Covid, Christmas Tree, Cat

The Sunday that Dan and I got back from our trip to Georgia for the wedding, Peter said he didn't feel well.  He said he was congested and had a cough and he was sneezing a lot too.

I chalked it up to seasonal allergies and/or the new cat (who has very long hair). He had no fever and no other symptoms so I was fairly certain it was not covid.

I kept him home from school on Monday and took him to the doctor because even though he had no fever, I couldn't stand the thought of him coughing all day at school and everyone giving him the evil eye.

The doctor agreed that it was not covid and most likely the beginnings of a sinus infection brought on by allergies.  So Peter headed back to school as soon as we left the doctor and life was good.

Until Tuesday.

Sarah got sent home Tuesday morning because someone that she sits near in one of her classes tested positive for covid.  She was excluded from school in person until 14 days had passed and had to do remote school.

The school recommended getting testing on day 5 or 6 so I scrambled around and got her an appointment for a rapid test on Saturday (this was November 21st not this past Saturday).

We drove to the testing center with our email in hand confirming our appointment.  There were three containers set up on the side of the building.  And when I say container, they looked like small container truck beds used for shipping.  Here is an image to help since I don't think I'm doing a good job explaining it:

Anyway, they had three of these lined up end to end and there were doors in each one on the side. Someone popped out of the first "room" and we had to hold up the email with the confirmation code printed on it in large letters and Sarah also had to hold up her driver's license.  Once we were checked in, we rolled forward to the next "room" and someone else popped out of it.

This person pushed a cart into our car.  The edge of the cart was wrapped in a pool noodle to keep it from scratching the car. He demonstrated how Sarah was to unwrap the swab, get the sample from both nostrils, and rewrap the swab. Once she did this, we had to put the sample back into the cart and push it back to this guy.

He then took the sample from the cart and took it the next "room" and deposited it there and we were on our merry way. And I am assuming that someone was in that third "room" furiously testing samples because in 45 minutes we had an email stating that Sarah was negative.

We were expecting that result because other than some sniffles (due to our lovely long-haired cat) she was absolutely fine.

She went back to school today and was very happy to be going back. She has missed a week of swim practice and has try outs tomorrow and she's nervous about that.  Apparently there are a lot of year round freshman swimmers and only a certain number of spots on the team and thanks to covid Sarah wasn't able to swim this summer or fall so she is going to be out of shape.  Hopefully muscle memory will kick in!

We got our tree on Friday after Thanksgiving like we normally do.

 And then we decorated it:

 

And Sarah made hot chocolate:

 I'm sure you could all see this coming, butwe had to give our sweet cat away because of the kid's allergies.  Peter was sneezing non-stop around the cat and had to take Benadryl to get things under control and Sarah's nose was running constantly.  We were hoping they would be able to adjust to him but it wasn't happening.

My mom agreed to take him and now she has the lap dog she's always wanted!  :)

Here's some pictures she's texted me:

And the nice thing about him being at my mom's is that he's just right next door!

I guess with that, you are all up to date and I really need to get some Christmas shopping done. Happy December 1st!