Well, we survived our first quarantine. I don’t really know how we managed to make it this far, honestly, although I assume it has a lot to do with the fact that we basically dropped out of society for a full year, but last week, we finally got the dreaded “close contact” email.
Funnily enough, the week before, we’d all had a cold, although we all got tested and were COVID-19 negative. Still, if you’re close enough to catch a cold, you’re close enough to get COVID, and we treated it as a wake-up call, reminding ourselves to be even more vigilant about masking, distancing, and hand-washing.
Right as we were all feeling better, after lots of chicken noodle soup and DayQuil, BAM! Quarantined!
The older members of our family have all been fully vaccinated since June, so we don’t have to quarantine, but Georgia, too young to be vaccinated yet, was the one who was exposed, so she got her computer and packets of worksheets from school and she hunkered down as well as a 9-year-old with ADHD can hunker.
It wasn’t that bad because luckily my husband works from home and my work is fairly flexible, so really, the worst part was trying to explain to a kid – who was feeling crummy the week before but is now feeling fantastic – why she couldn’t go to school, play with friends, or come into the office with me.
Ultimately, we took her temperature several times a day, baked a lot of pumpkin bread, tried to finish up the math packet, got her tested on Day 5, completed the “Return to School” Google Form, uploaded her negative test results, and sent her back to school today with a well-fitting mask.
So our first quarantine is over, and with the hopeful news about vaccines for the under-12s, I can at least cross my fingers that it might be our last!
