We're getting better all the time...

Tomorrow Miriam is supposed to be a page at the state senate, but she's been a little nervous about riding downtown with Andrew (who has been down with COVID). He's been taking Paxlovid for about four days now, though, and woke up feeling great this morning, so he took a test this afternoon and...it was negative!

"Wow! You won the COVID race!" I said.

"That's true!" he said. "I was positive for the least amount of time. Of course, I'm taking performance-enhancing drugs."

Which...is true.

So, Zoë is negative, Phoebe is negative, Andrew is negative. 

Benjamin took a test yesterday and it was ever-so-faintly positive, but we let him downstairs to play in the basement anyway...for the first time in over a week...to play LEGO. 

I'm still sick and am scared to test because I'm afraid it's going to be "more" positive than I'd like it to be at this point. While designed to be solely an indication of disease, and are no approved to show how much of the disease is present, the rapid-tests can actually offer an indication of how many virus antibodies are active in your body: "The line that you see on a test 'is actually made up of millions and millions of little antibodies holding onto a dye...so the more virus, the more little dye molecules are going to line up on the line.'" Thus, the tests offer more than a binary (yes/no) answer to the question of whether or not you have COVID; rather, "the intensity of the line does tend to correlate with the amount of antigen in the sample."

So I'm hoping for a faint, faint line. We'll see...if in a few days...when I get brave enough to take a test...

Let's see...

Alexander is still pretty freshly sick, but he's feeling pretty okay. 

Here's a picture of him and Zoë with a puzzle they worked on together yesterday evening:

Slowly getting better

Zoë tested negative for COVID on Tuesday (five days after she tested positive). Phoebe tested negative for COVID on Saturday (seven days after she tested positive). She's been full of energy the past few days, so we knew she was feeling better.

It sure would be nice if everyone had as much energy as Phoebe!

Consonant clusters

I'm not taking Paxlovid. I thought about trying it this time around, but it just didn't feel right to completely wean Phoebe while she's trying to get over COVID as well (though I'm sure she'll finish up weaning in the next few weeks, anyway, and then I might have wished that I had just cut her off and taken the medicine). Andrew is taking Paxlovid, however.

Oh, by the way, Andrew and Alexander tested positive today so obviously we've done a bang up job at containing this virus. 

Anyway, Andrew went ahead and got a prescription for Paxlovid. He just had to take a picture of his positive rapid-test and a random doctor online wrote out a script. 

On the one hand, I think that's approaching accessibility (and that's good). On the other hand, why don't we just make it over-the-counter at this point? I mean, it's not like the doctor is doing any actual safe-guarding in this situation. 

We have so many positive tests sitting on our counter...Andrew didn't have to take a picture of his own test. I mean, he did because...honesty is...good. But, I mean, come on... I guess I'm just team "make it over-the-counter." That said, I have no knowledge of how these decisions are made, so I guess I'll let those more knowledgable than me hash it out (but if they're looking for opinions, there's mine). 

Paxlovid.

The first time Andrew used it was when we had COVID the first time and I, honestly, was about 100 times sicker than I was this time around. I was miserable. But, I also had a baby who was still nursing full time, so Paxlovid wasn't even a consideration. But it worked really well for Andrew, who hardly got sick (comparatively speaking). 

I called the drug pax-LO-vid. 

He teased me for pronouncing it wrong, telling me it sounded far too Russian—pax-LO-vid, with a rich liquid /l/ following the tricky /sk/ of the x. Because here's the thing: you look at the word paxlovid and you think to yourself that there's only an "xl" consonant blend, just two little letters. And how hard can that be to pronounce? We have a billion consonant blends in English. I'll share some examples of blends below from this very paragraph:

sounded: nd

tricky: tr

think: nk

consonant: nt (and kind of ns, I guess, though that's a syllable break, so...I dunno)

blend: bl and nd

hard: rd

pronounce: nc
from: fr
paragraph: gr

English: Now, that one is pretty tricky since it looks like "ngl" is three consonants together, which is a somewhat unusual occurrence in English. However, the /ng/ is technically a single sound (/ŋ/ in the IPA), so it's still just a two-consonant blend. Think is technically /ŋ+k/, so that is two sounds.

Tricky, on the other hand, clearly has a two-consonant blend at the beginning of the word /tr/, but although it looks like that /ck/ at the end is another consonant blend, it's really not, phonetically speaking. We've just doubled the orthography representing one sound...so...it's not any different from any other /k/ sound and is not a phonetic blend; it's a digraph.

Same thing with that /ph/ in paragraph. That's a digraph, not a consonant blend. /Th/ is also a digraph—two letters coming together to form a single sound. 

X is tricky in English because it is a single letter representing two sounds /k+s/, so it alone qualifies as a consonant cluster, phonetically speaking, even though it's made up of a single letter.

I'm getting to the story, guys, I promise. 

Just around the river bend...

I feel like I have turned the corner on this illness, which is a good feeling. I mean, I'm just on the other side of feeling really awful, so I still feel really awful, but I feel on the downward slope of feeling awful rather than on the upward climb. So that's good news.

*****

We've been going through popsicles like water over here.

Here's a picture of Zoë so graciously sharing the last of her popsicle with Phoebe...after she dropped it on the ground:

Positive things happening over here

1) Zoë tested positive for COVID on January 31.

2) I was accepted into UGA's PhD program in Language and Literacy Education on February 2.

3) Benjamin and Phoebe tested positive for COVID on February 3.

4) Then I tested positive for COVID on February 6 (today).

Atlanta Zoo

Here's that same picture of Zoë (who is still coughing up a storm but testing negative for COVID now) with the flamingoes, which were actually quite a clever attraction so close to the entrance of the zoo. I haven't been to many zoos, but I feel like both the entrances to the Hogle Zoo and North Carolina zoos spill patrons out into plazas looking at large animals, which are neat, but...I don't know. The flamingoes were just entertaining—flapping and splashing and squawking around in captivating ways that elegant giraffes just can't manage. 

It kept the children's interest while we all filed into the zoo and used the restrooms and oriented ourselves.

How it's going

By yesterday Benjamin was feeling poorly—though testing negatively—so we left all the big kids at home to either recuperate or do homework, depending on whether they were sick or whether they are teenagers, and headed to the park for some carefree, unmasked, fresh air time:

The teenagers are not sick. 

A fresh air day

Phoebe, the boys, and I spent the day at the park. It's usually empty during the day when school is in session and it kept us out of the house and in the fresh air. For the most part everyone has been good about masking inside the house...but Phoebe doesn't understand why she should have to do that...so it's better to simply keep her where the air is clean.

In fact, when I first donned my mask inside, Phoebe ran to find a mask, and begged to have someone help her put it on, saying, "Me go, too! Me go, too!"

"I'm not going anywhere," I told her. "But you can wear a mask."

COVID, round 2

Tuesday was zoo day and it was a beautiful day! Everyone was excited and happy and healthy!

Here's Zoë hanging out with the flamingos at the zoo opening:

See how perky she is? How vibrant? How cheerful and carefree?

The only thing she complained about on Tuesday was a "dry" throat, which didn't really send up any red flags for me. She had a fun time at the zoo with everyone else. 

Petting zoo (the zoo within the zoo)

Going to the zoo on a Tuesday morning in January was a chilly idea, but an excellent one overall. We were shocked—shocked, I tell you!—to find the parking lot mostly empty when we arrived. I don't think I've ever been to such an empty zoo (except, perhaps, for the zoo in Cairo). So finding parking was easy!

We got a free pass for four from the library, and then Grandpa also got a pass for four, so this outing was much cheaper than expected (which was nice), and we almost had the place to ourselves! We took the zoo "backwards," as Andrew described it, which I think simply means that we took the available loop counter clockwise. This put us at the petting zoo first thing (after the flamingos), which was very exciting, at least for Rachel, Benjamin, Phoebe, and Alexander (and Prima), who were al excited about getting to pet the animals. Miriam and Zoë were a little less excited about the animals.