Quarantine Times

You’re surprised most likely why I’ve put so much content out this month, you’re thinking, Emily, what’s going on, you’re on fire with you’re writing! Did you have a breakthrough recently??

Yes and no, I had a significant amount of free time this month and I was originally going to save these words for my end-of-the-month music musings but then it would be too long a post for any song added to describe this situation.

Toward the end of July it was a day like any other until I found out my brother had caught COVID-19 from someone at his workplace. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal because he spent a lot of time in his room and treated it like it was a vacation. Then a few days later, my mom contracted it and she seemed to have it worse.

Then for about a week, I was the only one in the household who was still going to work since my mom and brother had to self-isolate and my dad was retired so he wasn’t working either. It was weird wearing a mask around my own house but I did what I had to because my workplace was terribly short-staffed all summer. I had all my streak of blog posts finalized and was still working on more, but then suddenly my throat became scratchy. Since it was the end of July I assumed it was just my allergies since they usually start to flare up around this time of the year.

But then the following morning I was tired after feeling feverish all night long, I took a rapid test and it was positive. So yeah, in short, I caught covid right at the end of the month.

I normally do not ever write anything to do with covid, ever on this blog due to how much I despise it and how it has affected my life. Sure, there’s people out there who are out of work because of it, and I still have a job but I’d prefer not to get started too much on how this has affected my mental health as I may already have done that in other posts.

When I found out the test was positive I was upset because I knew that this meant I couldn’t go to work and I am very passionate about what I do for a living. I took a PCR test the same day to confirm and sure enough, it came out positive a day later. It’s actually a good thing that I booked the Civic Holiday off, isn’t it? Yes, before you ask, I am fully vaccinated.

The first few days I was really miserable and tired, stuffy and feverish. I ate my breakfast in my bedroom and most of the time I barely left my room other than to go to the bathroom. I finished a book and pumped out more blog posts but for some reason, I didn’t have a lot of energy to do any excessive gaming. As my fever started to improve, then I began to do some more gaming: I trekked around in Horizon Zero Dawn and made it to the Carja border where there’s desert and forest beyond. There are way larger machines here than in the Nora territory. I sometimes find it hard to keep my mount handy that I end up losing it to an attack from Tramplers, maybe a Sawtooth, or a Stormbird. So most of the time Aloy is just hoofing it everywhere. I think it’s because I’m trying the game on the normal difficulty instead of the easiest!

Then in Brutal Legend I defeated Lionwhyte, watched Lars die, and Ophelia abandon us. Then I even met a tribe of warriors wearing spoofs of KISS makeup. Double Fine probably couldn’t afford to officially represent KISS in any way in the game so they had to parody it. I seriously don’t like the new enemies though, the ones in Bladehenge were better. Let’s just say that this game keeps getting better and better, even though I seem to be a terrible driver of the Deuce in tight quarters and the RTS stage battles feel like they take me hours!

Anyway, I also had to monitor my temperature for three days and I hated being all sniffly and unable to smell anything. But it seems like there were only two days where I felt the absolute worst. I was able to return to work on the 11th of August when all I was left with was this persistent cough.

Lo and behold that is the number one reason why I hate getting sick because I’m always leftover with this awful cough that just won’t go away, even if the virus is no longer active. I’m pretty healthy as the last time I ever recall having a cold was in late 2016 and once I was finally able to accept that August 11th would be the final date for me to return to work, then I was able to relax a little more and go about my life again.

Let me just say that I’ve recovered now but I’ve been sucking on Halls and Ricola almost every hour and I don’t want my trip next month to be ruined because of this cough because right now I feel like I can’t even speak without sounding like I’m Grievous.

I’ve survived covid, I’m sure you have too if you’re reading this. My first day back at work wasn’t easy but I have to take it one day at a time.

👽Emily

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