I mentioned in my last post that Lil’ S2 was sick, but I thought it was not Covid. Well, I can confirm, indeed, that it was not Covid. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it was something, and it was something he passed on to the rest of us. I woke up Sunday morning feeling like a horse had kicked me in the nose and then stomped on my eye sockets for good measure. It was an unbearable sinus headache. It got a little better throughout the day (a couple pops of ibuprofen went a long way), but that morning, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do much else but lie in bed all day.
Everybody was feeling more or less the same, so Monday morning we took a fun little outing to Anacostia for family Covid-testing day. Our house to the Anacostia testing site is just about the farthest any two points can be in DC and still be within the district lines. It takes over a half-hour to drive there, but it’s a good testing center for kids because you don’t have to get out of the car. So, we went there and got tested. It was super easy – the place had more volunteers than patients. We didn’t wait at all, a stark contrast from when I got tested before Christmas and had to wait in a line dozens deep. I think it was the season – a lot of people wanted to be cleared before traveling for the holidays – or maybe since a lot of people are vaccinated now there just isn’t the testing demand anymore (and surely some non-vaccinated people have just given up on the whole thing altogether). Whatever the case, it was easy and we got our results back in two days: negative all around.
I’m glad it wasn’t Covid, but from what I hear from the people my age who’ve had Covid, my symptoms were worse than what they had. It was brutal -- and it's not totally finished. I’ve been hacking and wheezing for nearly a week. I took two days off work and haven’t done a workout since last Friday (I just got into a really good rhythm too – it’s always something). Doing some amateur contact tracing, I’ve deduced that it was a woman who first got it, passing it to her child, who passed it to a different child, who passed it to Suren, who passed it to us (and our poor babysitter, who said she was bedridden for four days). I’m slightly annoyed, because the parents of the child who (probably) passed it to Suren knew their kid was sick and sent him over to pod at our house anyway. His mom texted that he was feeling much better, but when he came over here, he still sounded pretty sick to me. But I can’t be too mad – nobody is trying to get anybody sick and every parent has to make judgements about that type of thing. It’s not like S and I always do the right thing. Also, it’s not 100% clear who got whom sick. You have to chalk this one up to: Shit happens.
Speaking of Covid, S is scheduled to get her first vaccine dose next week. I don’t know why she got picked and I didn’t. I think she just had a better lottery number. It’s still good news. We have to be near the end or this whole ordeal. At this point, I want to avoid Covid mainly because it would be too disheartening to get it now. It’s like, I don’t want all the work and sacrifice I – we as a society – put into this to go for naught. If I get Covid I will feel like I've let us all down. It’s personal.
In other news, kids sports are getting going again. We’ve signed up both our boys for baseball, which should be interesting. Lil’ S1 played previously, and didn’t show much enthusiasm, so I’m surprised he wants to play again, but he insists that he does. We signed him up for the wrong league, though. He’s in the AA division, which is more competitive and goes up to 10-years-old, instead of the A league which stops at 8 (his age). We are trying to switch him, as he doesn’t really have the skills to hang with kids his own age, let alone older than him. And baseball is one of those sports in which it’s tough to fake it. Soccer -- you can just kinda run around and blend in. In baseball if you don’t have basic skills, it’s difficult to even participate. You need to be able to catch, throw, and make some contact with the bat, at the very least, and I’m not sure he can do that. I’d be more than willing to help him with those things, but he’s just not interested. Last time we played catch was over a year ago and he got bored five minutes into it.
He also shows zero interest in following sports as a fan. I’ve been watching March Madness games lately, and whenever he joins me, he gives the teams Pokémon names based on the color of their uniforms. (It’s the Scorbunnies* versus the Pikachus!) It’s fine by me. I wish he liked sports because I like sports and so it would be an easy thing to do together, but there are plenty of other things. Sometimes I think my own childhood was too sports-centric. Now, I wish I had been in more plays** or been a mathlete or done quiz bowl or become a hacker or something like that. But sports was how I wanted to spend my free time, so that’s what I did. Lil’ S1 just isn’t like that. In fact, I didn’t even really want to sign him up for baseball. It was S who pushed the issue, even though she never hesitates to tell me how much she hates sports. It’s a conflict for her – her dislike of sports versus her belief that our kids will fall behind in life unless they do everything every other kid does. This time the latter won out.
*Although, the Score Bunnies would be a pretty cool name for a basketball team.
**Perhaps my biggest regret in life is turning down an opportunity to be in the high school play my senior year. I knew the drama teacher from class, and she asked me to try out for one of the main roles after she had already made first cuts. I didn't do it because it overlapped with the first few weeks of the wrestling season -- a stupid reason, made even stupider by the fact I hurt my knee and missed those weeks anyway. When I saw the play I fixated on the kid who played "my" role thinking: I would have been so much better.
With Lil’ S2 it’s still too early to tell. He might actually take to baseball. I’m not sure. We will see. He has shown some interest in sports, but only combat sports. He loves watching boxing and MMA videos. This puts me in a tough position, as I want to nurture this interest, but I don’t want him to become some sort of violence-obsessed little kid. I’m trying to emphasize the idea of self-defense and sport fighting, and how that’s different from bullying and "real" fighting. I think he gets it. I would like to get him in to some youth classes at my Krav Maga gym, though, because the kid is a natural. He can throw a legit punch and he’s aggressive. Wrestling too. Gotta get this kid on the mat.
Okay, gotta go switch out some laundry. I'm doing a load of towels, because I had to do a massive -- and massively disgusting -- clean-up job yesterday. Some pipes got clogged in our basement, and it caused a bunch of shit water to gurgle up through a drain for our hot water heater. Thankfully, it didn't get on the carpet, but it was still a mess, and it stunk to high heaven. It also cost us $1,000 to get the pipe unclogged, and we have to pay more for a special diagnostic procedure to make sure it worked. It was roots, which is a common problem, and one that can be really damaging if you can take care of it.
Ah, the joys of home ownership.
Until next time...
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