Dept. of Cold and COVID
Tuesday, 27 January 2026 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rYep, I Tested Positive
I thought I was coming down with the same bad cold that Bob was slowly recovering from. I don't get colds all that often, and I'd thought this one would pass me by, but nope, it appeared eager to settle in my head. Well, dang ... I headed for bed, hoping it wouldn't be too bad in the morning.
Around 3 a.m. Saturday I woke up with aches that signaled a potential temperature. And indeed I had one; 100.7, significantly higher than the 97.9 I usually run. I knew that colds don't feature fevers so I tested myself for COVID.
I didn't even have to wait the requisite 15 minutes, both lines were there in bright red within 30 seconds.
Welp.
I've felt like I've been hit by a truck ever since. I keep telling myself it's a smaller truck than it might have been, thanks to the booster shot I got last year (of course, I can't recall exactly when I got it, but I think it was in mid-summer.) but it's still a truck. I ran a lower temp on Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday, today, I haven't had a temperature since then and today I retook a test. At first, the only reaction was the control line. Huzzah! I was certain I'd gotten the first of the two negative tests I'd need to declare myself COVID free. As I said, Huzzah--
--except at the end of the 15 minute wait time, there it was, a faint but definite second line.
Welp. Again.
And it's still like being hit by a small truck.
Ah well, I'm getting some work done on my NTBP* novel, escaping a corner I'd painted myself into. And I'm also making some bread. That always comforts me.
And here, have something I wrote about cold decades ago. Since we're still in single digit temperatures with subzero windchills, it feels the same to me, although this was written after a relatively rare ice storm during a cold snap.
.
March, 1995
* not to be published
I thought I was coming down with the same bad cold that Bob was slowly recovering from. I don't get colds all that often, and I'd thought this one would pass me by, but nope, it appeared eager to settle in my head. Well, dang ... I headed for bed, hoping it wouldn't be too bad in the morning.
Around 3 a.m. Saturday I woke up with aches that signaled a potential temperature. And indeed I had one; 100.7, significantly higher than the 97.9 I usually run. I knew that colds don't feature fevers so I tested myself for COVID.
I didn't even have to wait the requisite 15 minutes, both lines were there in bright red within 30 seconds.
Welp.
I've felt like I've been hit by a truck ever since. I keep telling myself it's a smaller truck than it might have been, thanks to the booster shot I got last year (of course, I can't recall exactly when I got it, but I think it was in mid-summer.) but it's still a truck. I ran a lower temp on Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday, today, I haven't had a temperature since then and today I retook a test. At first, the only reaction was the control line. Huzzah! I was certain I'd gotten the first of the two negative tests I'd need to declare myself COVID free. As I said, Huzzah--
--except at the end of the 15 minute wait time, there it was, a faint but definite second line.
Welp. Again.
And it's still like being hit by a small truck.
Ah well, I'm getting some work done on my NTBP* novel, escaping a corner I'd painted myself into. And I'm also making some bread. That always comforts me.
And here, have something I wrote about cold decades ago. Since we're still in single digit temperatures with subzero windchills, it feels the same to me, although this was written after a relatively rare ice storm during a cold snap.
.
Glass City
The city is glass and I am cold.
When cold aches out of bone
into fingertips,
and back again;
into the back of my throat and under the sleeves of my coat
and back again;
why then I can't see the glass.
My own breath blocks my sight. Painfully.
Cold holds my body for ransom.
It slaps my face and makes my toes snap,
it steps on my feet and punches the small of my back.
Traitor body, to let it in.
Did it really start in the bone?
I am so tired of my bones doing that.
All about me, the glass trees rustle.
Splinters of blue light and silver at the top,
in the middle a puzzle and madness of glitter in the bright, faded sky.
Winter sun does that.
It's almost worth
the cold.
March, 1995
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026 10:31 pm (UTC)Feh!
Heal well and uncomplicatedly.
P.S. The poem is great.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026 10:36 pm (UTC)Thanks also for your words about the poem. We may not have ice coating everything in this particular instance, but we have icy hands, fingers, feet, faces every time we venture outside, even for as short a time as it takes to take out the garbage.
How are you all faring on your particular portion of the East Coast?
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026 11:30 pm (UTC)If it's never been published, it's worth trying for. You can hear all the ache and dazzle of ice-light in it.
How are you all faring on your particular portion of the East Coast?
Our snow emergency has been lifted, but the street-straitening walls of snow remain. Cars are socketed into carved-out drifts like some automotive Amigara Fault. The Department of Homeland Security sounded like an Orwell knock-off when it was created and shouldn't even be broken up for parts, it should just be trash-compacted and an end to it.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 27 January 2026 11:26 pm (UTC)