For introverts, the thought of having to quarantine because of a positive corona test is usually considered “business as usual”. True, I’m usually camped at home when not at work, but this is tedious even for me. I was hoping to do some holiday baking, but I don’t even have the energy for that.

I don’t have the tell-tale virus symptoms of loss of smell or taste, or a fever. My symptoms have been aches and pains, similar to when catching the flu, and shortness of breath and fatigue. I’ve been getting winded after relatively little activity. Just walking up and down the stairs at home leaves me out of breath. It’s not because I’m out of shape—well, I really am out-of-shape, but I feel like I’ve run five miles just by walking upstairs to my bedroom.

Honestly, I’m not even sure how I caught this damned coronavirus. Since Utah enacted its mask mandate, I’ve been wearing mine everywhere I go. Even before that, I wore a mask at work, since it was required there. So now, because of this positive test result, I’m not supposed to even leave my house. That’s fine by me, since I don’t really have money to spend, I have food at home, and it will save me a bunch of gas. The only time I even left the house yesterday was to take some trash outside. I didn’t feel like sticking around out there, since the weather is cold and the ground was cold and wet. I guess we got some rain or snow Friday night. The forecast was for 41° Saturday, and a low around 20°, heading up to 46° for Sunday. Per the usual, southern Utah will almost certainly not have a white Christmas, although the temperature will only top out in the upper 40s.

For someone who has always experienced winter at the end of the year, it would be strange for me to have a hot Christmas, as they do in the Southern Hemisphere. Actually, I did spend a couple of Christmases in Brazil years ago. The thought of December being the beginning of summer down there and people making a “snowman” out of beach sand is totally out-of-the-ordinary for me. I did not enjoy sweating like a pig on Christmas down there, longing for the cold weather I was accustomed to. That is the whole point: what one is accustomed to. Anyone from the Southern Hemisphere is used to winter in June and summer in January (and water down the drain really does spin backward from the Northern Hemisphere). Something else I would find strange is, way up around the Arctic Circle, the sun not even rising this time of year. Even in Anchorage, AK, the Sun only appears for about five hours right now. In Nome, AK, they literally don’t see the sun until noon, and by 16:00, it’s already gone. Contrast that with the summer, when the Sun visits for some 20 hours a day. Right now, I’m good with the 10 hours of light and 14 hours of dark we get (sunrise around 07:30, sunset 17:15, give or take). I know people who, if they had their way, would live in perpetual heat and sun. I call these people weirdos. Give me the dark and cold (not quite as dark as my soul, but then again, Vantablack 3.0 isn’t as dark as my soul) anytime. You can always put on more clothing to warm up; in the throes of summer, you could lie naked on a bathroom tile floor and still be suffocating.

“Time is different in quarantine. It’s such a whole other world.”

– Emily Hampshire