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last winter when we got covid it happened around the same time as everyone else we know who got covid in december. there were holiday parties, and gathering indoors under the presumption of immunity and antibodies, and there was karaoke, and then all our particles were comingling together, and we were breathing them all in. chase had gone to LA for a work holiday party and then we both flew to buffalo for what certainly seemed like it was every time i die’s last annual hometown holiday show, and then we came home to brooklyn and both tested positive for covid, chase two days before me. this year we went to thanksgiving with my family in jersey and came back to the city and my dad let me know that one of my aunts had tested positive for covid. then this week i did too.
last time i was sick there was still some existing public health infrastructure for dealing with people who had covid. chase and i both got contact traced. his contact tracer called him one night and i just assumed it was one of his frat brothers from emory on the phone, the conversation sounded so casual. chase hung up and was like “yeah, that guy was telling me about how he just came back to his contact tracing job from mexico where he was having a bufo alvarius trip that he learned about on the joe rogan experience.” ok! then my contact tracer called me, and it was a painstaking hour long conversation that stuck strictly to whatever script the contact tracers had been given. the contact tracers are gone, i think. perhaps chase’s contact tracer is consuming more hallucinogenic frog secretions in mexico. honestly, i don’t even know what the cdc guidance is for covid anymore, not that i’m planning to leave my apartment anytime soon.
when i was sick last i was Sick sick. i couldn’t eat anything for three days and when i eventually did it was bone broth and congee. chase tried making me take tylenol with half a banana and within minutes i would throw it back up. i ran a fever. my body ached in the way that it only does when you have the flu. i cried because my entire body hurt and because i was developing a migraine on top of the covid. i felt pathetic for crying but it felt a little nice to not have to experience this misery totally alone like i feared i might have to in march 2020.
i went to citymd yesterday with a sore throat that hurt when i swallowed, so i could get rapid tested for anything and everything and hopefully put my concerns to rest. the doctor was dismissive even by citymd standards. i mentioned i was feeling fatigued and he said “it’s the tryptophan from thanksgiving, you’re fine” (???) and i tested negative for everything there and only today tested positive for covid, so perhaps it was not the tryptophan in the turkey i ate five days ago. chase has yet to test positive for covid this week—we keep joking that his smoking cigarettes is a covid prophylactic, and maybe we’re onto something, jk—and he very kindly came by earlier to take carmichael off my hands while i sleep this week. my symptoms are far milder this time, i’m exhausted and coughing but otherwise fine. my dreams, already made more vivid by the 10 mg of lexapro i take every day, have been even wilder this week, and all i want to do is sink into my bed at all hours for a sleep that is deep and restless at the same time.
more about thanksgiving: thanksgiving with my family was the first “normal” thanksgiving we had since 2019. we convened at my aunt’s house in new jersey—she works for a prep school on the pennsylvania border, and the school puts her up in a huge house on campus, so there was plenty of room for the 20+ guests at our unusually large thanksgiving this year. chase had met most of my family before—my grandpa’s girlfriend, who lives in upstate new york, is notably obsessed with him and kept standing on her tiptoes to try to plant a kiss on his cheek on thursday—but got to meet my mom and a few extraneous extended family members on thanksgiving. everyone behaved pretty well, except my aunt and uncle’s dog rufus, who kept trying to jump up on the counter. we went for a walk and found a three-legged cat that purred like a lawn mower and kept rubbing up against our legs. we briefly contemplated bringing him back to brooklyn but we figured he had a home on campus. chase made a shoofly pie that everyone loved. i made some alison roman dill rolls that did not turn out well, and an apple pie that did. i turned around at one point and chase was doing vodka shots with my 21 and 19 year old cousins. after everyone left we went outside and shot my cousins’ bb gun at some empty beer cans in the backyard. it was generally a pretty good day, maybe our best thanksgiving yet, minus the covid of it all.
on sacrificing routine and discipline: the hardest part of being sick is abandoning the little routines i’ve created for myself. i love waking up early and lifting weights or going to pilates, making my stupid little smoothie for breakfast, and diving into work. i love when things go to plan and i hate when i get derailed; it feels like progress is being taken away from me. i thrive on my rigid routine. even arriving to work 10 minutes late or going to sleep too early or late throws me off some days. the thing that most upset me when i tested positive for covid this week was the possibility that i would miss my lifting gym’s max out day, in which you try to lift your heaviest weight on deadlift, squats and bench press. i’ve been training for this day for 14 weeks, getting under the barbell 2-3 times a week with my trainer’s help and on my own at the gym, and i was finally happy with the progress i was making. i met two of the arbitrary, round-number goals i’d set for myself with a deadline of our december meet—benching 100 lbs and deadlifting 200—a month before the meet. i did not want all of this work to be for nothing, and i definitely didn’t want to wait for the next max out day six months from now to challenge myself in front of a crowd. i anxiously texted my trainer with the news. i dreaded her response, but she seemed far more chill than i did. “let’s plan for you to come. get your rest and drink a lot of water,” she said. there will be a professional photographer at the gym; i’ll be there in a mask as long as i’m feeling good.
a recommendation: i recently finished aesthetica by allie rowbottom. i loved her memoir jell-o girls, which is ostensibly about america’s most famous dessert but actually is a family history about three generations of women in her family who were inheritors of the jell-o fortune, but also the inheritors of so much trauma and illness and oppression. aesthetica is equal parts horror story, cautionary tale, and satire, a story about a former instagram model preparing for a novel surgery that promises to undo all the cosmetic surgery and work she’s had done to herself. it’s challenging and dark but the prose is nimble and makes you read it quickly. rowbottom expertly captures a moment of internet culture in a way that doesn’t feel forced or inauthentic or cringe and forces you to think about autonomy and exploitation and our digital and irl lives. one of my most anticipated novels of the year and one of my favorites too.