Covid AF
That stands for Alcohol Free.
I kicked off my dry spell after a New Year’s Eve at home with my kids and my visiting father. Not exactly a party night, however, I did my best to make it one. Even after all my recent increase in alcohol awareness, my long discussions with sober friends, and through the oodles of Quit Lit reading I’ve done. I drank a manhattan with my dad, which I don’t regret. Just he and I clinked glasses and toasted to his upcoming 82nd birthday. Then I refreshed mine, followed up with red wine at dinner, and glasses of champagne at 9pm to celebrate the ball drop in NYC. All with my three kids wandering around and my dad long since finished drinking.
After my parents went to bed at 9:15, my 14-year-old opened a can of Dr. Pepper and it sprayed across the entire kitchen. Sticky corn syrup everywhere. My buzzy mind was mildly irate, and in hindsight I think I teensy weensy overreacted. Then, the kids and I piled in my bed to watch Miley Cyrus and her wardrobe malfunction. Suddenly, the smoke alarm was going off and after sprinting into the kitchen, I found my beautiful copper Fellows tea kettle melted on the stovetop. In my haste to switch from booze to a cup of tea, I forgot I put the kettle on. Thankfully, I didn’t burn down the house.
So the next morning I decided that was a set of perfect, blinking neon signs from the universe telling me to stop drinking. I was truly proud of myself after day 2, day 3, consuming more tea (without melting the new kettle), kombucha, soda, and NA beer than maybe anyone in all of Los Angeles. On day 5, my 16-year-old tested positive for Covid.
Out of my hands, relatively speaking, right? Only, I might have made it a hair harder. After discussing with my husband about the ubiquity of cases and high contagiousness of Omicron, the seemingly mild symptoms, and pain of an individual quarantine, we opted to throw caution to the wind and not exactly isolate within our house. From the outside, we were absolutely isolated — there was no going out — but inside the house we didn’t wear masks, didn’t quarantine in bedrooms, etc. In essence, we were all accepting our fate and welcoming Omicron with an “all for one and one for all” camaraderie. A good friend of mine said it best: quarantining after you find out a member of the household is positive is a bit like “putting the condom on after you’ve had sex.”
Two days later, I was sick, and a day after that my 14-year-old tested positive. A few days later, our 9-year-old tested positive. Mind you, we’re all vaccinated and boosted to the max, and we had been paying careful attention to the symptoms the world had been reporting, and to our own set of symptoms. For all of us, it has been a mild cold, with low energy and some sleep disruption being the most annoying. I wholeheartedly believe the only reason our symptoms were mild is because of wonderful modern medicine in the form of three shots.
I digress. My real point is I’m tracking days like my life depends on it. I’m on Day 8 of Covid, and Day 16 of being AF — Alcohol Free. I think Covid is actually helping me abstain, and conversely being alcohol free is helping me get through Covid. But my abstinence doesn’t feel very “real world” as in I’m not going out to dinner and turning down drinks, or soberly watching my friends drink at a bar, or even feeling well enough to desire a drink. I’ll take it though, I’ll take my 16 AF days, but probably the real challenge will come when I’m out in that real world of antibodies and yearning for adult socialization.
We’ll see, wish me luck. I’ll be curious AF to see how it goes…
