It’s funny… I spent a full year not making any plans because of COVID, but now the last few months, I’ve started planning again (though usually not with other people). This weekend, though, I knew I was getting my second Moderna vaccine on Thursday, so I blocked my work calendar on Friday and made zero plans for the weekend. I was honestly kind of looking forward to my planned day off – a sick day isn’t nearly as bad when you know it’s coming and can prepare!
I got the vaccine at 5pm on Thursday, heading up to Walmart in Longmont to get it. Afterward, Mom and I celebrated by going for ice cream, since it was a beautiful day. We ended up discovering a new-to-us place in Lafayette, Cowabunga Creamery, which was delicious! Just as good as Sweet Cow (our usual favorite… and everyone else’s too), but without the line.
I had felt a little out of it all day, and was half wondering if I had the worst luck in the world to get COVID right before my second shot, but in hindsight, I think I was just overtired – I haven’t been getting quite enough sleep lately. Thursday night, though, I felt great about crashing hard into bed at 9pm – time to rest up and let this vaccine do its thing!
Friday morning, I woke up super early (5:30am… my norm these days is as last as 6:30am or even 7am), and felt pretty achy, but otherwise not too bad. I babied my body and skipped a workout, instead using the early morning time to read in bed. When I got out of bed, I realized I was feeling pretty okay; just tired and achy. I decided to make blueberry muffins for breakfast, and went with this healthy blueberry zucchini muffin recipe from Ambitious Kitchen. I cut the maple syrup in half, and they were still nice and sweet and delicious – I will be making these again, for sure!
Although I had planned to take the day off, I ended up sitting down at my computer for a little while. I recently sold my townhouse in upstate New York, and am trading it for a single family house in Saratoga, so I started with a fun Facetime call to do a virtual walkthrough of the property before closing. So weird to not see it in person, but I think it will be a good investment! I then stayed on my computer to take care of some work emails, and then even a few video calls, since I wasn’t feeling too bad. I was starting to think the symptoms of Moderna dose #2 was overblown… until 10am, when it suddenly hit me hard, and I felt terrible. I spent all day on the couch, barely able to move – even going from lying down to sitting up took several minutes, as every muscle in my body ached. Although I would have survived on my own, I was grateful to have my mom to take care of me and get snacks / drinks from the kitchen, so I didn’t have to get up.
In the afternoon, in particular, the chills got really bad – and of course, every thermometer I owned picked that day to run out of batteries! My mom went to the store and got a new one, and I discovered that my temp was normal during the day, but started heating up at night. I had a quick dinner of tuna salad, saltines, and red peppers (which was the only food that sounded even remotely appetizing), and then crashed hard into bed with Sadie at 8pm.
But on Saturday, I woke up at 5:30am (36 hours post-vaccine) and felt totally back to normal! I was thrilled that it was so short-lived. While it wasn’t much fun to feel so crappy on Friday, it made it infinitely easier to know that I just had to get through the night and would likely feel better the next day. Even if I have to go through this once a year for booster shots, it’s really not that bad when you can plan ahead for it. Next time, I’d set some reading goals for myself rather than allowing myself to mess around on social media and waste half the day 🙂
Now that I was feeling good, I headed down to the gym and did a Peloton stack: 20 minute core, 30 minute intervals & arms bike ride, and 20 minute arms class that my friend Heather had recommended. I hadn’t expected to be able to do all that working out, and I was so glad I was feeling better! My left arm was still sore from the shot, but it didn’t inhibit me from the strength class.
Before I knew it, it was 9am – when I had plans to meet a friend who was downsizing to check out her guest bedroom set. I had told her in advance that I was pretty positive I was going to take it, and she took me seriously – she had made arrangements to borrow a neighbor’s pickup truck and line up her husband to help me get it home and over to my house.
It took about an hour to get the various pieces moved and set up, and I was so grateful to them for the assistance! The set looks really phenomenal in my second guest room, and while I hadn’t cleared the room out of some old furniture / books / junk in advance, I was able to get it sorted out while they were making a trip back to grab the mattress. My house is four bedrooms, and until this weekend, I’ve had two of them as extra storage rooms that I just never go in; it felt great to finally have this one all set up and nicely arranged.
After that was done, I was inspired to get some more cleaning around the house done. I need to get myself in spring cleaning mode, for sure – I started doing that at the beginning of COVID, but then have gotten pretty lax in the last few months about just letting stuff pile up without a home. (Or, bringing new stuff in but not taking old stuff out.) I am honestly not very motivated to do it right now while my mom is here, but maybe in a few weeks when she goes back to New York, I’ll start clearing stuff out in earnest.
Speaking of mom – after lunch, we headed over to Lafayette to meet up with my friend Heather in person, and got Cowabunga ice cream to celebrate her vaccine. Hooray! And delicious, too 🙂 Heather loved the ice cream as much as I did, and I can see this is going to become a regular haunt for me.
After a quick stop home to drop Mom off and throw a bag together, I then headed out to the mountains. My brothers’ best friend from childhood, Danny, was up in Beaver Creek for the weekend, and since I was feeling good, I decided to head there to meet up with him. We grabbed burgers and beers at C-Bar, catching up while also watching a bit of the NCAA Final Four, and I was thrilled that we got to catch up on both personal stuff and some business too. I was really excited about this turn of events, and crashed hard when I got home after that full day.
On Sunday morning, I woke up pretty early, but didn’t get as much done as I wanted; the time seemed to fly by so it was suddenly 9am and time to get ready to head to the mountain. Although I had initially planned to meet up with Danny to ski, he ended up catching an early flight out, so I was now on my own. Works for me!
I dropped off my instructor uniform for end-of-season cleaning, then headed up the mountain. The snow was really thick, due to the (relative) heat wave; it was definitely spring conditions! I did two runs down Rose Bowl, then moved over to Birds of Prey for one room, and finally headed on to Grouse.
Normally, Grouse Mountain is where I spend most of my time at Beaver Creek (it’s the expert terrain, and has tons of really steep bump runs – my favorite), but this year, I hadn’t skied it much at all. And Sunday was not necessarily the best day to be doing it – it was so hot; the thermometer at the summit was already 40 degrees before noon! I wanted to ditch my jacket, but all I had underneath was a tank top, and I hadn’t put sunscreen on my chest / arms, so I was reluctant to strip down to that. I settled for periodically opening up my jacket to cool off, but I definitely could have skied in just leggings and a tank top if I had prepared!
I finally made it over to Bald Eagle, my favorite run on Grouse, for the first time all year, and was so glad I did. I really missed the bumps this year! Next year I’ll definitely have more time to ski on my own, since I won’t have as much training (more than 1/3 of my days on the mountain this year were training).
But this year, after Bald Eagle, I was so hot that I called it a day around 12:40; better to go out on a high note than potentially get injured in the thick slush! I headed home, stopping at the grocery on the way, and getting home by 3:30pm.
Getting back that early meant I could then spend a nice Front Range afternoon enjoying the Colorado sunshine. Mom and I took Sadie to the giant dog park, which was lovely, but Sadie was a little less excited than usual, I think because of the heat. It was 75° and sunny!
Finally, I forced myself to do a 20 minute Peloton ride, followed by another 10 minute core class. Last year, I did a lot of evening workouts, but this year I’m finding it hard to motivate to do them, even though I’m always happy when I do them. I need to get better about that routine!
Mom and I ended the night with a quick and easy dinner (chicken gyro sandwiches), and started watching a cute new-to-us Netflix series, Grace and Frankie, which we really liked. In spite of having no plans for the weekend, I packed a lot in! It will be interesting to see how quickly life ramps back up now that I’m vaccinated…