News & Notes, COVID-Ween Edition

The night before the Albany trip, Carter and I carved our pumpkin.  It figures that the one year I got him to participate in carving for a significant period of time, he was spewing COVID vapors, but he was a good help separating seeds from pulp.  Fair trade-off, I suppose...haha.  We ended up carving a different pumpkin than we originally intended to.  My office had a pick-a-pumpkin event last week and I chose a rather large one just because I could.  I liked the shape, too.  Well, once I got it home, I noticed there were a couple funky looking spots on it that were probably early signs of rot.  I decided that maybe we should carve that one before it rotted, because I wanted at least one of the big pumpkins to last through Thanksgiving.  The smaller one would fit better anyway, so we'll keep that one intact and let the rotting one go. 

I know I shared the picture of Carter with our purchases, but I don't think I ever gave a close-up view.

The tiny orange one was just too cute, and the white one was cheap and provided a nice contrast.  Carter really liked the green and yellow-orange one.

I loved the colors on this piece on how they almost looked like abstract art.

I decided to try something different with our jack o'lantern.  I saw a bunch of fun pumpkins with "peeled" teeth on Pinterest and thought I'd give it a shot.  It ended up being harder than expected, but I guess it was passable.  I also took a design risk with the eyes, which Carter loved.  I think this is the first pumpkin that looks creepier unlit than lit!  Lit, it looks goofy.  Unlit, it looks crazy and unhinged!

The teeth shrunk considerably over the next couple days and turned a little orange, which was a little bit of a bummer, but it still worked.  You can see in the picture below how much bigger the carved pumpkin was compared to our original, which felt pretty big itself!

The giant will go out when the mold takes over during the next few very warm days, but the rest will stick on the porch until Thanksgiving is over.  Hopefully then we can harvest some seeds and maybe try again to grow funky pumpkins next spring if I get my act together and get some new fencing.

As for Halloween itself, obviously we had a little bit of a complication with Carter having COVID.  Do we make him miss out?  Ironically, Jacob missed Halloween two years ago because he was waiting on a super slow COVID test result that ended up being negative.  We were so cautious then.  This year, after some consideration, we decided that if he was wearing a KN95 mask, since he was outside and only on each doorstep for 30 seconds or less, that it was probably okay.  I figured he could steer clear of crowds, and since he was feeling significantly better, mostly with just a lingering minor cough, it wouldn't be too risky. 

He decided to wear Jacob's Scream costume from 5th grade, which made things easy and cheap--and thank goodness because his class didn't do Halloween this year for some reason, so this was it.  He'd been wearing it around the house for a couple weeks, though, and I love that he had his double-entendre photo idea--Scream (the movie) doing Scream (the painting).  Silly kid, but it works!

All ready to go!  

Craig took him out this year since we normally alternate, and honestly, the last thing I wanted to do that night was go out into the slightly damp evening and navigate the neighborhood.  It's fun, but it always turns into a challenge to decide how far to go, figure out which houses are actually doing candy (last year was a tough one--the usual signs weren't working!), and how to get home before we were too cold or needing the bathroom.  For whatever reason, my brain just couldn't do all that and think through the COVID stuff, too.  Not to mention that I needed to fix Jacob's phone that night, as it randomly lost service that day.  In the end, they had an awesome night.  They got a ton of candy and had a lot of fun seeing the cool stuff around the neighborhood.  But then Craig mentioned that they went with the kids across the street, who had come to our door right before Craig and Carter were going out, and I was like, "Why would you do that when Carter has COVID?!" ::face palm:: So much for keeping distance!  Despite his mask I was nervous that he was walking with them and standing on crowded steps with them.  Hopefully everything is okay, but that was probably not the best judgment call on his part! In the end, Carter was pretty happy with his haul that was overflowing his pumpkin!

Miraculously, none of us have tested positive.  Craig and I have tested twice and Jacob once.  I definitely had some headachy moments, especially over the weekend and in evenings (I blame the evening ones on work and stress), and despite some other random symptoms like slight congestion and random aches, nothing has really been long-term or severe and clearly nothing has stuck.  We've been careful, with Carter mostly staying in the basement except for when he sleeps, and his door has been closed for that.  We all have masked when we're near him.  We kept him home from school for an extra day because he still tested positive Wednesday morning.  Supposedly people are considerably less likely to be contagious by eight days in, so I guess it's probably time for him to go back, which he did yesterday, but it makes me nervous knowing how close he sits with his classmates and that lunch will happen without a mask.  

I was nervous Wednesday morning because Craig was feeling off stomach-wise and then came back and slept a few hours after getting up early with Jacob to go to the gym and shoot.  But his test was negative, as was mine, which I took to confirm that I could go into the office a bit for my boss' surprise 20th anniversary lunch.  I had offered the successful suggestion of Olive Garden catering and then I thought I wouldn't be able to enjoy it.  But given the negative test, lack of concrete symptoms, masking while not eating, and planning to keep a slight distance while eating, I figured it was doable.  My Olive Garden was delicious and my boss was shocked!  She's like, "Oh, that's why you wanted to be here so badly!"  I would have felt terrible missing her big moment, but I'm not gonna lie--Olive Garden would have been sad to miss, too!

I'm still sort of in shock that I didn't get it.  I was with him doing the pumpkin, as I read to him at bedtime, and on Friday morning when I tested him and he sneezed repeatedly after being swabbed.  I shouldn't really have any immunity left--it's been almost a year since my vaccine booster and more than eight months since my exposure that led to a month of headaches and likely caused the antibodies that my blood donation testing revealed.  I think my blood type is considered a lower risk one, and for a while I thought maybe there was some sort of genetic thing happening since my parents hadn't gotten COVID either, but then they got it a couple weeks ago.  When Craig and Jacob got it, I had the booster and recent exposure to protect me.  I slept next to Craig and had rather close affectionate contact and didn't get it.  But it makes no sense this time.  My mom could go to a funeral wake and get it, and yet I sit next to my kid for 10 minutes and carve a pumpkin with him for 20, have him sneeze a foot away, and nothing.  It's so bizarre.  It's also possible that I rinsed the COVID right out of my sinuses before it had a chance to gain a foothold, thanks to the saline and steroid rinse I've been doing for my sinus problems. 

Speaking of which, I fortunately seem to be back to my allergy-ridden baseline.  I started irrigating my sinuses last week, and it seemed to make a difference.  There's still a low level of congestion, but I no longer feel sick every minute of every day.  I mostly have a little dryness, which causes its own type of discomfort, but it's so much better than the sinus pressure, the soreness in my mouth, and the general blah feeling.  Now to just get my overall energy back and get back into better habits--at least once Carter is out of the basement and I can sterilize my weights!  I still wonder what happened to cause all this, and I now have a theory that I have a hole between by sinus and my soft palate where that sore spot was, because I swear the nasal rinse keeps leaking into my mouth, but I guess I'll just ask that question when I follow up with the ENT.

The downside of the COVID stuff, even as we come out of it, is that Carter and I won't be going on the last basketball trip of the year to Spooky Nook in Pennsylvania.  I missed Spooky Nook last time around due to my cousin's wedding, and I was so looking forward to finally checking it out this time.  No such luck.  It just doesn't make sense to cram all of us into a hotel room when Carter is still supposed to be masked, since he can't really mask while sleeping.  It stinks.  Hopefully we can take advantage of gorgeous weather this weekend and do some outside stuff without much risk, but I'm still feeling a little torn about whether he could go to a playground unmasked, since I know he'd get judgmental looks being masked at a playground--either because he's masked or because he's not that far removed from COVID.  But maybe we can pick a hike or something that would be safer.  Not many leaves to look at now, but I'm sure we can find something interesting to do with the weather this nice.  And in between I think I need to do a bunch of yard cleanup.  I will thank myself after it snows and again in the spring!

I still can't really believe it's November.  The weather will keep that confusion going for a few days too (highs in the 60s and 70s through the weekend; seems more like September), but it is absolutely mind-boggling that "fun fall" is basically over and we're heading toward the winter part.  The trees dropped their leaves in bunches over the last week or so, and that just made reality hit home even more.  Those trees will be empty until April or May now.  It has snowed in early November many times before.  Thanksgiving is in three weeks and Christmas decor will be up right after that.  It seems like we were just at Disney, just celebrating the 4th of July, just having Jacob's birthday...heck, just taking down the Christmas stuff back in January...and now it's almost the end of the year again.  It's like we're in some sort of weird time warp because time is going so fast.  Part of that I blame on the break-neck pace I've had at work for the last year, but home life hasn't really slowed down either.  The other day I noticed the faint outline of my spring flower window clings on my kitchen window.  When it fogs up from steam and I haven't been diligent about cleaning the whole window you can usually see ghosted outlines of what was there previously, and it blew my mind to realize that we got the new window back in April when the clings were still up.  It seems like that window installation just happened.  But no, over six months now!  Part of me is panicked when I realize Christmas is coming, and yet part of me is excited to have the trees up again and I already have a bunch of ideas for the kids.  Seeing displays in stores is still giving me anxiety, mind you, but maybe the distraction feels needed.  

Anyway, off to a weekend that isn't going to go like I expected, but hopefully it will work out well nonetheless.  I'll miss seeing Jacob play and exploring a new place, but time with Carter is always fun and the weather looks pretty fabulous, so it could be worse!