Rant #3,039: Go Away From My World

 

“We hate you COVID,

Oh yes we do.

We don’t hate anything

As much as you.

When you are near us,

We’re blue.

Oh COVID,

We hate you!”

Yes, that is my simple take on this scourge—to the tune of “Conrad We Love You” from “Bye Bye Birdie” or “We Love You Beetles” by The Carefrees—and I feel even stronger about it now that it has invaded my own household.

But while it appears to be out of my environs, it hasn’t yet finished up its destruction of our holidays or New Year.

My sister told me yesterday that she now has COVID, probably getting it from my mother when our mom was being tested and she accompanied her to the testing site.

And my sister, as you know, is a long-hauler, meaning that she has gotten hit by the virus several times over the past three years, officially, and other times where it probably contributed to a cold or whatever other viral malady she had.

And she got it on her birthday yet—yesterday—and on Boxing Day and Kwanzaa to boot … what a predicament!

To make things even worse, her middle son is in visiting from California, but after being tested, he doesn’t have it … or at least not yet.

This thing simply does not want to go away!

We are all better here, with what I have morphing into a mix of a cold or a bad allergy period.

Sometimes I don’t sneeze or blow my nose for hours at a time; other times, it is like a waterfall of phlegm is cascading out of me.

But generally, I feel fine, and yes, through it all, I have never lost my senses of taste and smell as others have.

And my appetite remains hardy.

So this is really something that cannot be figured out, because it hits everyone differently.

I used the Castro Convertible last night, and will probably use it for two more nights, and then, barring anything unforeseen, I will be back in my old bed on Thursday evening.

That gives me all the incentive I need to be well and be rid of this thing.

I just thank my lucky stars that I had what appears to be a very mild case of this; I simply cannot imagine what my sister went through nearly three years ago with this when it came to us literally out of nowhere, and there were no shots or pills to lessen its effects.

I can’t even imagine what my wife went through a few weeks back, which was nowhere near what my sister had, but was way worse than what I ended up getting.

I really don’t wish this on anyone, but the timing of it--having it come during the holiday season--makes it all the more worse.

My wife said she has already forgotten anything and everything about the holidays this year, and I am going to do the same thing too, because it wasn’t much of a holiday for my family at all.

We have to move on from this, and hope that 2023 is a much better year than 2022 was … and 2022 was already a pretty rotten year for my family before COVID came knocking at our door.

Maybe January 1 will signify not just a new year, but a new beginning for us … I just don’t know at this point in time.

But when I look back at 2022, I see a few nice periods—our vacations—overwhelmed by the bad times, of which there were many.

I really did not want to write about COVID today, but when my sister told me that she got it again, I just felt that writing about it was the best antidote to fight it.

Let’s see what the remainder of 2022 brings to us; it can’t be much worse than what we received during the previous 300-plus days.

“We hate you COVID,

Oh yes we do.

We don’t hate anything

As much as you.

When you are near us,

We’re blue.

Oh COVID,

We hate you!”