I had a COVID scare in July.
It started with the symptoms of a stomach bug. I was planning on hiking one Saturday morning, and went to bed Friday night at a very reasonable hour to ensure I was rested up. I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but I was up and down and in and out of the bathroom from about 2-6 that night into morning. I cancelled my hike, attempted breakfast, spent another hour in the bathroom, and knowing I’d interacted with a coworker who felt ill a couple days earlier, texted my manager to let her know I was going to go get tested and work from home until I got the all clear.
Spoiler alert: I’m COVID-negative. It took me eleven days to get the diagnosis, so for eleven days, I was confined to my apartment. Now, the first four days or so was fine. I was legitimately sick and spent the bulk of them in bed. The rest of the time? Well, it was of course completely gorgeous weather, so when I wasn’t working, I spent as much time as possible sitting out on my patio. I also worked from my patio a good bulk of the day. I spend a good chunk of time out on the patio in general, but this was probably the most consistent I’ve been out there since moving here, and let me tell you, when you become that person Rear Windowing your neighbors all day, you see some shit. Here’s what I was blessed with:
- A young couple would regularly come and have picnics just feet from my patio in the middle of the day, whether I was out there or not. Now, they weren’t on my patio, and since I’m in an apartment complex any green space is free game, but they’d legitimately be 4 feet from where the concrete ends like that wasn’t a totally weird thing to do.
- Speaking of people on my patio, I discovered another young man who was shocked when I opened the patio door at 10 one day. He was shocked because he was sitting in one of my patio chairs as his dog just wandered leashless in the grassy area in front of him. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was just taking a break on his dog’s walk and like the teen picnic lovers acted like just using someone’s seat was normal (my guess is that this was a daily thing and he’d become used to me not being home during the day). I asked him to please leave my patio. He scolded me for not wearing a mask.
- Two teen Tik Tok stars filmed each other doing carthweels out of the breezeway to the right of my apartment circa 8 PM most nights.
- Two non-teen Tik Tok stars filmed each other doing dances out of the breezeway to the right of my apartment circa 6 some nights.
- There’s a gentleman who walks his dog every night around 7:30 carrying a very full glass of red wine. He seems ok.
AshevilleExplorer 