We had all the plans for our New Year’s Eve sorted a week before the big night. A few fancy cheeses that we had to practically elbow other shoppers for in our local grocery store, garlic stuffed green olives (my favorite), jams, slightly stale Christmas cookies, a fine selection of bougie crackers, and those little oily Spanish almonds. Oh, and wine, lots of wine.

We were going to ring out the interesting year that was 2022 with our son and my wife’s sister. Our intention was to have a nice evening in at home with movies. As it turns out, fate had other plans.

During Christmas dinner with the in-laws we noticed a couple of them had the sniffles. We thought nothing of it. Our guards weren’t down, per say, but you could say that we’ve relaxed them considerably since peak pandemic times.

In the ensuing days the dominos started to fall. My sister-in-law, who’s visiting from Arizona, was the first to test positive for Covid midweek last. Then my son, a day later. I started exhibiting symptoms (a hangover-like headache, chills, sensitive skin) towards the end of last week and finally developed a fever and tested positive on Saturday, a week after exposure.

Thankfully, so far, my wife hasn’t developed any symptoms at all.

I’m on my third full day with the sniffles and, although quite a bit less severe than previous variants, even the Omicron variant of this virus is no joke. It's less severe than the worse flu I've had but far more potent than a head cold. At various points I’ve felt like -- my eyeballs were on fire and had shards of glass behind them, my heart was going to beat out of my chest, achy joints, and the oddest…strange and quite intense twinges of pain in random places throughout my body, last but not least a really persistent dry cough that kept me up all night.

The best part about this is 2023 can only get better from here, that's God's honest truth. We’re planning on having a NYE 2.0 celebration at some point in January after we’re all in the clear.

During these past few days of my Covid journey I’ve found a few things that really help:

• Grapeseed oil nasal spray: This is supposed to have the potential of lessening symptoms and shortening the duration of the virus, various studies show it can protect you for contracting the virus if you’ve been exposed since Covid often incubates in the nasal cavity. It’s helped me tremendously and will be my new companion while traveling.

• Delsym 12hr Cough Medication. I owe a decent night’s sleep to this magical over-the-counter orange syrup. My cough kept me up all night that first night after testing positive but after taking a dose of Delsym the second night I was able to sleep ten straight blissful hours.

• Roasted Dandelion and Ginger Teas. Both of these teas, from Traditional Medicinals, are powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. I’ve been having a cup of each every day, sweetened with local honey, and topped off with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice for the vitamin C.

• Epsom Salt Soak. I discovered this one last night. Just before bed I soaked for fifteen minutes in a hot bath with a full cup of Epsom salt dissolved into the water. This worked wonders on the body aches and relaxed me enough to quickly drift off to sleep. Epsom salt is high in magnesium, a natural relaxant and pain reliever. I'll be doing this the next few nights, for sure.

• A dram of whiskey on ice. I don't know how much this actually helps but it makes me feel a whole lot better.

This is my third full day after testing positive and I’m beginning to feel a little better with each hour that passes. The hardest part of this all for me is not being active. I sit here thinking of all the things I could be doing if I weren’t locked away in quarantine. Then, I think about how lucky I am to have such an easy go of this. So many people didn’t survive this virus or have permanent limitations because of it.

Amstel sure does seem to be missing his Papa for walks, playing, and meal time. Here he is pestering me yesterday for his dinner. I had to explain to him that Mom is the temporary sous chef for the next few days and he was barking up the wrong tree.

All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.

~Eric Vance Walton~

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(Gifs sourced from Giphy.com.)

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Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.

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