You Think That You Can Front When Revelation Comes?

I can't possibly make this yet another COVID update, can I? Surely by now it's run its course and all the vaccines did their vaccinatin' and my lungs are back to their normal state of only being compromised by exposure to 1980s inland SoCal lead-based air pollution and not an active virus, right?

Well the plot, she has twisted, and the twist is in the shape of more SARS CoV-2 virus, but not for me in a Joe Biden-like recurrence, no. Instead, in the interim since last we spoke, my eldest child took himself to the largest concentration of human indoor breathing that could be found on the western seaboard at San Diego Comic-Con and came back with (and this will surprise you) a gestating COVID infection all his own. Aww, I'm a grampa.

It was a lot already that a month or two ago he told me that, even though he can't afford to live on his own in this historically brutal rental market despite having a full-time professional job and a college degree, he wanted to do something for himself and get a cat. I agreed, even though I'd never owned a cat before, but now I have two things in my house all the time: a cat and a COVID-infected adult man who is not me.

The fact that I'm on here finding plenty of time to blog at (statistically speaking only; qualitatively, I see you, I love you, you matter, you're great) nobody should tell you how I'm socially oriented. I have a job, I have someone I'm dating, I have an active gym membership, so there are people I come across, which is, you know, basic human requirement level. And I put 23+ years in now being a husband (for part of it) and a parent, all working toward one goal: occasional time in an empty house. I really can't overstate the appeal of being alone at home. That's really the only opportunity anyone ever has to really and seriously commit to getting absolutely nothing done. On my death bed, the regrets I have will very certainly be the things I never got around to deliberately not doing.

He can't go outside or go to work, so he's here all the time. And because the BA.5 bullshit threatening the occasional back-to-back infection, I'm limiting my escape time as well. That seems like an ironic thing to complain about considering I was just amping up at-home time like it was an ayahuasca retreat, but if your home insists on being stubbornly, persistently occupied, sometimes the next best option is Alone In The Car.

So I've personally defeated COVID, but like a 1980s movie villain, it's come back for my kid in this made-too-soon-after-the-original-for-way-less-money sequel. I had to go all the way to Switzerland for mine. Now not only am I saddled in quasi-lockdown, it has to be with this musky off-brand domestic shit. Tacky.