All the things I found helpful when dealing with my mild COVID case

As promised, here are things that my girlfriend and I found most helpful when dealing with our mild COVID cases, as well as some things I wish I’d known before getting sick and that I’d do differently if I could. (Note: I’m not a healthcare professional and you should not take the below as binding medical advice; this is a blog! Please talk to a healthcare provider about this stuff if you’re sick, and listen to what they tell you.)

Things that were quite helpful for us when we had COVID:  

Giant water bottles with straws. I was really having trouble staying hydrated in the first few days of getting sick, in part because I didn’t have a good drinking vessel. I knew exactly what I needed: the kind of no-fuss water bottle with a bendy straw that you get when you stay in the hospital. Two days later, these bottles arrived and they genuinely helped so much. Here’s mine ($6.10) and my girlfriend’s ($16.99) — aside from cold meds and a thermometer, this is the main thing I would recommend buying now. 

A neti pot and distilled water. I swear by a neti pot for allergy problems, and having a few neti pots helped so, so much throughout the week. There was a point early on when my sinus pressure was so awful, my bottom teeth hurt, and the neti pot was life-changing. Also be sure to get the distilled water for it in advance so you are ready to go/don’t get a brain amoeba from using tap water! :) There are a bunch of different types of neti pots out there; I prefer the plastic teapot style/think it’s easiest for beginners. Most come with the saline packets, but if you already have a neti pot that you use regularly, make sure you also have a decent supply of the saline ready to go. 

Putting a temporary trash can next to the bed. Early on, when I was burning through tissues at an alarming rate, I took a tip I got from UFYH and put a brown paper bag next to my bedside for used tissues, DayQuil wrappers, etc. It was so nice to have this! Nightstand tops get filled up (and gross) quickly when you’re sick, and it was a small thing that helped me feel a little better and less disgusting. 

A stick of men’s deodorant. From the very beginning of our COVID cases, we used a stick of L’Occitane deodorant to see how our sense of smell was doing; this ended up being helpful because it’s a strong and familiar-to-us scent. Also, because we were using it the entire time, we had a clear sense of how our sense of smell was waning day to day. I think a stick of Old Spice or any other men’s deodorant would work just as well, assuming you give it a few sniffs when you’re healthy. 

The thing my girlfriend and I both found is that when your smell and taste starts to go, it can be really subtle at first, and you can quickly forget what anything used to smell and taste like. Suddenly it’s like, Is this just bland or am I unable to taste it? Did these ground coffee beans always smell this faint? So my advice is to opt for things that are really recognizable to you. (At one point, after I felt like I had no idea what ramen is supposed to taste like, my girlfriend had me bite into a fresh cut lemon slice to see if I could taste that. When I didn’t really wince at it — I could sense “sour” but not much beyond that — we knew my sense of taste was in trouble.)

Slowing down, literally. I’m a fast walker and often move around my apartment at a pretty quick pace. That is...not ideal when you’ve got COVID and need to take it easy. I was good about staying put in bed, but I also forced myself to just move slower whenever I did get up, and to move at a much much much slower speed than I normally would when I started doing chores again. 

A daily vitamin cocktail. Every healthcare provider we talked to suggested that we take Vitamin D, Vitamin C, zinc, and magnesium. So did some friends, and my mom. It felt very, like, How did we not get this memo? So, that’s something I’d recommend buying today. (But please look to a healthcare provider for dosage info, drug interactions, etc.)  

Orange juice. Our friend Doug left us some orange juice (along with a few other things, including flowers!) when he picked up Chuck, and it was great to have. Drinking OJ definitely helped me stay hydrated, especially as I waited for my giant water bottle to arrive; LaCroix was just not up to the task. (Orange juice was also the only thing I could really taste for a couple of days there, so I found it very comforting.) 

Tea. Another thing several friends sent that was crucial to staying hydrated and feeling good; it was also good to have a mix of herbal tea (get peppermint, for nausea!) and caffeinated tea because we weren’t making coffee all week in the interest of taking it easy. 

Advil Sinus Congestion & Pain. This was a One Medical provider rec, and I ended up really liking it for sinus symptoms. Also, it only involves taking one pill, and the packaging is much easier to deal with than DayQuil. It’s very similar to DayQuil but lacks a cough suppressant, so it’s what I’ve been taking on days when my sinus problems don’t include much coughing.

Capsule. I’ve been using Capsule for prescriptions for the past year and have been really happy with it — they have great customer service, quick turnaround times, and are just genuinely helpful. They also now deliver OTC meds, so we were able to get things like DayQuil and NyQuil. (I also noticed last week that they deliver Plan B, which is a good thing to know if you’re having the kind of sex that could lead to pregnancy!)

Opening a window. Ventilation is a great way to help keep housemates safe if you’re sick, but even if you don’t do it for that reason, know that fresh air can be a very welcome relief if you’re in bed sick coughing and sneezing. When we finally opened the windows after a few days in bed, it felt amazing. We also put a fluffy Brooklinen quilt on the bed for the duration of the time we were sick (like duvet o’clock, 24/7) and being bundled under that with the windows open was very nice — the cheap version of, IDK, being in a hot spring in Iceland. 

Patient.info. This UK-based website was a good resource, with articles that get to the point in the way that, say, the New York Times does not. A couple we found helpful: Coronavirus: what are asymptomatic and mild COVID-19? and Coronavirus: what are moderate, severe and critical COVID-19? It was really useful for us to be able to see exactly where our symptoms fell on this spectrum when we were feeling worried. 

A natural way to drain sinuses. One night during Week #2, I was so, so congested — to the point that a neti pot wouldn’t even work on one side of my nose; I was just completely blocked, and my ears were starting to feel really terrible as a result. So I started poking around on YouTube for some kind of way to massage my face and ended up going with “Lymph Drainage for the Ears from Louisville Massage Therapist at MassageByHeather.com.” It worked wonders — like, within the first minute or two, I was already feeling relief. 

5-4-3-2-1. This technique was a Sally recco for dealing with catastrophizing, and it helped a lot with the uncertainty and anxiety of having COVID. 

Muting the term “COVID” on Twitter for a week. I did this after a tweet about a young healthy guy dying of COVID popped up in my feed, and I really recommend doing it after a positive test. 

Finally, my best advice is that, if you can afford to, it’s a really good idea stock up on stuff while you are healthy. We had a lot of what we needed on hand because we bought it last fall, and I’m so glad we did; it made everything less stressful and less painful. We had DayQuil, NyQuil, Advil, Tylenol, Mucinex, tissues, saltines, a thermometer, and neti pots. We did not have distilled water, packaged ramen, popsicles, or any of the recommended vitamins, which meant we had to get them delivered — so add things like that to your cart now if possible.

Things that were...debatable:

Pulse oximeter. This is something we got mixed advice on from the different healthcare professionals we talked to; we ended up using the one we bought last summer (and apparently the city of New York will give you one as part of the care package they offer everyone who tests positive). This NYT article is a good background/explainer. Personally, I found it very stressful to use the pulse oximeter often, because the numbers do fluctuate a lot, and ours occasionally told me my heart rate and oxygen was so low I would have been fully dead...only to give me a completely normal reading 10 seconds later. (These devices can apparently be less effective on people with dark skin, so maybe that played a role — it’s hard to say.) Ultimately, I’d say listen to your doctor’s recommendations on this one, and maybe set limits for how often you’ll let yourself check this number. 

“Deep yoga breaths.” This is another thing that a bunch of healthcare providers recommended, and I feel mixed about it. On the one hand, I don’t doubt that taking big breaths is good...but on the other hand, yoga breathing isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and not being able to comfortably do very many big deep yoga breaths in a row stressed me out (even though I think I was breathing pretty OK overall) which then gave me anxiety. So I guess I’d just say talk to a healthcare provider at length about how to best check to see if what you’re experiencing qualifies as “having trouble breathing” and about how many deep yoga breaths you should expect to be able to take comfortably.  

Things our friends did that rocked:

Our friends were wonderful and supportive in so many different ways, one of which was sending food. This was great because we had like zero energy for doing anything beyond warming things up in the microwave. If you are sending food to a friend with COVID, I’d recommend choosing something that’ll keep for a couple of days because 1) their appetite might wax and wane quite a bit, and 2) if they get a lot of food from friends, it’ll be nice to have things for later in the week. We truly appreciated everything we got, but the bagels and cream cheese, matzoh ball soup, tea, ramen, and boxed mac and cheese were standouts. Also, consider sending sweets — we could taste those better in general, and they brought a bit of joy and delight during a really rough week! And I have to give a shoutout to Spoonful of Comfort, which Sally sent us; it’s delicious, and the packaging is so charming. Also, having a full meal of soup, rolls, and cookies after days of being sick felt extra special.

In terms of checking in on us, our friends did a mix of things; Sally did morning and evening vibe checks which made sense given how often we talk and how close we are. Other friends checked in every few days, which felt like a conscious choice to avoid bombarding us, and which we also appreciated. And others waited patiently to be updated (and I tried to make a point to update them regularly because I knew they wouldn’t want to bug us). But if you’re sick and struggling with lots of people asking you how you’re doing or giving you not-helpful advice, it’s really OK to set boundaries! And maybe think about using IG close friends or something to that effect to share info with multiple people at once, or appointing one or two people to update the rest of the family/friend group. 

Also don’t be afraid to lean on friends to help you with research! It’s very hard to research basic things about COVID without also getting, like, terrifying info that’ll make you think you’re going to die within the hour. I definitely asked friends to look into things a couple of times for us, and they were happy to research and relay info to us.  

Things I would do differently if I could: 

View allergy and sinus symptoms as possible COVID symptoms. There are so many Venn diagrams on the internet that lay out the differences between allergies, sinus infections, a cold, the flu, and COVID…and reading them made us think we were probably fine. Two separate healthcare providers also thought we were fine! It ultimately didn’t matter because we chose to get tested, but I gotta say...do not sleep on sinus or allergy symptoms! (I’ve also been hearing from other people who had COVID that they also had sinus symptoms.)

Get tested earlier and/or go to a testing site that offered rapid results. This wasn’t the biggest deal in the world because we weren’t going out and doing things or going to work in person, but getting tested earlier definitely would have saved us some stress on Tuesday and Wednesday. (Like, I don’t think I would have felt the need to obsessively check for my results on Saturday or Sunday because I wasn’t very sick at that time.) We also were sicker by Tuesday, meaning trekking to get tested and standing outside waiting was more unpleasant. And we *just* managed to beat a big snow on Tuesday; had we waited any longer, getting tested would have been considerably more difficult. You just never know what the next few days might bring, and I don’t think putting off a test is a good idea if you have the time/means/transportation/ability/etc. 

Also, I thought that all of the H+H sites in NYC did rapid testing, but that wasn’t actually the case, and the website was a little confusing to navigate, especially on mobile. In hindsight, I wish I would have looked into finding the closest site to me that offered rapid testing while I was healthy so that I knew exactly where to go when the time came. So that’s something to look into now! (Also, I’d seen so many New Yorkers recommending the city sites over private testing at places like One Medical because the city sites were said to be considerably faster. So even though we didn’t get same-day results, I am still glad we did H+H. In any case, this is all the kind of stuff to pay attention to right now!) 

Better document my symptoms during the first week. I was ultimately able to remember everything that happened the first few days, before I tested positive, because I was paying such close attention...but then I kind fell off for a few days right after we got our results. Those middle days in bed just really blended into each other! It wasn’t a huge deal to not have that documentation, but it was also easy enough to make notes in my Day One journal app each day after that, and to note what meds I had taken and when so I could stay on top of everything. Honestly, I think it’s worth it to start making notes from the get-go; it doesn’t take much effort, and it’s really helpful to be able to communicate this stuff to a doctor, especially in an emergency situation. 

Never take zinc on an empty stomach. Doing so made me *instantly* feel like I was going to be very sick, and actually made my girlfriend throw up at one point. 

Sleep more. Even though I wasn’t getting up as early as I normally would, I was still setting an alarm every morning for...no good reason, in hindsight! A friend of ours who likely had COVID last spring said he slept for 12–14 hours a day, but because I’m not much of a napper, I think it would have been wise for me to sleep more at night.  

Expect to be sicker longer. In talking to other people who have had COVID, it sounds like it’s not unlikely to take 3–6 weeks to recover...and I can say that it’s definitely taking longer than two weeks to feel better! During the third week, I was still waking up with sinusy symptoms every morning that were bad enough to necessitate meds, and I still felt very low-energy. In hindsight, I would have just planned that I’d need two full weeks off of work to rest and recover, and would maybe even have taken a couple days of the third week off.

The Wednesday of the third week, after putting in a normal workday with lots of editing, I did a few chores and was fucking wiped. This very soothing and validating article (which I read while fucking wiped) encourages folks recovering to not do too many “thinking activities,” like emails and planning things. I ended up taking that Friday off to extend the long weekend and rest more, and I think that helped a lot. It’s only right now, just past the four week point, that I’m feeling somewhat normal again, and I'm still taking it easy and trying not to over-extend myself. 

If you get COVID and are fortunate enough to be able to take PTO, I’d recommend taking a little more than you think you’ll need, and think about padding your time off with another day or two to be able to do any chores/tasks that piled up while you were sick (knowing that you shouldn’t expect to do a full day of chores on, like, Day 11; see also: move slowly). It’s also good to have a little time to simply process what it means to be sick with COVID, because it’s fairly overwhelming, and that has been a delayed feeling in our case.

If you can’t take time off work, or can’t take much, or have to go back to a job where you’re going to be on your feet all day, I still think it’s good to know that it’ll likely be a while before you’re at 100%. Clear your calendar outside of work to the extent that you can, ask for help to the extent that you can, and just be as gentle with yourself as possible.  

Also! Being sick longer means you’ll likely need more meds than you might expect, so keep that in mind when stocking up, and make sure you have enough if multiple people in your household are sick. 

Don’t put things off that you can do now. Look, if you’re worried you’re going to die, you might not care about whether your bedroom is tidy...but if you’re anything like me, you’re capable of vacillating between thinking you’re going to die and wishing your bedroom was tidy!!! The thing is, having some household chores done really does make it easier to recover and function, and you definitely shouldn’t be doing chores while sick. 

All this to say: do what you can to avoid waiting to refill necessities (from prescription meds to dog food to trash bags to toilet paper) until the last possible minute, try to always have clean socks and underwear in your drawer, keep your gas tank relatively full, make a pot of soup and freeze it, etc. Have a plan for what you’ll do if you get sick (including figuring out where you’ll get tested and what doctor you’ll call for a follow-up appointment). Figure out who might be able to take care of your pet if you’re sick/can’t leave your apartment, and put together a doc with instructions for the pet’s care while you’re healthy and able. We didn’t have everything we needed when the time came, but I can’t overstate how relieved I was to have the things we did have. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. ✨

🍑

Positive

My girlfriend and I tested positive for COVID two weeks ago; we got tested on the morning of Tuesday Jan. 26 at an NYC H&H site, and got our results on Wednesday evening (Jan. 27). We both had mild cases (technically speaking) and are doing OK now, but we aren’t back at 100% yet, and are definitely still sicker than we’d like to be/than you might expect. (BTW, here's a list of everything we found helpful when dealing with our mild COVID cases.)

Here’s what the past couple of weeks have been like. 

Where we got it

We truly don’t know how we got sick. My girlfriend barely leaves our apartment; I leave it daily to take Chuck out, which makes pinpointing a specific day when I could have gotten sick difficult. My route outside through the building is very brief: down one very short hallway, down a flight of stairs, past two elevators, down a corridor and outside — it probably takes 90 seconds, tops, from door to door. I rarely encounter other humans (I wait for people to exit if I hear voices) and I definitely don’t encounter unmasked people at close range. Whenever we leave the apartment, we’re always wearing masks that have filters in them. (I think we started double-masking a day or two after I likely got infected, and our better masks only arrived this weekend.) We haven’t been in any businesses in months.

To give you an example of how much we’ve avoided any sort of contact: at the end of December, our car’s battery died and needed to be replaced, so we had it towed to the nearest dealership and when it was ready to pick it up, we made the 90 minute walk to Queens to avoid public transportation or an Uber. If we order takeout, we put the food in the oven before eating it to be extra careful, and we let groceries sit (either in our entryway or in fridge drawers) for a day or two before using them. We haven’t done masked or unmasked hangouts or anything that even comes close to the CDC’s definition of “close contact.” In the timeframe in which we would have gotten infected, we hadn’t even checked the mail. 

So, right now, our best guess is that I got it taking Chuck outside — maybe someone coughed or sneezed unmasked in the hallway, and I had the unfortunate luck to walk through it a minute later. (Surface transfer seems unlikely given our rigorous handwashing practices and the fact that I wear gloves out now that it’s winter. It’s also pretty rare in general.) It seems quite possible that the more contagious variant had something to do with it, and a lot of people in our building don’t appear to be particularly cautious. (Last night, for example, two people on our floor, including our next-door neighbors, were hosting parties.) I don’t know how I got COVID, and I’ll never know. It’s frustrating, given how cautious we’ve been, but our caution likely also kept me from getting sicker or getting sick sooner, which matters a lot.

Physical symptoms

The first sign that something was wrong was Friday night (Jan. 22), when I did three (3) mild, dry coughs. Then I coughed mildly all day Saturday, probably a few times an hour. I also had a really itchy mouth and nose; I’d had two bad allergy moments during the week (on Tues and Thurs) that seemed pretty clearly tied to my kicking up a bunch of dog hair and dust, and our apartment felt especially dusty overall, so it made sense to me that I was still experiencing weird indoor allergies. I felt a bit low-energy but not awful. I took it verrrrry easy just to be on the safe side — no workouts or walks or anything like that. I also took my temperature throughout the day and it was normal. 

On Sunday when I woke up, my tongue felt a bit weird, and suddenly I had the thought, Oh no, is this me losing my sense of taste and smell? so I immediately went to the bathroom and smelled some deodorant and tasted the mint toothpaste; everything was fine/normal. It made me think that the sensation in my mouth was likely itchiness (especially because my nose/ears were still itching a lot). Throughout the day Sunday, I coughed a bit less than Saturday, but my cough wasn't all gone. Around noon, I managed to get the last drops of my usual prescription allergy nasal spray into my nose and I felt WORLDS better within an hour, which made sense to me given my allergy symptoms throughout the weekend. I took it easy again all day, and had a remote One Medical appointment that night. They refilled my nasal spray and didn't seem at all concerned that it could be COVID; they said that I had likely inhaled dust or some other allergen, and that’s why I was having an ongoing reaction.

That Monday, I woke up feeling pretty fine/normal — maybe a little slow moving, but nothing noteworthy. I think I coughed two or three times during the day. But around 2:00 in the afternoon, I had another bad allergic reaction feeling all of a sudden — I was super sneezy, really itchy, etc. This isn’t wildly uncommon for me, though it’s usually triggered by outdoor allergens. I decided to take the rest of the afternoon off of work because I was just really dragging ass. My allergy meds weren't doing much for me at this point, and I also started taking Advil because I had a headache. As the night went on, I felt low-energy with a lot of increasing sinus pressure and congestion; I was congested enough at that point to have to start breathing through my mouth.

The most concerning thing was that my girlfriend woke up Monday feeling…off. She felt really fatigued and had body aches from her back downward; it was bad enough that she took a sick day. By Monday evening, we both had symptoms that were identical to all the symptoms of allergies/sinus infection on every website we looked at (and we looked at...many websites) as well as cold symptoms, so we went back and forth between thinking we had COVID and thinking it was something else. 

Around 10:30 that night, I looked at my girlfriend, who had been feeling progressively worse (she said her legs felt “like someone had taken a hammer to them”). Suddenly she went from looking sick to looking BAD — there was absolutely no color in her face, and she was really weak. She had been taking her temperature all day — we both had — and it was still normal, but this was the point where I started to feel really worried. Around 1 a.m., she woke me up and her skin was hot to the touch; throughout the day, I’d been putting my hand on her forehead to see if she felt warm, and every time, was kind of like, I don’t know what I’m feeling for here??? But at that moment, I was like, Oh, I don’t need a thermometer to tell me that this isn’t normal. And then a thermometer confirmed that her temperature had indeed spiked (I believe it was 100.4), which was really alarming and upsetting. 

The next morning, her fever was gone, and she had a remote appointment at 7:30 a.m. with someone from OneMedical, who diagnosed her with sinusitis and prescribed an antibiotic. Their general attitude was kind of like, Sure, you can get a COVID test if you want to… I think because our contact with people was so nonexistent. They didn’t even say it could be the flu. At this point, we just wanted to know for sure as soon as possible, so we drove over to the nearest H&H site as soon as it opened and got tested for the first time ever. 

We both felt pretty bad throughout the day on Tuesday; my nose started running a ton after we got home from our testing appointment, and I went between having a really runny nose and feeling really congested. (I went through nearly an entire box of Kleenex from Tuesday to Wednesday.) I had a lot of sinus pressure and itchiness in my face, and overall felt like I had a really bad cold. My sense of taste and smell was fine, but was also not AMAZING due to all the congestion. We just tried to drink fluids and rest (we both took the day off work), and both used our respective neti pots a couple times to relieve the sinus pressure (which helped a lot), along with taking DayQuil. 

Wednesday was another day of feeling crappy. I felt like I had a bad cold or sinus infection: stuffy nose, runny nose, bad congestion, headache, some coughing, etc. I also got my period, which is fucking criminal. I was trying to stay optimistic because sinus pressure wasn’t listed anywhere as a common COVID symptom, but it was just impossible to say for sure what was going on, or to think we would be spared getting COVID when things are so bad. We finally got our test results around 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday night, and had both tested positive. 

We each had separate appointments with different providers at One Medical that night, and I talked to my aunt, a nurse who has been working with COVID patients since last March. A lot of similar themes emerged (and we heard the same stuff the next day from the person who called us from the city): treat the symptoms; rest and take it very easy; take zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and magnesium; take deep yoga breaths; and look for signs that things were getting worse. The main thing we were told to look for was trouble breathing; the person I talked to at One Medical said that it’s OK if you’re out of breath because you got up to do something around the house, but if you sit down and still can’t catch your breath, that’s a problem. (We also heard mixed things about using a pulse oximeter, but did end up using ours to monitor ourselves.) 

Right after the results came through, we told our families and friends about the diagnosis, and made arrangements for our friends Doug and Nathalie to pick Chuck up (no-contact) to watch him for the duration of our isolation. Saying good-bye to Chuck was hard; it was just one of those moments when things felt very real and very sad. We also missed him a lot while we were sick. (Meanwhile, he thrived at Doug and Nathalie’s.)

From there, we just hunkered down and rode it out. We were told to rest and to not take a day of feeling good as license to start doing chores or anything like that, which I think is good advice. We spent the entire duration of our isolation in bed watching The Sopranos and Real Housewives of New York, coughing and blowing our noses and taking meds and drinking fluids and mouth-breathing and doing frequent symptom check-ins and temperature checks. Our cases were similar but different; my girlfriend’s had more highs and lows (and she was sicker than I was), while mine was more consistently medium-shitty. I also was two days ahead of her in terms of symptoms; for example, I lost my senses of taste and smell first and then, two days later, hers started to go. 

Even though our cases were technically mild, they weren’t a walk in the park by any means, and we’re both still sick, and sicker than you might expect two weeks after catching something cold-like. Both of us still need meds (DayQuil or Advil Cold & Sinus) to treat our symptoms. (Our senses of smell and taste seem to be returning though, which is a relief.) I’ll do a separate post with the things that helped us the most/things I wish I’d known, because that was the kind of thing I wanted to read when we got sick, but I was also afraid to go looking for too much information, lest I give myself a panic attack.

Aside from the physical symptoms, we were dealing with major anxiety and fear that things would take a turn for the worst at any minute — something we’d been reading about happening for the past 10 months. Every time I’d think, OK, I’m not feeling so bad, I’d start to wonder if it was the last day of my life, if I’d already been outside for the final time in my 35 years. I was glad I’d updated my will (a long overdue task I’d been putting off for a while) at the beginning of January so I didn’t have to do it while sick. My girlfriend and I set alarms every night to wake up and check on each other. It was incredibly dark and grim and the kind of thing that really separates COVID from every cold or flu I’ve ever had, even if the symptoms were ultimately pretty similar. 

My girlfriend and I were lucky, but for no apparent reason; other people our age, similarly healthy, have not been as lucky. It’s really difficult to process that. As I lay in bed, I couldn’t help but think about Dez-Ann Romain, a healthy 36-year-old high school principal who died in April. I never saw surviving COVID as a sure thing. I still wonder if there are long-term effects lurking.  

Final thoughts

We’re so close to being through this pandemic, but it’s not over yet, and by all accounts, everyone’s behavior for the next few months matters a lot, especially as the vaccine rollout lags. “We are in a race against time, and the virus appears to be gaining an unfortunate ability to sprint just as we get closer to the finish line,” Zeynep Tufekci wrote in The Atlantic five weeks ago. And just this week, I read this in a different Atlantic article: “At the same time, the more transmissible B.1.1.7 strain of the virus is becoming more prevalent in the U.S.; early evidence suggests that it may harm young people and women more than the dominant coronavirus strains do. The strain will eventually dominate the U.S., Andersen told me: ‘It’s not an if; it’s a when.” 

I was in bed, sick, when I read that indoor dining is re-opening at 25% — on Valentine’s Day, so people can propose, Governor Cuomo joked (?????????????). I was in bed, sick, when, a few days later, he said that the calls to vaccinate restaurant workers as part of that were “cheap, insincere discussion.” (He has since reversed course, but it doesn’t change that he thought that and said that.) I felt such white-hot rage in that moment. Every time I think about it, I feel sick to my stomach. 

I cannot overstate how normal and healthy I felt the days I would have been the most contagious. I had plenty of energy, I worked out, I ate and slept normally — nothing seemed amiss. If I was doing outdoor dining or seeing a few close friends or family members unmasked, I absolutely would have done it when I was super contagious without a second thought, especially given how cautious we’d been in the weeks and months before it. 

It’s really difficult to conceive of not knowing what is happening in your own body at a given moment, or to believe that you could be contagious when you don’t seem contagious or sick at all. It’s even harder to believe this if you’re not doing things you deem risky...and I don’t think most people are doing things they deem risky; I think most of us are doing things that fit our personal definition of “safe.” We’re doing the things we’ve been doing for months now, the things that, for whatever reason — and lower case numbers can play a really big role here — have seemingly kept us safe the whole time. But that is the reality of this virus: the day you got infected might not be obvious or knowable, and by the time you know you’re sick, it’ll likely be too late for you to protect other people. 

Literally everyone we told we had COVID had the same reaction: “You guys are the most cautious people I know.” While I know that might make it seem like getting sick is random and happens no matter what you’ve been doing, thus, Fuck it, let’s go out to dinner, I don’t think that’s the right takeaway here at all. To me, it’s that the more contagious variant is spreading and we don’t know how dominant it is, but we do know that case numbers are still really, really high around the U.S., and everyone who can needs to lock it down. Look at being safe thus far as a gift, not a guarantee.

Just Good Shit: 01.24.21

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

Hi! Here’s what I was up to this week…

On the blog

• A small nice new year thing: a house journal

Reading

An Incompetent Authoritarian Is Still a Catastrophe, The Atlantic.

Let's Not Become a Bunch of Panicky Reactionaries, In These Times.

Cori Bush: Can She Bring the Movement for Black Lives to Congress?, Teen Vogue.

My Life Sewing T-Shirts for 26 Cents an Hour, The New Republic.

My ‘Long Covid’ Nightmare: Still Sick After 6 Months, NYT Magazine.

Mary Retta on the B.S. that is celebrating Black people in law enforcement in order to convince us that police reform is possible.

Gay Stories for Straight Allies, Utopian Drivel.

Improve Your Life With These Tiny Chores, NYT.

The Corny Comforts of the Biden Inauguration, GQ.

PSA: Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Is About Jews Having Sex, Hey Alma.

“I Think My Gmail Has Crashed”: The Teacher Who Made Bernie Sanders’ Mittens on Watching Them Go Viral, Slate.
This is so charming.

Did everyone spontaneously applaud Amanda Palmer in a Havelock North cafe? A Spinoff investigation, The Spinoff.

Watching & listening to

My girlfriend and I listened to Serial Season 3 and immediately followed it with Nice White Parents, both of which are really, really good. We’ve also been enjoying the current season of The Challenge.

Have a good one! ☀️

🍑

Sign up to get these links each week in a newsletter.

A small nice new year thing: a house journal

Here’s a little thing my girlfriend and I started at the beginning of the month: a house journal. We took an extra notebook I had and started using it for making shared lists, like movies we want to watch, recipes we’ve made, things we’re planning, etc. We’re also doing one weekly entry, on Sunday nights, where we do a quick recap list of the week’s highlights — shows we watched, purchases, any good things that happened, etc.. It’s a super low-stakes way to do pandemic journaling, and also just practical. I still have my own journal for my to-do lists, knitting projects, diary entries, etc., but I’m finding it really nice to have a singular place to document and keep track of things this year. ✍🏽

🍑

Just Good Shit: 01.17.21

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

Hello, friends! Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

My shit, elsewhere

Sally and I dropped a new episode of Oh, I Like That: “And Now for Something Light and Fun: Home Safety Tips.”

I also keep forgetting to link to a couple other recentish podcast appearances: I talked planners and journaling on Best Laid Plans, and shared my best tips for logging off with Carolyn Kylstra on Checking In.

Also, it seems like a good time to re-up this post from last January: Reading list: Race, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism in America.

Reading

The Capitol Rioters Weren’t ‘Low Class’, The Atlantic.

Only Democracy Reform Can Stop Trumpism, Crooked Media.

Nebraska meatpackers breathe for hours through blood-soaked masks. This can’t keep happening., Washington Post.

Why Aren’t We Wearing Better Masks?, The Atlantic.

How MAGA Extremism Ends, The Atlantic.

“All Bets Are Off the Next Few Weeks”, Slate.

The Dream Job That Wasn’t, The New Republic.

Sea Shanty TikTok Is on Fire, Slate.

“The Sopranos” for Women Is Just … “The Sopranos”, Inside Hook.

'Why Do I Spend Weeks Avoiding Tasks That Will Take Me 10 Minutes to Do?', VICE.
I have been thinking about this article…pretty much every single day.

Life shit

Utilizing the wisdom from this Swole Woman column, I’ve been getting back to working out regularly! I’m doing a Nerdfitness kettlebell workout twice a week (which is, for me, a less overwhelming/more attainable goal for the first month or so) and the foldable exercise bike we ordered arrived this weekend! I had my own spin bike at home for years and loved it, and I’m really looking forward to using this one. Between the workouts and my nascent knitting habit and the fact that my family members are getting vaccinated (!!!), I’m feeling pretty OK overall at the moment, despite *gestures around tiredly* everything.

Have a good night and a safe week! 🥽

🍑

Sign up to get these links each week in a newsletter.

Just Good Shit: 01.10.21

via @ReverendWarnock on Twitter

Hi, pals. Here’s what I’ve got for you this week…

Reading

The Only Strategy Left for Democrats, The Cut.
“Govern like you won, winners.”

The Man Who Saw Yesterday’s Coup Attempt Coming Is Only Surprised It Wasn’t Much Worse, GQ.

The American Abyss, NYT.

They Were Out for Blood, Slate.

‘Senate Being Locked Down’: Inside a Harrowing Day at the Capitol, NYT.

Nazis Stormed The Capitol. Why Are People Afraid To Call Them That?, Refinery29.

I Don’t Know What The Answer Is, But It’s Definitely Not More Cops, Defector.

A Domestic Terrorism Law Can’t Solve Right-Wing Violence, NY Mag.

How SoulCycle lost its soul, The Goods / Vox.

On the internet, anything can be a lesbian, Xtra.

The Man Who Turned Credit-Card Points Into an Empire, NYT Magazine.

Is ‘The Bachelor’ Just a Christian Dating Show Now?, Alma.

Rookie’s Popular ‘Life Skills’ Column Is Back, The Cut.

The Best Two-Player Board Games, According to Experts, The Strategist.

Why Is it So Hard to Design a Good Can Opener?, Curbed.

For An Easier Parchment Experience, Do the Crumple, Epicurious.
Genius.

Watching

None of the footage I saw from the Capitol on Wednesday captured the terror quite like this Chris Hayes segment — I think, in part, because of the incredibly chilling audio that is present throughout it.

Meanwhile, if you want something cathartic, definitely watch Joe Scarborough’s rant, along with this video.

Be safe and well this week. ✨

🍑

Sign up to get these links each week in a newsletter.

Just Good Shit: 01.03.21

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

A couple hours ago, my girlfriend asked me what I was going to include in my newsletter today and I said “just a bunch of little articles,” which was apparently not quite as specific of an answer as she was looking for.

Anyway, here are all your little articles!

On the blog (ICYMI)

• This tinsel is a pretty good way to spend $15

• The best things I read in 2020

• The best things I published in 2020

And there’s a new episode of the podcast this week!

Reading

The Mutated Virus Is a Ticking Time Bomb, The Atlantic.

Some Covid Survivors Haunted by Loss of Smell and Taste, New York Times.

The Year When Everyone Bullied Their Mayor, The New Republic.

‘Such a Personal, Private Thing’: Rethinking the Home Pregnancy Test, New York Times.

Rev. William Barber on Greed, Poverty and Evangelical Politics, New York Times.

The Questions of Male Consent That Puncture Both Fantasy Worlds of 'Bridgerton' and 'Wonder Woman 1984', Pajiba.

Wonder Woman’s Middle Eastern Stereotypes Should Have Stayed in the 1980s, Slate.

Watching

We’re halfway through The Flight Attendant, which is great so far, and have also been binging At Home with Amy Sedaris. Also The Reagans, which is infuriating but really well done. And Wonder Woman 1984 and Bridgerton, both of which were…bad (and not in a fun way imo).

Have a good week! 🗓

Sign up to get these links each week in a newsletter.

🍑

The best things I published in 2020

Photo of laptop by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

As the year comes to an end, I wanted to share some of the work I’m most proud of! Here are some of my faves:

• The Answer to All Your Social Distancing Loophole Questions Is No

• A Beginner's Guide for 'Straight' Women Who Want to Act on Queer Feelings

• How to Talk to Relatives Who Care More About Looting Than Black Lives

• Self-Care Tips for Black People Who Are Really Going Through It Right Now

• 'RHOP' and the Hypocrisy of 'Your Behavior Is Bad for Black Women'

• 11 Tiny Pride Floats to Help You Celebrate This Year

• If You’re Already Dreading Winter, Here Are Some Small Ways to Prepare Now

• Love/Hate Reads: 'He's Just Not That Into You,' Revisited

And my book! 💻

Earlier: The best things I read in 2020.

🍑

The best things I read in 2020

Photo of phone by Mel Poole on Unsplash

In my mind, I read very little this year besides news articles, tweets, and Notes app apologies from canceled girl bosses. But when I checked my “best of 2020” tag in Pocket over the weekend, I was surprised/happy to discover that I actually read quite a bit of good shit on the internet this year! So here, in no particular order, are my 2020 favorites:

This Is Not the Apocalypse You Were Looking For, Wired.

Do DC Renters Who Are Evicted Know About Their Court Dates?, DCist.

‘I apologize to God for feeling this way.’, Washington Post.

The Soft Butch That Couldn’t (Or: I Got COVID-19 in March and Never Got Better), Autostraddle.

Coronavirus, Charity, and the Trolley Problem, Crooked Media.

The N95 shortage America can’t seem to fix, Washington Post.

A Failure, But Not Of Prediction, Slate Star Codex.

What Did Emile Weaver Know?, ELLE.
Content note: this is a pretty harrowing article about the death of a newborn.

Tear Gas Doesn’t Deploy Itself, The New Republic.

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument, The New York Times.

My Mustache, My Self, NYT Magazine.

The Consequences of Your Actions, Design Mom.

The Darkness Where the Future Should Be, The New York Times.

How hard will the robots make us work?, The Verge.

Eating for Two, The Cut.

Learning to Swim Taught Me More Than I Bargained For, NYT Magazine.

Applying for Unemployment Is My New Full-Time Job, The Cut.

How Salon Shutdowns Are Disrupting Black Women's Haircare, Jezebel.

Dear Fuck-Up: My Close Friend Is Being Radicalized On the Internet and I Don’t Know What to Do, Jezebel.

Apparently, I’m Too Fat to Ski, The Cut.

The very real, totally bizarre bucatini shortage of 2020, Grub Street. ✨

Also: The best things I published in 2020.

🍑

This tinsel is a pretty good way to spend $15

One of the unexpected winners of the at-home birthday celebration I threw for my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago was the pack of metallic tinsely curtains ($15.99 for two silver and two gold on Amazon) I bought.

Each curtain is approximately the width of a door and fairly long/tall, with a horizontal adhesive strip at the top; I put three over the window/door to the terrace, and one over the bedroom door, and they genuinely made the space feel different and celebratory.

In fact, we liked them so much that we got a second pack to use for the “office holiday party” that we had on Tuesday night.

The curtains flutter and reflect light in a really nice way, and you actually don’t need to do anything else to make them shine. But if you want to take things up a notch, you could turn on a mini LED party light. (We used the one that came in a company swag bag my girlfriend received a couple of months ago, but you can get a similar one for $16.99 on Amazon.)

Even though you can see some window showing behind the curtains in these photos, they look great and plenty thick IRL. (But if you wanted to make them appear thicker, you could easily double them up.)

We also kept them up for our “supercouch” (aka air mattress inflated in front of the couch) movie day.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much delight/novelty the curtains provided; in this bleak year, it’s always nice when a small thing actually helps quite a bit. If you’re a New Year’s Eve person and want to do something to mark the occasion while also being safe, or if someone in your household has a birthday coming up, these are totally worth it.

Get the gold and silver four-pack from Amazon for $15.99. (They also come in a bunch of other colors, like this pretty rose gold.) ✨

🍑