pandemic

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Illness and Vaccines and Vaccine-Induced Illness

I’d been dragging my feet on scheduling my booster. First, because I wasn’t sure whether I should really wring all the extra immunity out of my bout with Covid before I got boosted, and, if so, how long that would take. Second, because I wanted to also get my flu shot, and ideally would get both shots simultaneously, but was that a good plan from a scheduling perspective? Maybe I should just do the flu shot whenever I could, and then schedule the booster when I had a free day for feeling sick. 

Swistle posted about flu shots, and made some comments to the effect of how there is never a good time, which turned out to be the push I needed. I scheduled flu and booster shots at the same time, at the pharmacy down the street, on a Friday so I could have all day Saturday to recover. 

I got my shots in the morning. The most triumphant moment was that I remembered to bring BOTH of my vaccine cards (when I have forgotten to bring my vaccine cards to every other vaccine appointment since Covid began). The most frustrating moment was when the pharmacy tech handed me a clipboard and asked me to fill out two pages of information that I had literally just input into their online form. No, wait, that wasn’t the MOST frustrating; the MOST frustrating was when I noted that the form, under “which vaccinations are you getting today?” had a sticker that said “flu” but no sticker that said “covid,” and the tech said, “Oh, yeah, the Covid sticker is on the next form.” And it turned out I had to fill out TWO IDENTICAL FORMS, just because he couldn’t/wouldn’t put two stickers on one form. And when I say identical, I mean identical to one another as well as to the form I’d filled out online. WORLD WEARY SIGH.

The pharmacist was a person I am unfamiliar with, and perhaps he was unfamiliar with giving shots as well because the flu shot hurt like the dickens. Whatever that means. And then when he gave me the Covid shot, I could sort of feel the liquid go into my skin. (I asked my husband about that, later, and he said it is normal. But I had never experienced that sensation before and do not care to experience it again.)

My arm was almost immediately sore, which worsened steadily throughout the day. As the hours passed, I kept thinking that I was starting to feel crummy, but convinced myself that I was merely hyper-aware of how I was feeling, and was really fine. I think it was about eight hours after my shots that I admitted to myself that I truly did feel crummy. Tired and cranky. And my bones and joints were starting to ache. I took an Advil and went to bed.

Sleep was… elusive. I must have developed a fever overnight because I kept waking up, teeth-clacking, body quaking with the cold. I added another blanket to my bed, put on some pants, and snuggled up as close to my husband as possible. My husband slept on, unaware.

In addition to the fever, my arm was SO painful, I kept waking up because I’d accidentally roll on it. And then when I tried to roll to the other side, I’d have to lift my arm and it felt so heavy and so painful I was near tears. 

At three in the morning, Carla came in to tell me she was freezing. My husband slept through this. I piled some blankets on top of her and staggered back to bed. 

Around four, I woke up and could not fall back to sleep. My skin hurt. My scalp hurt. My bones and joints felt like I’d fallen off the top of a very tall building. My head ached. At six, I could tell that Carla was awake and downstairs, but I wanted my husband to go make breakfast etc. so I could lie in bed and contemplate whether death would be preferential. He slept until NINE O’CLOCK, waking several times to mumble that he would go down, and did I want him to make me tea. Yes, yes I did. But he did not wake up or make tea, so I dragged myself downstairs, made tea, and took my temperature. 101.5. Carla was uninterested in food and I was uninterested in forcing her to eat anything. She told me she had never gone back to sleep after she woke up at three and had come downstairs around four. Maybe that’s what jolted me out of my meager sleep. She kept saying she was cold, so I took her temperature: 100-ish, which was inconclusive, fever-wise. (Our thermometer can be a little hyperbolic.) I drank my tea, took some more Advil, and dragged myself upstairs to get back into bed. 

This time, my husband did wake up and go downstairs. I didn’t hear from him until two hours later when he came up to inform me that Carla had thrown up. Turns out a fourth grader is old enough to say, “I think I’m going to throw up” and then to make it to the toilet to do so, for which we are all thanking our blessings. I cursed the power of thought, because I had just recently been marveling at the fact that Carla hadn’t vomited in several years. (Longtime readers may remember that vomit was one of my top reasons for never wanting children, and one of my top fears when I realized that I really DID want a baby. Carla is a wonderful child in so many ways, one of which is that she has vomited less than a dozen times in her entire life so far. And most of those times were in the presence of her father. She is the best kid.) She had a fever of 101.7, so we plied her with Tylenol. 

I was feeling like death, Carla was feeling yucky. It was the perfect day to sit on the couch and watch endless episodes of The Dog Whisperer. 

I will say that the Advil kicked in, and I felt noticeably better… and about 36 hours after my booster entered my arm, I felt completely normal. It was a much better experience than after my last booster. For the record, I got two Pfizer vaccines, a Moderna booster, and this most recent booster was Pfizer.

In Carla news, she felt better just a few hours after throwing up. She kept saying she was STARVING, so I doled out Ritz crackers very slowly until she’d devoured an entire sleeve of them. We also made her some Pedialyte popsicles that she loved – I think her favorite part about being sick, besides unlimited TV, is the popsicles. She had no symptoms besides the fever and a sore throat, and seemed pretty cheerful if a little more lethargic than usual. She tested negative for both Covid and strep, rapid and PCR (we spent the following day at the urgent care to have a doctor do a PCR), and she was fever free after 24 hours and able to go back to school on Monday as normal. Mystery virus with a blessedly short duration.

Carla’s booster is on the schedule. She and I have already had our flu shots. My husband is the last one to need a booster, and I will continue to pester him until he finds time to make it happen.

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

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Road Trip! Round Up

Okay, so now that I am feeling better, I am going to tell you about our Road Trip! It was truly a wonderful experience, except right there at the end. I do wish I could back in time and urge my family to WEAR MASKS even though we would be the only! people! doing so! but I cannot. 

We drove through so much beautiful landscape.

The best thing about the trip, by far, was spending so much time with my husband. He was so relaxed and cheerful and fun – all the things I love about him. All the things that the stress of his work chips away at on a normal basis. 

Madison, WI. Such a charming city. It’s very walkable with lots of cute restaurants and shops.

We had planned to take turns driving – we had six consecutive days of five- to seven-hour drives there, and five consecutive days of pretty-close-to-seven-hour drives on the way back. That’s a lot of driving for one person. And I DID drive. But my husband admitted that he spent the entire two hours I was in the driver’s seat staring at the speedometer, willing it to rise to the level HE is comfortable going. And we had multiple tense conversations where I expressed fear at passing someone and he would say that I should only pass when I was comfortable! and neither of us enjoyed that. So! From then on, he did nearly all of the remainder of the driving. 

Yes, we stopped to take a photo with the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN

We used pretty much every single thing I told you I bought in this post, and a few of the things that I was considering at the time and ended up buying. PLUS we also bought a fidget snake that mbmom11 recommended. Used and LOVED, I should say. The only thing that went unopened was the game of Loaded Questions, which my husband put into his backpack and then wouldn’t allow us to remove. So none of us even knows if we would have liked it. 

Sioux Falls. Also very walkable, and the Falls were lovely.

The one thing that I wished we had but didn’t was a travel laundry bag. We kept stuffing our dirty clothes into random shopping bags or those dry-cleaning bags that hotels clip to the hangers in the closet, and the bags filled up more quickly than I would have thought and the handles kept breaking and it would have been very nice to have a dedicated bag for it. (I am really weird about NOT mixing dirty clothes with clean clothes, so I recognize this wouldn’t be at the top of everyone’s list.) We were able to wash laundry at my parents’ house, for which I am VERY grateful.

The Badlands National Park in South Dakota was spectacular, although we didn’t see any wild animals. We did see a lot of idiot tourists going off the well-maintained paths and climbing onto precarious perches to take photos for the ‘Gram, though.

Carla loved the road trip journal and the travel atlas. I’d say that she loved the atlas a little more than the journal – it seemed to have more easy breezy activities and fewer essay assignments. If I were a better planner, I would have allowed Carla to open the journal a day or so in advance of our trip, and talk it through with her. But oh well. 

The Dignity statue on the Crow Creek Reservation was breathtaking.

Even though we didn’t play Loaded Questions, we did try to find license plates from all 50 states. My husband made the rule early on that semi-trucks do NOT count, which made it really tough. (One of the last states we got was Maine, and SO MANY trucks seemed to be from Maine!) In the end, the only two states we didn’t get were Delaware and Hawaii.

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse were SO worth seeing.
We arrived at about 7:45 am, which meant NO crowds.

We DID get a cooler and we did USE the cooler, but only because we had it, not because we really needed it. In fact, for the first few days we didn’t use it at all and I kept asking my husband WHY we’d bought it. On the way home, though, we stopped at a little bakery and got some cute little cakes and put those in the cooler for two days before we had a chance to eat them, so it did come in handy in the end. 

Deadwood was fun to see. We spent about an hour there, and caught one of the free re-enactments they offer. It was exactly the right amount of time to spend there.

Speaking of food: I didn’t try to stick to the keto diet. Not even a little. (Note: It would have been fairly easy to do so if I had wanted to, I think. Most of the gas stations had Quest products and Whisps and little packages of meat-and-cheese and sometimes even Keto cookies. The reason I didn’t try was that I didn’t WANT to.) (Also, I weighed myself when I got home and I weighed EXACTLY THE SAME as I had when we left, which was highly disheartening.) I found that I often opted for the little veggie snacks when we stopped at gas stations – I ate carrots and ranch as well as a little tray of carrots, celery, and spinach dip with great gusto. But I also ate lots of chips. I unintentionally went on a Ruffles kick and tried several of their new (or new-to-me) flavors: Spicy Dill Pickle, Lime & Jalapeno, Flamin’ Hot BBQ. I don’t know that I LIKED any of them, but nary a chip crumb was left in any of the bags, so… I didn’t NOT like them. I drank a LOT of Diet Mountain Dew. One day, on a whim, I got a bottle of regular, full-sugar Squirt which was MUCH too sugary and only tasted of childhood for the first few sips. Yuck. I ate at my all-time favorite fast food place THREE times (I get a large potato oles with a side of nacho cheese, and I ask for a second little empty nacho-cheese cup to fill with hot sauce, and then I dip the oles into the hot sauce and then the nacho cheese. HEAVEN.) and ate fries from multiple McDonald’ses and Arby’ses. I would be okay if I never see a Subway Spicy Italian sandwich again. My husband found THREE Super Mega Candy Stores on our route, and he and my daughter had so much fun ogling all the candy and choosing what they wanted to buy. I forced Carla to eat some lettuce one night and tried to get tomatoes and fruit into her at least a few times, but mostly she subsisted on chicken nuggets and fries for two straight weeks. Her favorite gas station food stuff (besides morrrrrrrre candddyyyyyyy) was Babybel cheese. Oh! The Trader Joe’s popcorn I got before our trip was… not my favorite. No one really loved it, sadly. And I had bought a second bag in a fit of panic about not having enough if it turned out to be the best thing ever. Oh well. Fun to try.

Devil’s Tower in Wyoming was nothing short of a geological marvel. Stunning and bizarre and totally cool. The little walk around its perimeter was a great way to stretch our legs, too.

We also ate at a LOT of restaurants. More than we have eaten in over the past two-ish years combined, I think. Part of my husband’s in-depth planning for this trip involved researching fun places to eat, and it paid off. We went to a lot of breweries. I really grew accustomed to my nightly pint of local craft beer, to be honest. By the end of our trip, I was DESPERATE for something other than brewery food. I love burgers and fish and chips and salad with grilled salmon and whatever else you get at every brewery across the country, but I started craving enchiladas smothered in hot sauce or chicken vindaloo with a side of chana masala or red curry with shrimp or Brazilian braised pork with avocado crema. FLAVOR that is not Grilled or Fried. We went out for a LOT of breakfasts. I don’t LIKE breakfast, so I got tired of that in about the time it takes to scramble an egg. The last place we went to was not my kind of place – cramped, order at the counter, bus your own table. The silverware was in big canisters in the little cramped space between the tables and kitchen, and several of the forks I pulled out had crusted food baked into them. The mug they served my husband’s coffee in had multiple chips around the rim. My husband thought it was CHARMING and had CHARACTER but I hated it and I hated my artisan avocado toast and I was kind of a brat. But it was just the one bratty morning, and I think I pulled myself out of it okay, so I am going to give myself an overall rating of Good Breakfast Sport.

These were the ONLY wildlife we saw, and they weren’t even “wild,” because they were hanging out behind a fence with some longhorn cattle. Well, I did see a mountain goat on the side of the road, chewing some grass. But I didn’t get a photo and no one else saw it so it doesn’t really count. Oh, and we saw a ton of antelope, so many that the novelty wore off and they seemed as unexciting as cows.

We listened to two books on the drive. When Carla was watching her iPad or listening to her own collection of audiobooks (I think she was re-listening to Socks and to the Gooney Bird Greene series, both downloaded from our local library), my husband and I listened to There, There by Tommy Orange. It was, overall, a compelling and eye-opening read/listen. The audiobook was well done, with a multi-reader cast to help differentiate between the multiple narrators. But the subject matter was so very dark and sad. And there was SO MUCH cursing, which I don’t love but don’t normally mind too much – but it made me uncomfortable with Carla right there. Not that she doesn’t know most of the curse words. Not that a few overheard curse words can hurt her in any way. We FINISHED the entire book, which felt like quite an accomplishment. When Carla was taking an iPad break, we listened to the fifth Harry Potter. I wish we had listened to more of it; I don’t think we even made it halfway through. We listened to a lot less music than I thought we would. Mainly, I think, because we were so often in areas with no cell service, so our music choices were limited to a downloaded playlist on my husband’s phone. It’s a good playlist, but he’s heard it a million times, and honestly there’s only so much Drake I can deal with. Next time, I will suggest making a playlist in advance of the trip.

Ah, the prairie. Makes my heart sing, but I am only posting one photo of sagebrush and endless plains for your viewing pleasure. If you want more, I have MANY.

And there WILL be a next time. It went so well that we all agreed we want to do it again. We may not go on the road for two weeks straight again (just taking the time off is tricky for my husband), but we definitely are no longer fearful of lengthy, multi-day car trips. Maybe we’ll go to Canada, next time. 

Snow in Glacier, MT.
And lakes, also in Glacier! Montana has everything: plains, badlands, mountains, lakes, forests. Postcard views everywhere you turn.

The best days – even those that included the most time in the car – were those where we woke up early and were on the road between 7:00 and 8:00 am. That way, we could get to our day’s destination before dinner, even if we ended up stopping a couple of times along the way. I also found it most useful when we could walk around for a bit before or after dinner. Despite being in the car for up to seven hours a day, I still managed to get in 10,000+ steps most days. 

My favorite state to drive through was Wyoming. I’d only ever been to Jackson Hole before, and that was in the winter. Well, wait – I did go to Yellowstone some years ago; but I can’t remember if that was the Wyoming part or the Montana part. I think Montana. Anyway: the geology of Wyoming is stunning, and so changeable. We would be driving through plains, and then suddenly mountains would loom up around us. And then we were in a canyon surrounded by jagged rocks. And then rolling badlands. And then plains again. The Wind River Canyon was spectacular – everywhere a breathtaking view. Plus, the highways were fast and crowd-free.

We went to the Cody Nite Rodeo, which was a lot of fun.
None of our photos of Wind River Canyon do its staggering beauty justice. We kept pulling off the road to take photos, it was so gorgeous.

We went to a rodeo. We saw Mount Rushmore. We bathed in hot springs. We fished. We spent a LOT of quality time together. I got to see my best-friend-since-sixth-grade and my brother and my niece and BOTH sisters-in-law and my parents. 

We stopped in Des Moines for lunch. It was cute.

We covered nearly 4,900 miles. My poor car announced that it was due for maintenance somewhere along our journey home, and I understand exactly how it feels. But it was truly a wonderful, beautiful experience. 

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Complaints, Frets, and Small Annoyances

I woke up at 4:00 am with a splitting headache and then couldn’t fall back to sleep. So I am feeling a bit fretful and complainy this morning. 

I don’t want Carla to get Covid. I have been doing my very best at isolating, but it is slightly tricky with my husband being back at work and me, you know, having to feed and care for my child. I wear a mask any time I venture out of my bedroom. I spend as little time in the “main house” as possible. Carla cries at bedtime because I can’t hug and kiss her goodnight. We have a little stash of rapid tests and have been making good use of them, and Carla and I went to the pharmacy the other day to get PCR tests. (That was nerve-wracking – we both wore masks AND I kept all the car windows wide open the whole time.) (My husband calmly reminds me that we were all just in a car/hotel room together, windows closed and maskless, for fifteen days.) Carla’s PCR test was negative, mine was not. I don’t know how I could manage to be the only one to get Covid, but if that’s how it works out, I will be very glad. Carla did just get her booster before we left, so I’m hoping she was at Peak Immunity when she was exposed to me and my germs. 

Here’s what I want to know about isolating in a home you share with others. How does it WORK? My bedroom is not magically on some alternate air circulation system. Every time I open the door, surely germs are escaping into the rest of the house. My mask isn’t trapping 100% of all the little Covid particles. HOW can we avoid getting Carla sick? It seems impossible. And yet, some people manage? I think? 

The next two bullets are Deeply Boring and yet I cannot bring myself to delete them.

I have been trying to do a little work from my bedroom. This means phone calls, my least favorite task of all. Do you recall the bank that charges us an annual “inactive” fee for an account whose sole purpose is sit there as collateral until we pay off a loan? (All the mind-numbing details are here.) After three years of arguing with people who cannot grasp simple concepts who work there, we sailed through 2020 AND 2021 without a late fee, and I was so delighted! They’d finally made a note on my account that there was no reason for me to make a deposit in an account that I cannot access, and had stopped charging me! You can sense what’s coming next, right? My husband alerted me this past May that we had now been charged a total of $12.00 in inactive fees. (Which means they DID charge us in 2021; we just didn’t notice.) Perhaps the bank had waived the fee in 2020 because of The State of Things. And apparently we simply did not notice when we began to lose $2.00 a month from the account. Whoops. As I have mentioned a billion times, normally I HATE making phone calls. But this one particular issue makes me practically giddy with wanting to tell someone how ASININE and RIDICULOUS it is. I was Let Me Talk to a Manager level irritated, after FIVE YEARS (minus the 2020 exception) of this nonsense. So back in May I called the bank and gave the lucky person who answered my spiel about how we should not be charged an inactive fee because the purpose of the account is to remain inactive. Unlike all the other brainless fools everyone else I’ve spoken to at the bank, she IMMEDIATELY understood that it was ridiculous to expect me to add even a single dollar to an account that I cannot touch. Not just ridiculous, but virtually impossible, considering that I don’t have checks or a debit card for that account, nor do I have digital access to the account, nor do I live within a 20 minutes’ drive of the bank. The account is under the control of the bank until we pay off the loan. The woman I spoke to Got It. Like, without my having to do anything but sketch out the basic issue, she said incredulously, “Well that’s ridiculous. Of course you wouldn’t want to add funds to an account you can’t touch! There’s no reason you should be paying an inactive fee on an account that’s meant to be inactive!” It took the bluster out of my Let Me Talk to a Manager sails, but it was SO mollifying to be understood. She said that she would talk with the bank supervisor and get the charge reversed AND she would have them make a note on our file. I was very pleased with the interaction. (Usually, the person I speak to says that ALL we have to do is deposit something in the account! It can be as little as a dollar! Once a year! And there are branches in X and Y and Z cities! Which, yes, I get that this sounds like a small amount of time and money and a very minimal hassle, but THE PRINCIPLE.) You know, perhaps, where this is heading. We came home to another statement which, alongside the credit of the $12, included a debit of $2 for a new inactive fee. ENDLESS SCREAMING.

Yes, I have a second bullet point about the banking thing. This morning, I called the bank and asked specifically to speak to the person I’d spoken to in May. Her name was similar to a fairly common name, but one syllable was different – like “Carlotte” instead of “Charlotte” or “Car-ree” instead of “Carrie” or “Samintha” instead of “Samantha.” I love her with my whole heart. She made things happen AND fully grasped why this situation is so stupid/frustrating. The person I spoke to put me on hold and then said that Samintha was not available but he would connect me to customer service. Sad, but okay. Customer Service means, as I discovered, the customer service line for the entire national banking system, when really I wanted to talk to someone (Samintha, sob!) in my local branch. Oh well. The customer service agent was very nice. His name was Tryin’ with a B. I explained to him that this is an annual problem, and gave him the quick and dirty details, and then he explained to me what was happening. “Oh, I think what the issue is, is that you have a LOAN, and this is a CHECKING ACCOUNT (it’s not, actually – it’s a money market account that we cannot access), and since you haven’t made any deposits or withdrawals, they are charging you an inactive fee.” Yes, thank you for repeating the exact same thing I just told you. And, nice as Tryin’ was, he couldn’t DO anything about it because the only person who can DO anything about it is the manager of my local branch. Tryin’ promised me he would call me back but I’m not holding my breath. I think I will see if I can get a hold of Samintha tomorrow.

I get canker sores about once a month and they are GOING WILD right now. I think this is a hormonal thing, but maybe it is a Covid thing? Who knows. Seems like EVERYTHING could be a Covid thing. And yes, canker sores are different from cold sores. They are basically little ulcers that occur inside the mouth, usually on the cheeks or under the tongue. Sometimes I get them on my gums, too. They are AWFUL. I have a massive one under my tongue and one on the very back part of my tongue right where my tongue brushes up against my bottom molars. 

The news is so enduringly turbulent. I just typed and erased a 634 word diatribe about one of the various Hot Button Issues that is driving me mad/making me worry that I have made a terrible mistake bringing a child into this fraught world. But I don’t like to write about Hot Button Issues on this blog, so I deleted it. (If I want to torment myself gnash my teeth and rend my garments over The State of Things catch up on world events, I will look at the news or go on Twitter.) Not that I have anything new or groundbreaking or interesting to say anyway; just vents/frets/threats of walking into the sea. There are SO MANY things going on and I have Feelings about many of them and yet I feel like it is utterly pointless to talk about them. The people I might discuss them with either disagree with me strenuously, which means voicing my own thoughts would lead to the type of confrontational encounter I HATE, and not to mention there’s no way I can convince anyone to feel differently from how they do; I don’t know enough of the background and facts, nor am I well-spoken enough to craft a convincing argument… or they already agree with me, and discussing things will just drive us each deeper into the pits of despair/rage we are already existing in.

I have eaten the last of the Reese’s peanut butter eggs.

My father (a physician for 40+ years) (I don’t know why I feel like I have to make sure you know he’s qualified to give advice) suggested that I make sure Carla is getting enough calcium. This is an ongoing concern, but one I haven’t properly fretted about recently, so I’m in Full Fret Mode right now. Apparently, she needs 1,300 mg of calcium per day – or four servings. She doesn’t get enough calcium. She refuses to drink milk – yes, even chocolate milk. She eats a bunch of cheese, and there is 200 mg of calcium per ounce of block cheddar or per 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar, so that helps, but it’s not enough. She only eats yogurt occasionally. She doesn’t even really like ice cream (and has never liked milkshakes) (she IS related to both me and my ice cream loving husband, I assure you). She eats cream cheese – it’s one of her non-pork camp foods this summer – but, despite having both “cream” and “cheese” right there in the name, there is only 26 mg of calcium per two tablespoons of cream cheese. (And NONE in the whipped cream cheese!) My mom and I walked through a whole list of foods that contain calcium and of that list Carla eats two things with moderate consistency: chickpeas and cheese. And sometimes yogurt. Very rarely, almonds. My mom was being really creative, too. What about calcium fortified orange juice? What about almond milk and almond butter? Carla does not drink juice and she will not touch almond milk with a ten-foot pole. I have no idea if I could get her to eat almond butter but my confidence level is low. Some people have suggested Ensure, but my guess is that if she refuses milk/juice/milkshakes, she will refuse Ensure as well. My current plan is try to coax her into drinking a smoothie every day. I can pack it with yogurt, almond milk, AND calcium fortified orange juice. She likes smoothies. We used to drink a mango smoothie together every week on the drive to ballet practice. But I am not sure if I can get her drink one every single day. My father thinks we should start giving her Tums. (We cannot do the Viactiv chocolate calcium chews.) Probably we will have to use a multi-pronged approach, with smoothies on one prong and roasted chickpeas and plenty of cheese on another prong and Tums on another prong. If you have any magical calcium ideas, I will prong them right up. 

Our refrigerator is unplugged and empty right now. This is something we’ve been planning to do, for awhile, and it’s not like I’m making big elaborate dinners at the moment, so it seems like a good time. We bought the fridge in 2011. It has some real advantages, like that it is beautiful and also it holds a TON of food. But it’s been plagued with issues almost from the beginning. To name a few: the door closing mechanism fails on a regular basis (I have learned how to source the replacement part and repair it myself), the ice maker broke and had to be repaired, the water dispenser pressure dropped off precipitously for no discernible (or fixable) reason, the bottom of the fridge fills with water that then turns to ice, the ice maker and dispenser chute are often coated with a slick black mold, the electronic panel frequently disconnects from the temperature readout and makes an incessant tinkling noise. ET CETERA. The most recent repairman I had in the house informed me that the ice problem was A Known Issue with this brand of fridge (GE/Samsung) and that it is unfixable. (He also said that if he’d known in advance this was the fridge we had, he wouldn’t have come out because he knows it is unfixable and wouldn’t want me to have to pay the service fee his company charges for sending someone to our house; he declined to charge me the service fee.) He suggested that best thing we can do is unplug it for three days, wait for the internal mechanisms to thaw, and then plug it back in and hope it works for about six months before we have to do it again. So that is what we are doing: we are thawing out the fridge in hopes that it will magically reset. We are lucky enough to have a second (though much smaller) fridge in the basement, so I have relocated the foods we cannot live without/cannot bear to toss. It is a jumbled mess down there, but at least it functions. However, now I have to run downstairs for every little thing and it’s a pain. (My husband keeps asking me, “Are you breathing heavily because you just went down two flights of stairs to the basement to get a plum and then walked back up two flights of stairs to the bedroom or because you have Covid?”) My father thinks, in a non-pressurey way, that we should just replace the damn fridge already. But I am one of those people who wants a key appliance to LOOK a certain way, and I have grown accustomed to how spacious it is. And have you SEEN how expensive refrigerators are?!?! I am not in the mood to spend one-, two- or three-THOUSAND dollars when a refrigerator should be a ONE-TIME purchase. Of course maybe we will plug the fridge back in and it will refuse to work and we will have to buy one anyway. Fun times! 

Speaking of fun times, summer feels like its coming to a close. I feel like there was so much anticipation about the summer, and our Road Trip!, and now the Road Trip! is over and Carla only has two weeks left of camp and then school will start before we know it and then it’s practically Thanksgiving, which might as well be Christmas and then a WHOLE YEAR will have passed.

A final Covid fret (for today, at least): My husband and Carla are following all the Covid protocols set forth by the CDC, my husband’s workplace, and Carla’s camp… but I am still fretting. I am being Very Strident about Carla wearing her mask, and her camp is mainly outdoors, and they only admitted children who were fully vaccinated, but ACK. I am fretting that Carla (despite having no symptoms and still testing negative on a rapid test) will somehow spread this stupid disease to others. (Also, I am very grateful for my little stockpile of rapid tests.) I hate being contagious. It is STUPID and I HATE IT. Well. As of tomorrow, according to the CDC, I am okay to leave isolation and rejoin the public, as long as I wear a mask. I haven’t taken a rapid test since the one that read positive, so I don’t know that I am negative yet, and that seems Kind Of Important, even though no one else (CDC, I am glaring in your direction) seems to agree. Anyway: I don’t have anywhere I plan to go, but the reasons that I COULD are positive: I have no fever (I don’t think I ever did) and my symptoms are improving. Except for the crankiness. That has, if anything, increased.

What are you fretting about? What’s making you cranky? Any complaints to share?