I know: I disappeared for a few weeks there. Life has been busy. Justin had a conference to attend in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, and I joined him out there the day before it was supposed to end. We both have wanted to visit British Columbia for a while and just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. It seemed like a good time, especially since Justin was already going to be there for work.
As always, being away from work for the week was nice. Getting to explore a new place is always fun. We didn’t rent a car, so we stuck to the city. As people who follow our vacations know, cities aren’t usually our go-to, but as is our standard vacation, we made sure to walk for 10+ miles every day and come home with various minor injuries and plenty of muscle soreness. Stanley Park sure is something. Imagine: a city park that you feel safe walking around in on your own and makes you forget you’re even in a city. It’s quite literally a breath of fresh air.
We had a bit of a disasterous return trip though. I find I usually enjoy being on vacation, but I often hate the traveling between home and the destination and then back again. Some trips go pretty smoothly; others just make you want a fast-forward option for time. We were supposed to be on a red eye flight home Thursday night. We arranged for our hotel to hold our bags after we checked out so that we could go and enjoy the day without lugging them through the city with us after checkout. We walked over to the Granville Market one last time for breakfast, taking in the scenery along the water while savoring donuts and pastries. Afterwards, we briefly relaxed in the hotel until checkout time and wandered back to Stanley Park for a last walk around Beaver Lake. We made it to the aquarium within the park just before it torrentially rained. I checked our flight status from a coffee shop in the late afternoon, and everything looked good. Not five minutes later, I got an alert that the flight was canceled due to “weather.” The weather forecast, however, did not show anything in either Vancouver or in Newark.
I tried to call United and was, of course, greeted with, “We are experiencing a higher call volume than usual. Your call will be answered in the order it was received.” I was on hold for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, Justin was looking for alternate flights. The coffee shop was closing. No one was picking up my call. There were no flights into Newark. We absolutely had to get home on Friday because my sister was watching our dogs, and on Saturday, she and her fiance were leaving for the Outer Banks for 10 days. We , in turn, would be watching their dogs during that time. Justin ended up buying a flight to JFK that was supposed to leave a little later than our original flight because it was the best we could do. We’d deal with getting from JFK to Newark and canceling the flight United ultimately rebooked us on once we got to New York.
Our new flight was delayed 40 minutes because the plane was going to be late. When it arrived, we all boarded the plane only to learn that there was a problem with the hydraulic brakes. Two and a half hours of sitting on the plane at the gate later, and we were off. At ~5am home time. For several years, I sometimes get terrible stomach pains when traveling, and that flight home was the absolute worst they have ever been. When we finally got to New York on very little sleep, the customs agent recommended we take the Airtrain to Howard Beach to get out of the Uber/Lyft airport hotspot and make our fare to Newark, where my car was waiting in a seedy lot, a bit cheaper. In the end, I don’t know that it saved us much after paying $17 for the train, but eventually, we made it back to the car only to sit in ridiculous traffic getting to my sister’s house for the dogs.
After only a few hours at home, Justin rushed off to South Jersey fora weekend packed with his dad’s best friend’s funeral, a visit with his cousin we haven’t seen in years and Father’s Day celebrations. I couldn’t make it because of the arrangement with Seanan to watch Carson and Polly, so from Saturday evening until Justin returned Sunday night, I was shuffling 4 dogs around and trying to figure out some kind of routine for us. At the same time, I had all of your expected just-back-from-vacation chores to do like restocking the fridge and doing all of the laundry.
The week was moving along okay until Wednesday afternoon, when I came home from work and was surprised to see Justin’s car parked outside, as he had said that he was expecting a very busy day. As he was leaving that morning, he mentioned that he had a headache. Then he realized he had a bit of a cough and that maybe it wasn’t from the yardwork he had done the previous evening when he found himself trying not to cough through the duration of an hour long meeting. Thursday, I went to work as normal with Justin looking like he had no intention of getting out of bed. Sometime mid-morning, he sent me a picture of his positive antigen test and said he had a PCR test scheduled in a couple of hours. That test, a surprise to no one, came back positive as well the next afternoon. I tested negative Thursday afternoon, but figured it was only a matter of time for me.
Sure enough, I woke up with a pounding headache Saturday morning. Justin had all the energy in the world. Saturday afternoon, I had a mild fever and spent a couple of hours in bed. Since then, Justin’s been more tired again, but he’s hoping to get back to work in the office tomorrow. I am out until at least Friday. I didn’t have a fever yesterday or today, and I’ve had decreasing congestion since the peak of that on Sunday. Last night, about an hour before bed, the cough really kicked up for me though. Thankfully, neither of us has been really sick. The headache on Saturday was definitely the worst part for me, at least so far. I hope we’re both on the up and up. I said this morning that despite the cough and congestion, I don’t actually feel bad at this point, and in pre-COVID times, I would 100% have been at work today. These are not pre-COVID times though. The rules are different now.
I’m not sad about the lack of client interactions this week. I am sad that I couldn’t have my surgery day today. I haven’t had a surgery day since April, and that’s my favorite part of my job, by far. I’ve had plenty of dental days. A couple of the more recent ones have been uneventful, but for a while, there was a run of truly long, tedious, horrible dental days. All I wanted was a surgery day, but COVID said, “Not this month either.” I also feel bad about the extra work for the doctors that are there this week, as one was already scheduled off for vacation for the next two weeks. It is what it is. I’ve known for a while that it was only a matter of time before my own bout with COVID.
In my extra few days off, I’m trying not to worry that I’m 99% sure I was below my production to cover my salary for June since corporate says they aren’t holding that against us any longer. I may be the first one of us in our practice to test that out. I’m reading the backlog of cheap and not-always-so-great Prime First Reads I have downloaded on my Kindle, playing with and walking Rookie and Magic, baking cookies and getting in a daily workout (within reason because coughing doesn’t go well with intense exercise). It’s a bonus few days to decompress from vacation followed immediately by dog-sitting. Work will still be there on Friday.
“Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
