A Close Call

 I've had many inner battles and mixed feelings about a lot of things lately. One of them was our decision to travel out West to see family for the holidays. Even my "close call" gave me more mixed feelings about it, but in the end, we decided to just stay here.

Last Monday morning, I received a call from Red Bell as I was preparing my breakfast. They told me not to come to work. Someone had tested positive for COVID-19 and we needed to wait to hear more instructions. That morning I was all distraught. They wouldn't tell me, at first, which classroom the infected person was in, due to privacy policies. It makes a big difference in my position, though, because I'm only there for four hours and come in contact only with my classroom students and my one assistant. Other teachers/assistants are there longer and have more contact with other students and teachers. 

I had to text the Relief Society Presidency who I was actually physically with the night before, the first time in a very long time. We had decided that we were going to sign Christmas cards for the ladies in our ward together, socially distanced, of course. Our area was still on a pause, but it was supposed to be lifted the next day (it wasn't of course), so none of us had been around many people, but when I found out about the COVID scare at my school, I felt awful!

After texting my boss personally and reminding her that I come from a big family and we have a lot of connections with people, even if we've been social distancing, that we would need to make aware if I was more at risk of being in contact with the infected person, she finally told me that it was a student in my class. I was going to have to quarantine and until I took the COVID test, and possibly afterward. Luckily, we have been more strict with our kids and they hadn't been around many friends that weekend, otherwise, I would have had to do a lot of texting! (Thank goodness for lots of homework over the weekend!) 

I was able to get ahead in Christmas prep and organized a lot of stuff, the few days while in quarantine. Victoria had to buy toilet paper from Target, where she was planning to go to buy some presents in her free time. We make a Walmart order every week for a pick-up. We found out that our order for last week wouldn't contain the toilet paper we desperately needed, which became a problem since the last few times I went to Costco, it was out there too. With not a big storage of it, we were suddenly out! 

Finally, Wednesday evening came and I was able to take my scheduled COVID test. I've heard many stories about how awful it is, so I wasn't looking forward to it. Lucky for me, I got to swab my own self! I made sure to put enough pressure that my eyes teared up and the nurse counted the long ten seconds for me, but I think since I could do my own and could control the amount of pressure, knowing it was sufficient, but no overkill, it was just fine!

10 minutes later, I was notified it was negative! I texted the RS presidency and my boss and we were all very relieved. Thank goodness I wear my mask at work! We can't open Red Bell until a full 14 days from when the student was there, which will be next Thursday, but at least we can be there before Christmas to get the students' gifts finished for their parents and have our holiday party!

During those long days at home, while my kids were in class and worked on homework all evening long (no exaggeration for some of them), I had many thoughts about our vacation. We were going to go to Utah and then on to California. In CA we were going to stay in a hotel, but we've read that hotels are not allowing people from out-of-state to stay in them unless they intend to be there for 14 days under quarantine first. Even with my dad's booking of the hotel, if they discovered where we're from, what if they turn us away? Utah doesn't seem to have many regulations, but on the way there, what if we're denied staying a hotel? That is less likely, but we don't want to risk it. Also, if we want this thing to pass and we're praying that it does, how can we expect our prayers to be answered if we're not doing our part??

We're all a little sad that we've canceled our whole trip, but looking forward to some of the fun ideas we have in store for us here. 

Erik and Austin made these ornaments on their Zoom primary activity (Erik was fully clothed then). Erik's looks like the Corona Virus.