I got COVID

Wednesday, 11 January 2023 Starr2 Comments

This year, after 2 years of spending my birthday mostly alone and at home, I decided to celebrate with my friends doing my favorite thing in the whole world: karaoke. In the days, weeks, and months leading up to my birthday, I hesitated a lot, constantly expressing to my partner that I should and would cancel any reservations and forgo having a social birthday for at least one more year. He talked me down frequently, reminding me that we are fully vaccinated and fully boosted as well, that our friends know how cautious we have been and especially how cautious I have been and would not risk infecting me if there was any reason to believe they could.

So I went and I had an incredible time on Friday evening. A staff member at the karaoke establishment recognized me from my previous birthdays celebrated there and pulled me up on the (new-to-me since 2019) stage to celebrate and pour sparkling wine into stranger party-goers’ mouths and generally be merry. It was a fulfillment of a wish I never even dared to make.

On Sunday, already a little hoarse and tired from an evening of singing for my life after having not sung for years, I screamed and cried and cheered as Argentina won their first world cup in decades, cementing Leo Messi’s status as one of the greatest to ever play the beautiful game.

On Monday, I went about my day and cooked a big pot of soup for myself, my partner, and my brother who was staying with us until his new lease started a few weeks later. I recall feeling the effects of all the singing and screaming of the weekend on my throat, and having been so busy with the day that I was uncharacteristically dehydrated. My lips and hands were dry, and my head was starting to hurt, not quite bad enough to call a migraine but enough that I realized I hadn’t had very much water at all that day, a bit embarrassing to realize as the person at work who reminds everyone to drink water. The three of us cleaned up after dinner and sat down to play video games together when I started feeling chilly. “Are you two cold at all?” I asked. Neither of them felt cold, but I had pretty distinct chills.

A knot of anxiety formed in my gut and I excused myself to take my temperature and also a COVID test, just in case. My temperature was normal, so I wasn’t experiencing a fever, but I wanted to see the negative test just to be safe. I swabbed my nose, set a timer for 15 minutes, went to the bathroom, and came back 3 minutes later to make sure the test was working correctly, bracing myself mentally for maybe that faint wisp of a line that you can barely see.

Worn-Out Feelings

Monday, 14 March 2022 StarrLeave a comment

For a while, I’ve been the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about how I’m feeling and feeling about how I’m thinking. (Long-time blog readers know this well.) So it was nearly impossible for me to not notice a distinct… shift… in both over the course of this pandemic so far. And I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how to put it into words so I can better understand it myself, likely thanks to 2 decades of making a habit of crystallizing my thoughts into blog posts for a handful of friends and an unknowable number of strangers to read.

Two Years of Working From Home

Thursday, 10 March 2022 Starr1 Comment

Another whole year of working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Time has been so strange during this era of human history and this past year was no exception.
It feels both like ages ago and just yesterday that I was reflecting on a year of working from home, that I was seeing my coworkers for the last time, that I was nursing my husband back to health, that I was welcoming my brother to New York.
Time doesn’t feel quite precise enough for reflecting on the past 2 years.

But we’ll try.

One Year of Working From Home

Wednesday, 10 March 2021Wednesday, 10 March 2021 StarrLeave a comment

I’m so lucky, and privileged, to have even been able to work from home for the past 365 days. I understand that I am only able to do so because other people are not, that I am only able to have groceries and dinners and office supplies delivered to me during a year I rarely left my building thanks to the work of people who are not paid enough. I hope that you will join me in supporting the people and businesses that have sustained us throughout this year and who brought us joy in the time before… and the soon to come time after.

A year ago today, I set myself up to work from my dining room table after taking my laptop AND charger home from work, at the behest of my husband. The day prior, I was just getting settled in the office after a theme park visit (!) and a cruise (!!), but he was very worried about the news about the virus while I was much more nonchalant about it, so I humored him and packed my bag as though I was planning to do work over the weekend, which I hate and never do. That day, I remember tracking which office buildings near ours had confirmed positive cases: the building next to ours, a building owned by the same company, a building ours was connected to. The head of Port Authority was confirmed to be positive for the novel coronavirus after conducting visits to nearly every major airport, train station, and bus terminal. I went home early to avoid rush hour, but the trains were still full, and we couldn’t avoid feeling both in want of masks in such close proximity to other riders and consciousness of the stares other people of Asian descent got for wearing them. I asked leadership if we should expect to be back in the office after a week or maybe a month.

My office would ask employees to work from home one day after I began doing so. Later that evening, after “commuting” from the side of my dining table designated for work to the side of the table designated for eating, we would learn that Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks tested positive, the first celebrities who did at that time, and that the NBA was cancelling their season after Rudy Gobert tested positive. A day later, Broadway announced shows would be cancelled, and the majority of New York City offices were closed.