Seventy-One Degrees

So it was 71 degrees today. Outside. On November 6th, in Idaho.

We raked up leaves. I finished installing a gate on the north side of the house and cleaned the camper out from the campout last month. Liam and I took down the Halloween lights and started on the Christmas lights.

Good thing, because even though it was 71 degrees today, it's supposed to snow a couple of inches tomorrow.

This is November. Snow is expected. Seventy-one degrees is not.

It was nice.

Winter. Yes. That's coming. In 2020, we also get winter. What joys will it bring?

We finally had a covid-19 scare in the house. The test came back negative. But we were in that odd little loop for about 36 hours. And an odd loop it was.

Started out at crushthecurveidaho.com, where we were assured we'd be given help to set up an appointment.

They got personal information. Insurance information. Email addresses and phone numbers. And at the end, a list of test providers in our area whom we had to call to set up an appointment. They also gave us a handy reference number to use with our selected provider to make the process go faster.

That's helping us set up an appointment in a technical sense, by which I mean I got a list of providers in the area offering tests. Not quite the help I wanted, so I decided to roll with it.

Called our selected provider and their first question was: "Are you in the parking lot?"

No. I'm at home, calling for an appointment like I was told to.

"Oh, you have to be in the parking lot, then call."

Fine. Maybe crushthecurveidaho.com could mention that with the phone number, but okay. We're only ten minutes away.

So we drive to the provider and are in the parking lot and are trying to make a call when another guy pulls into the spot next to us in a massive diesel Ford and I can't hear the person on the other end of the line.

We get the appointment. I offer them the handy reference number I got from crush the curve. "We don't do anything with them," she said.

Okay. So I give personal information. Insurance information. Emails and phone numbers. And we wait. For twenty minutes, we wait.

Finally get called in. And are told their test isn't accurate in the first few days of exposure, but we get an "order" which will allow us to get a test at another place.

We go to the other place. Behind a really slow guy clearly looking for an address. Very slow. Like five miles and hour up the road slow. He pulls over and we go ahead, because we've been to the place before.

And get in a line to wait. Finally it's our turn. We give personal information. Insurance information. Email and phone number. And finally get the test and a little card with a web address on it where we can go for results. We might have them in one to three days. As we're heading into the weekend, well, I'm not so sure about that.

Go home, and go to the website. There we're told because of a national backlog of covid testing, it could be four to six days. Or ten to fourteen days. WHO KNOWS? And we have to have a negative result or the testee has to quarantine for two weeks from both school and work.

Tonight, we get a call from the original provider, the one who could not administer an accurate test. The test from the other lab came up negative.

Good.

But I don't want to know how much that all just cost me. We're told insurance will cover it. But allow me a cynical chuckle. We'll see how that goes.

But today, today paid for it a little. Seventy-one degrees. And snow tomorrow. Maybe we'll last to 2021. Maybe.