I’d wanted something with at least an approximation of sleeves, and this dress had an off-the-shoulder swath of satin that fit that preference. I could not walk in heels, and all the colors of flats we tried looked meh with the purple (I should have tried strappy flat sandals, but I don’t remember that option occurring to me), and custom-dyed shoes were too expensive—but, if I am remembering this story correctly, my DAD…stopped at MARSHALLS or somewhere similar…and found PURPLE FLATS THAT EXACTLY MATCHED THE DRESS?? Did I DREAM this?

I had a sparkly rhinestone necklace with matching earrings. I pulled my hair back on one side with a big floofy purple thing, and wore purple eye shadow, purple eye liner, and purple mascara. I did not even particularly LIKE purple, but I’d tried on a bunch of dresses and none of them were right, and this one fit beautifully and was comfortable, and it only came in purple so I just went with it!

What Are the Best Ways for Other People to Help/Support You in Times of Need?

66 Replies

This post began with me mulling over a question I wanted to ask a friend, and I realized that “forming the question” and “thinking about my own answer” and “thinking about other people’s possible answers” was interesting/fun enough to me to want to make a whole post/discussion about it. Plus, that friend reads here, so this way I don’t have to worry about making the question both clear and succinct, but can instead go on and on, which is my preferred communication style but can come across a little…odd…if it’s, say, 50 texts, most of them clarifying/modifying earlier texts.

The situation is that a member of a friend group is going to be having a hysterectomy, a procedure I had not realized had as long/difficult a recovery time as it does; and what I wanted to ask her, essentially, was “Do you know what you are likely to find helpful/useful, so that we in your friend group can see if we can help out with that?” And I don’t mean “Can you look into the future and guess how you’ll feel and what you’ll need?,” I mean instead “Have you had relevant past experiences that showed you what things FOR YOU are the best ways for other people to help/support?”

FOR EXAMPLE. After the twins were born, a lot of people wanted to help. Here are some of the things I learned about myself AT THAT TIME (it’s been almost 17 years, so things may have changed):

• I could ONLY accept housework help or errand-running from (1) people who live in my house and (2) my own parents. (I don’t know how I’d feel about it at this point.) But I think I would do VERY WELL helping someone ELSE with housework / doing someone ELSE’S errands (my experience as an in-home elder-caregiver let me know this was My Thing), so my Giving Help feelings don’t match my Receiving Help feelings.

• I ONLY wanted family (my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law, my kids) in the hospital room; I did not want friends to visit. (I don’t know if this would be the same now or not; I will have to see how I feel the next time I am in a hospital; I feel like I might be tearily grateful to see a friend.) But I did VERY MUCH WANT family. We set up a puzzle and people were chatting and working on the puzzle and taking turns holding/admiring the babies, and it was idyllic. “Wanting company” seems like an interesting element to consider, and I can imagine that some people would want as many visitors (in the hospital or at home) as possible, and others would not really want any—but might want emails, or phone calls, or other kinds of social contact.

• You will not be surprised to learn that I did not want check-in phone calls.

• My number one most important need was/is FOOD. If I am WELL-FED, I can cope with almost anything else: pain, lack of sleep, clutter. If I am NOT well-fed, I will FALL APART. Also: I feel able to accept food from pretty much anyone. And this includes ALL KINDS/QUANTITIES of food (i.e., it doesn’t need to be homemade, or enough for the whole household, or adjusted to meet the needs of the entire household, or whatever).

• I also loved FUN MAIL: cards, postcards, etc. During that pregnancy, and it might have been around the time I found out I was expecting twins because I remember a certain “AHHHHHH DEFCON TWO!!!” urgency to her email, my friend Surely asked what she could do to help: scour the second-hand shops for car seats and high chairs? send giant supplemental piles of little hats and onesies and socks? WHAT??—and I said “Oh, could I have FUN MAIL??” And she sent me SO MANY cards and postcards and so forth, and did it for SO LONG after the twins were born, I was QUITE SPOILED. (She STILL sends me cards and postcards sometimes!)

• I LIKE presents but I can get SHY about them. There is a part of me that feels embarrassed when other people spend their money on me. (I do not feel this way when spending money on other people.) I did love that a friend sent me a book of Sudoku puzzles, which I worked on while nursing.

• I LOVE flowers but I can get squirmy about how expensive I know they are. (Which just ADDS to the fun when I SEND flowers.)

 

What I would like to know from you is what are some of the ways YOU like to (and/or can) receive support, and what are some of the ways YOU like to (and/or can) give support—and I am interested in the DIFFERENCES, such as in the example where I feel like I could go over and wash dishes and clean someone else’s kitchen with joy, as well as relief to be of use, but I don’t think I could let anyone except my mom come over and clean my kitchen (and actually I’d have the kids do it).

And it’s going to be different for everyone! That’s the point! It’s not like we can make a list of “Oh, THESE are the things people should offer because these things are Helpful! And THESE are the things people shouldn’t do because these things are Not Helpful!,” not at all! Because one person will DESPERATELY want/need someone to come over and do the dishes and fold a load of laundry and change the sheets, but maybe their spouse does all the cooking already so food wouldn’t be particularly helpful! And another person would actually really like their spouse to step up and take over the housework for awhile as a little Workload Appreciation Reset, but would LOVE if people would come over and keep them company for awhile, maybe bringing a box of pastries! Everyone’s situation is different; everyone’s preferences are different; everyone’s Helpful Things They Can Accept/Offer are different. And so NOTE: We do NOT want this to be one of those comments sections that makes us feel as if EVERYTHING WE COULD POSSIBLY DO IS WRONG

It seems to me that this is one of the glories of a friend group: lots of chances to mix-and-match a person’s needs with another person’s abilities/inclinations. Maybe one friend would most want food and childcare, and some of the friend group can do one of those things and some can do the other, and some can do neither—but then the next friend needs errands and housecleaning, and now a new batch of the friend group gets a chance to pitch in! Plus: ideally, everyone is comfy enough with each other to SAY what they need, which is one of the hardest parts of this normally.

I’m finding it fun to think of lots of areas of help/support to consider, and am hoping others can think of more. Would you want a gift certificate for a manicure, for when you didn’t feel like you could cope with doing it yourself but would love the little lift of pretty nails and someone else taking care of you? Would you want someone to come over with a box of ingredients, make cookies while chatting to you and telling you how beautiful you look, and then clean the kitchen and leave behind cookies and the scent of cookies and a clean kitchen? Would you want a nice houseplant, or would that be one more thing you had to take care of? Would you want someone to come and watch a movie with the kids while you took a shower and a nap without anyone interrupting you? Would you want someone to take the kids to the park for an hour and a half while you spent some time lying on the floor breathing carefully? Would you want to send a group text asking if by chance anyone was available to bring you some fast food but perfectly fine if nah? Do you like to exchange silly Snapchat-filter photos?

(My hope, by the way, is that we can avoid bringing “love languages” into this discussion, even though I realize it is nearly irresistibly applicable. I found the concept SO interesting and useful when it was described to me, and then I read the actual book and was icked out by it, and have since heard various icky things about the author, and so now I wince at the term even while sheepishly finding it useful. Like, above, talking about housecleaning: housecleaning is a way I could GIVE support, but wasn’t so much a way for me to RECEIVE support, and that’s a useful distinction for this discussion—but I hope we can make the distinction without love languages.)

Keto Chicken Vegetable Soup, for When You’re Sick or for When You Just Want Soup

16 Replies

I have been meaning to post this Keto soup recipe, but it is the kind of recipe I make without measuring, and I knew I’d need to measure things before I could tell anyone else how to make it; and also I’d probably need to take some photos, and I don’t know how to make food look good in photos. So I kept putting it off, and then today Life of a Doctor’s Wife mentioned that she has extreme soup cravings while on keto, and so that was sufficient motivation, and I assume by now you are accustomed to the level of photojournalism you can expect around here.

It doesn’t even manage to look HOT

 

As I made the soup today, I weighed/measured things. But in almost every case, I first collected what I was going to put into the soup, and then I measured it—so most of these measurements are in no way exact, and will vary each time I make the soup. The measurements are for a single portion, and it’s fast and easy: I forgot to time it, but I started making it at 12:15 or 12:20, and at 12:55 I was done eating the soup and realizing I’d forgotten to time it. First I will write the recipe out in the “walking you through it” way, which I think makes it easier to learn the gist so that you could make your own modifications. And then after that I will write it out the normal way, so that you are not driven up a tree by having to paw through heaps of words to find the few you need.

In a small saucepan (mine is a 1-quart), I put 1.5 cups of water. I add ground pepper and ground crushed red pepper flakes, and I counted how many cranks of each, but that isn’t helpful because different grinders are more or less generous. But I did 15 cranks of the crushed red pepper flakes (ungenerous grinder), and 7 cranks of black pepper (medium-generous grinder). I turn the burner on and get the water/spices heating up while I handle the vegetables.

You can use whatever keto vegetables you like / have on hand. I use either one branch of celery, or else one jalapeno pepper (seeds/ribs fully removed), or sometimes I have half a pepper left over from something else, and then I’ll use that plus half a branch of celery. Today I had celery, so I used that; I diced it up and weighed it, and it weighed 3 ounces. I put that into the water along with the crumbs from the bottom of the bag of frozen broccoli. I go through a lot of frozen broccoli, and the crumbs are hard to eat but it feels wasteful to throw them away; this is the perfect moment for them. I weighed this particular bag of crumbs and it was 1.5 ounces, but it seemed like fewer crumbs than usual; I would think 2-3 ounces would be ideal. I put those into the water too. And maybe you don’t have broccoli crumbs, because you had like four bags of them in the freezer and realized this was ridiculous so you finally threw them out! So then you’d use celery AND a jalapeno, or maybe you’d put in non-crumb broccoli, or maybe you have other keto vegetables on hand so you’d use those instead. Whatever you have, like 5-6 ounces of it.

When the water/vegetables boil, I turn them down to a nice hearty simmer and let them cook for 5 minutes. (I would cook for longer if I were using broccoli florets instead of crumbs.) Meanwhile I have been turning my attention to the chicken. One of my keto staples is Perdue Short Cuts pre-cooked chicken breast strips. They’re perfect for when I just want to add a little chicken to an omelet or something, and they’re perfect for quick soup. I take out several pieces of chicken and dice it up; I weighed it this time and it was 3.5 ounces, but the soup seemed a little heavy on chicken this time, so I would think 3 ounces would be ideal.

When the timer rings, I add the chicken to the pan and turn the heat back up. I also add 1.5 tsp of chicken bouillon; I like the Herb Ox brand. And let’s be honest with ourselves: I kind of heap up the measuring spoon, so it’s probably more like 2 tsp. I also add a few shakes of salt. And I add a dollop of butter. Don’t skip the butter: once, I made some soup and it just did not seem very good, and I wondered if I was Over the soup—and then I realized I’d forgotten the butter. If you use a nice fatty chicken broth instead of water + bouillon, you can probably skip the butter—but otherwise, it’s the butter that stands in for the chicken fat that ought to be in there, and it is quite important—and even more so if you are sick and need Building Up! When I measured it, I used 1 tsp, but that didn’t seem like enough while I was eating the soup and so I added another half-tsp; and then I was remembering that when I first started making this soup, I sautéed the celery/pepper in butter before adding the water, and when I did it that way I was probably using more like a tablespoon of butter, and that was not too much butter. So in short, use butter one way or another, and don’t skimp on it. Butter and salt are two of the good things about keto, and they are what make this soup yummy rather than pitiful.

 

Keto Chicken Vegetable Soup

1.5 c. water
ground pepper
ground crushed red pepper flakes
5-6 ounces of keto vegetables (e.g. celery, jalapeno peppers, broccoli)
3 oz cooked chicken, diced
1 T. butter
1.5 tsp chicken bouillon
salt

In a one-quart saucepan, combine water, ground pepper, pepper flakes, and vegetables. Heat to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes or so. Add chicken, butter, bouillon, and salt, and return to a boil, then remove from heat and CONSUME.