The point is, this was kind of shocking because these two friends live together and they've been sequestered in their house since just before the war; they've been taking social distancing very seriously and they have jobs that have allowed them to work from home. Neverthenotwithstanding, they were marked with the great 2020 curse.
They were fortunate because their symptoms were never really all that bad. Just coughs and fatigue. But the thing is--no matter how bad your Rona is, you really have to turn yourself into a pariah because you aren't any less contagious. Apparently. I don't really know that either. Because science.
Knowing this, Skylar and I offered to deliver groceries and so forth but these friends are good pioneer women with eleventy decades of food storage so they were actually pretty prepared. But after a week of this they thought of one thing they could use so I picked it up at the store and took it to their house.
They were sitting out on the front porch, feeling not too bad. I stood out on the sidewalk and chatted with them for a while, a full 30 feet away. I didn't touch anything. I even left the groceries on the sidewalk for them to come out and pick up after I left.
I know that I didn't get coronavirus from them. I know this. It's honestly impossible. If I somehow got sick from that, we are all doomed.
But even though I know I didn't get sick, my brain has convinced itself for the last seven days that I definitely did get sick from that. Every time I sniffle. Every sneeze. It all feels like I contracted the disease.
Two nights ago I woke up at 12:00 AM in a total panic because I thought we were having an earthquake. Skylar says it must have been a dream, but it wasn't a dream. I sat up in bed and felt the shaking. I woke Skylar up and told him there was an earthquake. He lay there for a few seconds and then told me it was all in my head.
I sprinted out of the room to see if the light fixture in the kitchen was moving because that's what happened when we had our earthquake a few months ago. Nothing was moving but I still felt like the earth was shaking. It was so surreal. I don't know how to explain it.
Skylar thinks I got in my head because just before we went to bed we were talking about earthquakes. Duncan wouldn't come to bed with us. He wanted to sleep on the couch and that was very weird behavior for him. Skylar had said "maybe he can sense an Earthquake is coming--you know how dogs can apparently do that--so he doesn't want to sleep in bed with us since we panicked so much last time."
We laughed and then fell asleep. Skylar thinks I convinced myself so thoroughly that an earthquake was coming that I actually felt one.
But I think I'm just feeling some PTSD from 2020.
It's not all bad, though. People in my life who I previously saw posting "all lives matter" on social media are marching in Black Lives Matter rallies. Skylar is taking emergency preparedness very seriously, almost fully transitioning into a good Mormon pioneer. And we're all washing our hands more.
But I wouldn't turn down a few quiet weeks at this point.
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| At least we still have puppies. |
Man, don’t even make me think like that, because if 2020 takes away my puppy, I don’t even know, man. And I don’t say “man”.
ReplyDeleteI swear I have felt earthquakes every day since "the big one" in March. I work on the 14th floor of our building and I swear it shakes and rolls every day. It is so eerie.
ReplyDeleteNo Strangerville this week?
ReplyDeleteMomma needed a break this week. Meg and I did watch Sharknado and recorded a Hive Mind podcast about that wild experience. That will be out tomorrow, if you just need to hear our sexy voices right away.
DeleteMaybe you had a brainquake that made it feel like everything was shaking but only your brain was shaking.
ReplyDeleteEveryday feels like a rollercoaster so I'll give you that. My third grade teacher used to tell us that you couldn't cry if you were looking up and he would demonstrate this by staying straight up into the sky and start singing some absurd song. Throughout my youth when I was in public and feeling on the verge of tears I would stare straight at the sky. Then I just felt dumb but it did make me smile and I didn't cry. I forgot about that for the last couple years, but I remembered today and now I think I'll spend the rest of the year looking up.
ReplyDeleteI have had that happen to me on a few occasions. I’ve even been so certain of an earthquake before that I will check the California Quake site to see if we have had one. Strange. Maybe it is stress related.
ReplyDelete