So yesterday, I finally got my first shot. Washington State started bad a year ago, but got better once the governor (Democrat Jay Inslee. I can only imagine what a shit-show either of the GWP morons who ran against him would have had) shut things down. I live on the edge of an extremely red zone, such that in late April I can still drive by DRUNK 2020 posters on my way into town. Several of them. For the longest time, Enumclaw spiked harder than the other areas around me, mostly because the rest are either way rural or have more purple.
Maple Valley, WA, has been gentrifying hard since I first bought the farm ten years ago. New suburbia creeping in, as folks build mcMansions in town as well as new apartment complexes. More colors/ethnicities/nationalities of people moving in, too, which is all sorts of awesome, when the old place used to be largely descendants of the southeastern European (Slovenia, Czech, etc.) who moved in a century ago to work the coal mines around here. (Black Diamond, WA is a neighboring town, if that tells you anything.)
Something weird happened in the last month or two, though. Enumclaw went from having some of the worst numbers per capita around to doing pretty good. Not great, but down significantly. Maple Valley, conversely, swapped with them and started trending harder.
All this is a bit of background. Once enough shots had been delivered to folks at greatest risk, the governor opened everything to anyone over 18 who wanted to get a shot. That went into effect April 16. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) got her first shot on the 16th. Moderna.
She had previously had a mild case of what we assume was covid about a year ago, so we were prepared for her to suffer. She also woke up that Friday with a ‘meh’ day and maybe a touch of a cold, so her entire last week was a rotating bunch of yuck and symptoms as everything worked its way out. According to studies, folks who had been exposed or had COVID react hard to the first shot. She did.
That was why we didn’t schedule me to get a shot on the same day. I needed to be available to take care of her, which I did. At the same time, because I was exposed to her but never came down with anything, I figured I was asymptomatic.
So I was all set for a really shitty day yesterday, followed by several more after it.
Went down and got my shot at 1:10pm. Waited the 15 minutes. Drove home.
My wife has the metabolism of a hummingbird. I like to call her an elf, because a good drunk buzz on her lasts about 15 minutes tops. She reacted to the first shot in about an hour. Was mostly over the flu-like symptoms in a day, but had other things.
I came home and made a variant cheesecake. (Coconut yogurt vegan. I’ll send the recipe out with a Redneck Chef newsletter some first of the month for folks that want to try it.) Threw it in the freezer and sat down on the couch to just burn the rest of my day.
I had planned ahead, so I wrote 5,000 words per day instead of 4,000 all week, expecting that I would be too far gone to write today or Monday, and not wanting to fall behind. (And I also managed to get myself put in FB jail for reasons they won’t explain, and with no deadline, so I’m not sure when I can post over there again. Maybe ever. Maybe this is the sign I need to walk away. Will wait a few days and see.)
Was kind of brain-dead last night, but part of that was the emotional let-down of finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. It’s been a year. And I had my first shot. I am frequently surrounded by murderous nincompoops who still tell me the disease is a hoax until I block them. [I HAVE KNOWN PEOPLE WHO DIED FROM IT, YOU FUCKS!]
About the only group I am physically social with includes a fireman (first line, got his shots on day one, basically), a guy recovering from open heart surgery last fall (co-morbidities, also high on the list), and a retired army vet who was able to go down to JBLM early for his. With their spouses, I was literally the last of eight folks to get a shot. The rest are all covered at this point.
So I woke up this morning having slept on the couch. Really warm and would have kept her awake cooking her out of bed, plus I was expecting to snore. I do that when I’m sick. Slept well
Feeling reasonably okay this morning. She made bacon and eggs. I added some biscuits and homemade gravy. Sat down to blog, because I’ve been a little slack here.
Got a little coffee left. Planning to hydrate like hell today, but brain is there. Yesterday, I just let myself rabbit-hole down wikipedia. (Example: FLIT-gun. go look it up for fun.) Backbrain was generating story (“How do you make it stop?”) and I will pivot shortly to either the novel in progress or an origin story for a new “villainess” character (kind of a bad babe, but not. It’s complicated.) and work on her, so I can introduce her to a new Space Opera series I plan to write in the summer/fall.
I’ve gotten my first shot, and things seem (knock on wood) to be doing okay this morning. Which probably just means that in a month I will feel like I got run over by a beer wagon.
Y’all stay safe. Get your shots, or unfriend me, because that choice makes you an anti-vaxxer, plain and simple, and I don’t want to come anywhere near a plague rat like you, because you’ve decided to kill random strangers rather than act like anything but a toddler. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you that your life choices got you here?
Go make better choices and stop killing people.