I woke up on Friday with a sore throat and shrugged it off, thinking I’d spent the night snoring and had simply dried my sinuses out. It stuck around through the day—usually not a good sign—and on Saturday morning it was a bit worse. I began to get a bad feeling about it, and began thinking I should take the spare COVID test we had left from one of my trips over to see Brian. But all I had was the sore throat; I could taste and smell, I had no fever, or any other symptoms. Jen and I talked it over and we figured it was just allergies. I took allergy meds and made my way through the day as my nose started to run. On Sunday my my nose was constantly running, so I took some cold medicine and pulled the COVID test out of the box. Facing down a busy week of work and an on-site shoot next Tuesday, I wanted to be sure I was clear.

That second line on the bottom means oh shit. I immediately grabbed a couple of things and headed up to the spare bedroom to quarantine for the next eight days. My brother and sister-in-law dropped off spare OTC tests for Jen and Finn, and a pulse/ox meter to check my levels. Jen immediately began taking excellent care of me. It reminds me a little bit of the cancer days when I was knocked out by radiation and chemo, but at least then I wasn’t stuck talking to the girls through the door.

Finn went out and did battle with the snow, shoveling the front walk and the sidewalk all the way past the neighbors’ house. She’s going to be home for this week while we all quarantine, which also sucks. Jen set to work making food, and soon the lovely smell of chili wafted up through the floorboards into my room; when she brought a bowl up to me I gobbled the whole thing right up.

All things considered, I’m very lucky. Again, I have none of the other symptoms often mentioned. So far my oxygen levels haven’t been below 95% and I’ve only run a slight fever for a brief while. I’ve got my work laptop up here on the bed and I’ve been able to do everything remotely from my room. I’ve got Mom’s giant TV up on the dresser hooked up to a digital antenna, so I had reruns of Adam-12 on mute for part of the afternoon while I worked (broadcast TV is a fucking wasteland). I’m lucky to have gotten my booster when I did, and I’m super happy Jen got hers last week; the CDC just opened things up for 12-15 year olds so when we’re out of the clink we’ll get Finn her shot as well.

I didn’t expect to be one of the folks with COVID, but here we are. Once again, thank god for modern medicine.