OMG, it’s Omicron!

Ducking and weaving for over two years with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-like agility, Omicron finally got us in the end. Last weekend, the poor Swede contracted corona, leaving the rest of us as sitting ducks, ready to be taken down one-by-one, roasted and turned into a Peking pancake five-dollar special.

The first few days…

It wasn’t good. He was sent upstairs into isolation and I started to disinfect the house. He was incredibly ill, non-contactable for the most part. Knowing the Swede’s penchant for pneumonia, anxiety levels spurred the hands into action. Feeling fine, I set to work keeping things going; gloves and mask on, I’d check in on him at times to feed and water.

I kept on working, yelled at the girls to do stuff, took care of the puppy. I cleaned the downstairs bathroom for the patient; fresh towels, fresh flowers, diffused Doterra’s ‘Forest Breeze’ blend and lit a tea-candle.

This shit stopped pretty quick; Florence Nightingale got very tired and yelled some more.

Perfect pandemic planning

Apart from strategically planning for this event for years by keeping the house bio-diverse* to ensure our solid immune response, I soon found that we were largely unprepared.

At the wrong end of a washing cusp, the covid crisis had hit the household when there were no clean towels, no clean bedsheets, not a box of tissues or Vicks Vapour Drop to be found. No rehydration tablets, no Dettol, but I did find that our medicine cabinet was full of wildly out-of-date meds, if we were so inclined to test our immunity that little bit further.

Despite ‘big talk’ over 2020/2021 of packing the freezer full with my famous immunity-boosting 30-glove garlic soup, the cupboards were bare.

If only we’d had two years to prepare.

Home School?

In the heady innocent early days, I was determined to keep the spirits high and just because the Swede had one of the world’s most contagious viruses, well this did not mean that we all would get it; the show must go on!

Thanks to neighbours, by 09:30 Monday, we already had Marigold’s schoolwork tucked nicely into our letterbox, the other two would get theirs soon.

I went upstairs to work and disinfect, and left Miss 11 as Head Teacher.

Later, it was discovered that the Head Teacher, who was meant to be teaching the other two the Art of Swedish Punctuation, had devoted 1% of the time to that subject, and 99% of the rest, to the Art of the Cubbyhouse.

Impacted supply chain

Like the rest of the world, I also realised that our supply chain had major issues and ‘headwinds’, with food supplies now running severely low. With the Global Operations Manager out of office, an SOS request was again put out to neighbours, who delivered groceries as soon as, with flowers on top. Bless them. Florence had a smile again. But not for long.

“Oh Dear Lord I’m tired. And no one has unpacked the dishwasher. LISTEN UP GIRLS, tomorrow, we’re going to have much more structure to our day. I will help you all with your schoolwork. Now, I said a week in iso will be tough, but we are going to get through this, TOGETHER AS A TEAM!”.

Covid Cracks

Should be interesting, I mused, looking down at my positive test as tomorrow did arrive. My dicky immunity already mistakes a juicy red tomato for a green blade of grass; wonder how corona will spice things up.

“Cancel that bit about being a team. I’ve got Covid, so does your Head Teacher. Your dad is still incredibly ill, leave him alone. You know where the toaster is, use it. You’re all on your own. So is the puppy.”

And so, we descended into Covid hell, with both parents out for the count.

Postlude

3/3 for 2022. Despite turning syntax and sarcasm into sentences, I’m still unreasonably unwell. I’ve banged out a few hundred words between sleeping and coughing; stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment, to find out how things pan-demic-ed out…