You know those vacation t-shirts that say, “My Grandparents went to (exotic location of your choice) and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”? That’s how I feel about Suzanne’s last trip. She got the fun adventure, lots of social time and seeing old friends — plus, alas, COVID — but all I got was the virus. So unfair!

I’m so grateful for the vaccination and booster, though, because it’s honestly pretty unpleasant. I suspect my immune system would be going crazy if it hadn’t already had those exposures. Right now it’s the equivalent of a bad, reasonably long-lasting cold. I tested for the first time last Thursday, because I felt like I was starting to get sick, and I was negative. By Friday I was clearly sick, and yesterday I took the test to confirm that it was the virus, mostly so I could notify my healthcare provider who then notifies the county. (The only way for people to realistically assess their own risk is if sick people share their info and I want the county numbers to represent reality.)

Anyway, yesterday’s test was the fourth time I’d seen a rapid test in action and I had to laugh: after you do the test, you’re supposed to wait fifteen minutes for the positive line (the T in the image above) to appear. I barely had time to say “Alexa, set a timer for fifteen minutes” before the positive line appeared. So, so, so positive.

Even before I got sick I was having many unproductive days, largely because the puppies have turned into escape artists. I blame Bear, mostly, although Sophie is an eager participant. But not only do they move the concrete block to escape out the front yard, someone — and in a choice between the small dog and the big dog, it’s hard to believe that the small dog is responsible — managed to pull down a board from the backyard fence, creating a gap that both dogs could easily go through. And did! They had much fun visiting the neighbor dogs. Fortunately, the neighbor dogs didn’t seem to mind the territorial invasions.

But the puppies aren’t the only escape artists. Bear — and it was definitely Bear because I caught her in the act — also tried to pull a board off the chicken coop. I stopped her, but she loosened the wire fencing enough that the chickens are now capable of letting themselves out of the coop. Chickens, incidentally, are stupid. When the big predator opens a hole in your enclosure, the right response is NOT to go visit the big predator. Or even the small predator.

The chickens have escaped three times now, much to Sophie’s delight. She is SOO excited to chase them. The chickens are not so excited to be chased. The first time was the worst, because it was just me and both dogs, and the dogs did not understand why I was not happy about the new game. I had to get the dogs shut into the tiny house before I could work on getting the chickens back into their coop. Fortunately, chickens — although apparently stupid about big predators — are not stupid about food. A person carrying cheese is like the Pied Piper as far as the ladies are concerned.

My point, though, was that the puppies are requiring enough supervision when outside that I wasn’t getting much done even before I got sick. Once I got sick, I just stopped even trying. I will get back to writing, obviously, but it wasn’t going to be last week. It’s not the worst of fates, though, to need to spend my time supervising puppies in the backyard supervising puppies. Sophie is eleven+ months old, Bear is ten+ months old, and they are growing up fast. I feel really lucky that I get to spend so much good time with them.

I do have a lot I want to do, though. First priority should definitely be writing some thank you notes, (thank you, Dad & Charleene! thank you, Marcia & Bill! thank you, Christina & Greg!) but I also have an audio short story (The Spirits of Christmas) that I’ve been meaning to post for a couple weeks and… hmm. Well, I know my to-do list was a lot longer than that, but apparently I have just hit my energy wall. I think I need to go back to bed. Still, I got out of bed today and I wrote a blog post; perhaps I can call that sufficient accomplishment for the day.