Isolating in 60 Square Feet

No one wants to hear details about someone being sick (eww), but you may be interested in how Tracy and I are trying to isolate from each other in the 200-sq-ft trailer, as I’ve caught the Omicron virus and, so far, Tracy’s not showing any symptoms and certainly doesn’t want to catch it from me. Heck, even if this were the flu he would not want to get near me; I am yuck.

How I Got It

I hate to even bring this up, but so many people have asked me how I contracted it since I so rarely go inside public places and am so careful and am fully vaxed and boosted. The reason I hate saying is that I probably got it from a neighbor who hung out with us in the tent one night, and I don’t want him feeling guilty about it.

We had the tent sides up to keep warm, and although he was sitting at the open entrance, he was still breathing into the common air of the tent, and he was symptomatic the next day. He’s vaxed (but not yet boosted), and texted me right away about his symptoms, so he did what he could. In retrospect, now that I’ve learned a bit more about how aerosols concentrate and think about how the air behaves in the tent, we should have all been wearing masks. Lesson learned. (My neighbor thankfully had mild symptoms, and his wife none.)

How We’re Isolating

So, maybe Tracy caught it that night, too, and is just asymptomatic. He’ll test soon to find out. In the meantime, we’ve divided up the Airstream into zones, one for me (the bedroom; red in the diagram), one for Tracy (the living room/ kitchen area, green) plus outside, and one necessarily common space (hallway with bathroom, yellow).

(This isn’t exactly our Airstream, but close enough.)

The bummer is that this virus is airborne, yet we don’t have wooden doors to separate these spaces, just cloth accordion-style sliding things.

And this is the space between the two doors (yellow in the graphic), with the bathroom on the right and the shower/storage closet to the left. That’s the extent of our buffer. Note the air gap at the bottom.

So, we’re keeping those so-called doors closed, keeping the ceiling vents open with fans on to direct air from my space outside, and Tracy’s wearing a mask while in the trailer. This may seem to you like a lot of unnecessary trouble, but if we succeed only in reducing his viral load, that’s a good thing.

My Space

So far I’ve felt yucky enough that the bed is exactly where I want to be. I’ve got all I need here.

The problem will be when I’m feeling better and if Tracy tests negative several days in a row. Then I’m going to keep isolating but I’m also going to be mighty tired of this bed. There’s not even room for a chair.

Not sure I want to play ukulele, knit, read, work on my tiny house, all on top of the bed day after day, then sleep there night after night. I’ll tackle that when I feel well enough to do more than just blog, though.

In the meantime, here’s a snap shot of wild burros that I took from the bedroom window. Not a bad view from bed!

And if you care to watch them frolic in action, here’s video Tracy took:

I’m looking forward to getting a lot of sleep today and a few glances of beasties outside my window. You guys take care!