The Valkyrie: It's Alive!

Hey world. It's been a while. I'm alive, relatively healthy, and officially survived COVID. I would have posted sooner but it honestly took quite the toll on me, which I was not anticipating. Luckily I didn't develop any "severe" symptoms, but I was decently sick for a good bit. I decided to buy a pulse oximeter to monitor my oxygen levels, which I checked pretty frequently. For a couple days my oxygen levels were on the low side, but I never developed any respiratory problems. My main symptoms were headaches, a very sore throat, and crazy fatigue. I felt like I could sleep for days and still need a nap. Eventually when I started feeling better my mom told me she could tell I was sick because I looked "bad", but she didn't want to tell me at the time as to not upset me. While the time off from work was nice, I still missed it. I actually wrote this a while back but never got around to publishing it, so my bad. I'm breaking it down into two parts - the original post and a little extra update at the end.

2/11

I returned to work this week and it was certainly an experience. We've been short staffed due to other people being quarantined, and staff in other classrooms refused to help us because of my previous COVID diagnosis. Despite my abiding by the CDC guidelines and being medically cleared to return to work, it feels like our classroom is being treated like a leper colony. We ran out of gloves for us and cups for the kids, and no one gave us any help. I had to purchase more cups and plates with my own money and one of my coworkers had to bring in gloves from home because the school still hasn't provided us with what we need. I'm starting to see just how shady some of these schools are.

I've also started my second semester of graduate school. So far I'm doing alright, but I'm still learning how to organize my time appropriately. Balancing full time work along with full time graduate school is going to be a lot, but I know I can do it. I'm looking forward most to the summer months. Since I have time off it'll give me a much needed break after working incessantly. I want to use that time to travel and go somewhere, but it obviously depends on the state of things.

3/1

I feel bad about not publishing sooner, but the first week back at work was exhausting since I was still recovering. As I said, I didn't have any severe symptoms which was good, but I was definitely sick. Seeing the kids again made me happy. They drive us crazy some days, but overall they're good kids and I've become pretty attached to them. We're now indefinitely short staffed because 2 of the people in our classroom ended up quitting, so that's been fun. I've been feeling a little under the weather the last couple days and one of the kids had to go to the isolation unit earlier today because he was showing COVID symptoms. For now we're waiting until his test comes back, but it would be just my luck to get COVID twice in a month's time.

By way of school, it's going pretty well. It's a little overwhelming sometimes because working full time takes a lot of time and energy, but I'm handling it for now. I think I can keep balancing it for a while. I just have to keep my brain focused on the summer ahead. Then I'll have all the time in the world to play GTA in my underwear while smoking some totally-legal-substance.

With Mike things have escalated. We're enjoying our time together per usual, but we finally got some time alone at his place. His bedroom moved and he was showing me his new setup since the last time I was in his room a couple years ago. Of course we ended up in his bed and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. I feel so giddy when I'm with him. He annoys me sometimes but I can't help but like him anyway. He was a hot nerdy side to him that I melt for. He also gave me access to his Disney+ account so that has to mean something...right?

Music time! I know I've been skimpy with the music so I'll post a bit more this time. As always, just sit back and listen. Take some time to just listen to the music and tune out your life for a bit. Music really is a portal to the soul.