Covid, Toil, and Breakfast

 On Friday evening I succumbed again to a mistake I'd made last fall, which is sitting in a cold room, developing a mildly snuffly nose and sore throat because of the atmospheric conditions, and then worrying that I'd caught the coronavirus after all. I also had the feeling of not having strength in my legs that I'm reasonably familiar with and had presumed is either a pre-diabetic thing or a symptom of stress or blood pressure problems.

After getting a good night's sleep, I realized that the day before I'd gone on two brisk bicycle rides without the slightest symptoms of shortness of breath, so it was probably wrong to suspect Covid. But to make the rest of the family feel more at ease, and because on top of all the other nonsense lately I did not want to self-quarantine, I went to the pharmacy and bought a coronavirus self-test for 9.95 Euros. I read through the instructions a few times before going through the steps, then waited 15 minutes as recommended for the results, and only got one line on the test strip: the control bar.

Now that I've finally been tested for Covid-19 in one form or another, I feel morbidly trendy.

Later in the day I made potato cakes to go with a less-full Irish breakfast: baked sausage and potato cakes, along with a fried egg, bacon, and tomatoes. As we did not have Guinness, I committed a diplomatic faux pas, and set up water for a more British pot of tea. It was a belated nod to St. Patrick's Day, earlier in the week.

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In general I don't feel so great.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I'd put in ~4 hours each of overtime, toiling away with a few breaks until 11 p.m. or 12 a.m.

On Thursday I reserved a half day off, which turned into more of a quarter day off...

And I put in overtime yesterday.

But it's all small peas and I'm reasonably hopeful that matters will improve. Two new teammates will join and, for the first two months at least, will reduce my team's severe short-staffing.

I will also need to schedule a pep talk for my team on Monday. The company was bought up just last week, and I want to reassure them that we'll still be valued and employed in the new company order.

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Today I woke up at 11 a.m., as the church bells were tolling after the morning service. The streets were relatively empty; the sky was grey. Mama popped out to fetch croissants, Schrippen, and other bread buns from the bakery. When she returned, Ge. had begun to grind beans for our morning coffee. And then we had a 2 hour breakfast where we talked about politics and so on.

Three of us then adjourned to the corner room. There Ge. read the Berliner Zeitung and Mama dove further into an academic book about the Visigoths etc., and I leafed through the April issue of Elle Germany and extracted a perfume sample.

Right now I'm about to prepare a batch of boxty, to take up the household trend of Irish cookery again. And I might play the second movement of Beethoven's Waldstein sonata on the piano, since like vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her far-ranging taste in newspapers, I am taking a completist approach to his later sonatas and trying to play 'all of them.' And J. is playing his mandolin repertoire: a tarantella by Saint-Saëns that does drive us slightly nuts, as a tarantella should; and Baroque pieces by Bach and Vivaldi.