Monday: positive

I woke up to Joshua's PCR results: negative.  Let's be honest though, I didn't really believe it.  So we subjected Joshua to yet another nasal swab for a rapid test and that clearly turned positive.

The day was fine, but by the end of the day I was done.  The kids did all their work without complaint, but they were bouncing off the walls by the end of the day and I was ...not.  They did some of their coding activities for a while and that helped...Horizon trapped me on the couch during that time so I had no choice but to read.

Sunday: normal day

Today was a pretty normal day, other than people wearing masks.  No one was sick.  

We're still waiting on Joshua's PCR results, but even if he gets a negative I will hesitate to send him to school.  It'll involve another rapid test and possibly a call to the doctor.

Saturday: fever

Joshua woke up today with a fever.  His rapid test came back negative, but we really doubt that it is negative so we brought him in for a PCR too.  The fever was gone for most of the afternoon (without fever reducers) but returned at night.

My PCR test came back negative.  I had 15 minutes of a runny nose and a few weird muscle aches.  Probably just due to it being cold outside and not getting enough sleep Wednesday night.  I'm just hyper-sensitive to anything that's wrong.

Friday: continuing on

Joshua's bed: 

Giraffe got a mask:

We skied on the lake.  Isaac enjoyed going down the tiny hill right before the lake, but not so much the hill next to our house.

Thursday: positive

Well, Isaac tested positive for COVID.  There is so much going around right now that I kind of expected this would happen at some point.  Guess it's a good thing that we kept him home.

We got the results at 11:45pm last night.  I really wasn't expecting a positive result, but between school and karate it also isn't surprising, even if he does wear a mask.  I didn't sleep well the rest of the night.  Partly thinking about what needed to happen today, partly because I was cold.  My foot warmer cooled off while I was taking a rapid test for myself.  I considered getting up to get something warm, but of course that would have made me colder in the short term so my sleepy brain decided not to.

Today went fine.  We're making Isaac wear a mask at home and trying to stay away from him, but we also haven't banished him to his bedroom.  (In some ways we figure it's probably too late since we were around him for three days since onset of symptoms.)  He was a bit sad by the end of the day, but he understands what's going on and complies.

Joshua was so sad this morning.  Mainly because he thinks that Isaac gets to play all day.  While this is a mostly untrue, Isaac does get some more play time.  We've also moved Joshua's bed out of Isaac's room.  I really wasn't sure how this was going to go, since Joshua seems to hate sleeping in his own bedroom and I didn't want him sleeping in our bedroom either.  After school he said he'd sleep under the table.  Well, his mattress doesn't fit under the table, but we rigged up some sort of fort for him that was sufficient.  I don't really understand what's going on, but it's not a battle that I care enough about to fight either.

Isaac gets to go back to school next Thursday and has to continue masking for another five days.  Perhaps we'll let him take a two month break from masks after that?  The school called to give me these dates and I was able to proudly say that Joshua is fully vaccinated and that's why we kept sending him to school.

edit: for reference later, this is probably the Omicron variant.  That is what is currently the most predominant in the area and has the highest probability of infection if vaccinated.

Wednesday: no results

We still don't have results for Isaac's COVID test and the phone nurse suggested that we wait for those.  Tomorrow will be a little annoying, but at the same time since Isaac is able to stay home alone for short periods of time it makes it so much easier.  Ben was planning on working from home in the morning a bit anyway, I'll come home between classes, and then Isaac will only have an (appropriate) block of time by himself.  He did it today with no problems (unsurprisingly).

I really think I need to look at this in a different light...at least Isaac isn't getting exposed right now.  Everyone else is, but at least it cuts the household exposure by 25%, right?  There's also a chance the results will come through tonight and Isaac can go back to school tomorrow.  Here's hoping.

Tuesday: whirlwind

Well, the day started out with Isaac telling me 10 minutes before I left for work that he had a headache.  And that he still had a sore throat.  Couple this with 1) Ben having some symptoms on the COVID list and 2) these being two of the minor things that we're not supposed to send him to school for, we didn't send Isaac to school.  In some ways it worked out well since Ben was working from home today anyway.

On the way to work there was a pop-eye coming toward me as I was turning left.  Since it was a pop-eye I misjudged how far away it was when I made the turn.  Now, I got through the intersection just fine, but it scared me a bit.  I proceeded to take several wrong turns on the way to work and found out there is a new stoplight at Michigan and 12th street.

I taught.  It went fine.  The normal things went wrong, but it went smoothly for the most part.

I went back to my office in search of a PCR test for Isaac.  Normally we'd just do a rapid test, but since there were two people with symptoms we thought maybe PCR would be better.  I must have found a canceled appointment because it was the only one available until tomorrow at 4:30pm.  It wasn't ideal for Ben, but he brought Isaac anyway.  I need to vent: signing up for a COVID test is 100% utterly terrible.  For most of the sites you need to fill in a significant amount of your information (name, birthday, address, covid vacinations, symptoms, why you need a test, etc) before they let you see the schedule.  This is idiotic because you want to shop around for the best appointment and so instead of taking a minute to see the appointments you spend five minutes filling out info only to find out there are no appointments until Thursday anyway.  On top of this, CVS needed our insurance information, which was in the car.  I only had eight minutes left to hold the appointment, so I ran out to get it...and promptly locked myself out of the building.  Without my phone.  I banged on a door when someone was passing to let me in, but it is not what I wanted.  I got the appointment with two minutes to spare.

I then realized I needed to alert the housekeepers and piano lesson.  The housekeepers still elected to come (Ben and Isaac stayed hidden away) and we did a virtual piano lesson.

I got a little bit of work done and it was time to teach again.  Teaching went better this time because I fixed some of the issues from the first class.  This is pretty normal.

While I've normally been coming home after teaching, I elected to stay at Hope until it was time to pick up Joshua from school.  I had gotten almost nothing done during my set-aside hours and really needed to get some stuff done.  I figured I'd be happier later if I just did it.  (I am.)

The rest of the day was busy but uneventful.  The virtual piano lesson went very well.  Joshua's karate class went well.  They had to run a bunch of laps and he kept up with a kid twice his height...his little legs were pounding the ground so fast.  I went to karate...they started late and I almost wished I had just stayed home due to the short class, but it was fine in the end.  Ben had a rapid test at the doctor's and it was negative.

So yeah, that was the day.  A bit weird since Ben and I sort of switched roles, but we can't completely because of knowledge that the other has.  We called and texted a lot more than normal.  We've decided to keep Isaac home at least one more day.  If we don't get the PCR results we'll probably give Isaac a rapid test and then hopefully send him to school Thursday since Ben's result was negative.