The Lazy Genius Podcast - #231 - What I Learned During Covid Quarantine

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

When the first positive test came back for Covid in my family, I started writing things down. Especially the big things I learned. Even if you’re not in this situation, hearing what people learned from challenging situations is always helpful to me. You can find encouragement or comfort or ideas from someone else’s experience, even if your experience is centered around something completely different. So even if you’re not dealing with Covid, I hope you still find value in this episode. Helpful Companion Links Grab The Lazy Genius Way (affiliate link) where I share the 13 Lazy Genius principles that help me in everyday life, including during quarantine. Download a simple Quarantine Tracker to keep up with symptoms, test results and more. Here’s our Quarantine Kit, aka the items that got us through two weeks at home. Other shows mentioned in this episode: Pantsuit Politics and last week’s episode #230: How to Be a Person Fun news alert: We have new gear! Check out the new Lazy Genius merch here. Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Presents. Laura versus fruit flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo, chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the everyday with Amazon. Hey everybody, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 231, what I learned during COVID quarantine.

If you don't follow me on Instagram, you might not know that for most of September, my family was hold up at home with domino positive COVID tests. One got it and then another and another until all five of us were positive. my kindergarten-age daughter was home the longest for over three weeks and the rest of us at least two. I purposely paid attention during our time at home because I have a feeling a lot of us are going to go through bouts of this. And I want you to have some tools. I want to share what I learned, not like I'm an expert at quarantining or something, but more to offer some comfort and solidarity and practical help to ease the burden a bit if you're in the situation at any point in the future. So I wrote down the big things I learned and there were 10. I love a round number when it happens

accidentally like that. So I'm going to share 10 things I learned during COVID quarantine. And frankly, even if you're not in this situation, I think hearing what people learned from challenging situations is always helpful to me. You can find encouragement or comfort or ideas from someone else's experience, even if your experience is centered around something completely different. So even if you don't have COVID, this is something. This is still an episode worth listening to. Now for some context, my husband Kauze and I are both vaccinated. We have three kids who aren't old enough to be vaccinated yet. They're five, nine, and 11. Kaz is a middle school counselor and I, of course, do this. All of our kids are in public school

and virtual learning isn't set up as easily now that the kids are back in. Our county created a separate virtual school for students who chose to learn at home for this school year, like after in-person instruction came back. So a lot of the virtual learning resources went there. So there just wasn't a lot when we were in quarantine. I will also say that our experience has to be seen through the eyes of our own resources and support systems and privilege. We all have computers so everyone could do their thing at the same time they needed to. Cause and I both could adjust our work and we weren't financially affected by having to take so much time off. We have our our own transportation, you know, so we could do grocery pickup. We have amazing friends and family

who brought us food and buoyed our spirits. We have a house with a yard on a quiet street where the kids could still play outside. And none of us got so sick that we couldn't function. The symptoms were fairly mild. And even when somebody hit their peak, no one felt really bad for more than a couple of days. So all of those things are important to remember when I share what I learned. Not everyone has it as easy is my family did. And I just want to recognize that up front. Okay, so that's the context. And here are the 10 things. First, two things will likely change often. Medical advice and your emotions. So we got a little bit of like slightly contradictory information from the health department, the school system, and our doctor's office during our weeks of quarantine on like whether or not somebody should

isolate or just quarantine as a family. when a quarantine could officially be over, stuff like that. It was very, very small, but it wasn't always exactly the same. Now, this episode is not about giving you medical information. Number one, because it keeps changing. And number two, because I am not qualified to do that. But as Delta does its thing, I imagine doctors and scientists continue to learn the best ways to protect both people and their livelihoods. And then some rules are going to be different from state to state. Right. So when it comes to the medical stuff, like check the CDC website, but also talk to your local authorities. Your kids' principles will have standardized steps that they have to go by.

Call your doctor. You're going to be contacted by contact tracing. Please be kind to them as they work through a huge backlog and they're going to help you get the answers you need. But it's not their fault that you have to cancel your plans during quarantine. And it's not their fault that what they might share with you based on information that they've been given might vary by a day or two from what a doctor or someone on the news said. Things change. So it's just really good to be prepared for that. Emotions change too.

One minute, I felt very equipped and like totally fine about suddenly being at home for two weeks. And then the next I would cry because I had to cancel a work trip I was super excited about. And everything in between, right? Your kids or anyone you might have to quarantine with will go through their ups and downs too. The big thing is to expect it. It will happen. Emotions will change and sometimes they will change significantly. When you expect something though, it doesn't surprise you as much, right? And it's those emotional surprises that can leave us a bit untethered, whether coming from ourselves or someone else. So if you expect change and confusion, both within yourself and then even again, perhaps the information you're getting, you will be less off center when it does happen.

Expect it. Number two, write down everything medical. So we have a big whiteboard in the house and I made a quick chart with family members in like the vertical column and then dates in the horizontal column. And then I would just mark when someone started sneezing or feeling tired when they had a fever, when someone took a test and then I put the results when it came two days later. You think you're going to remember. what day your symptoms started, when someone took a test. But the more people you have to manage,

the more details you're likely to forget. And if you do in fact get COVID, brain fog is likely and very real. You probably won't remember. And those dates are crucial to when you can exit the quarantine itself. So write down everything medical. I took a picture of my whiteboard, by the way, and I sent it to Leah, who is in charge of everything creative on Team LG, and she made a simple, downloadable quarantine tracker that you can just print out and fill out if your family goes through this. It's free. It's there if you need it. The link is in the show notes.

But the number of times I thanked myself for writing things down from day one is a lot of times. Because you guys, every time I talked to Tammy from contact tracing, she and I became very friendly over those weeks. She needed another tiny piece of information or needed me to repeat something or confirm something, you know, like when someone had a fever, and I was able to look at my board and tell her. So write it all down. Number three, it's so helpful to name out loud how you're weak under stress. What makes you weak and spiral under stress? Being in quarantine is stressful. It just is,

right? I'm guessing you are not going to argue with me on that one. And it's long term stressful. like at least three days of stress if you've been exposed and you're vaccinated but you have to wait on a test result or something but more likely it's like at least 10 days of stress because of unvaccinated kids or an unvaccinated you or a positive test the point is it's stressful for more than like a minute right for it's for a long time so because of this i highly highly encourage you to name how you spend out when you're stress and then acknowledge that with whoever you're living with or regularly talking to. So on the first day that we found out that Sam, my oldest was positive. He was the first one and that we'd all be quarantined for at least 10 days.

I could feel my body changing. When I'm stressed, I feel like my spine and my chest organs, my vital organs are being squeezed like a washcloth, you know, they're being like wrung out. And then my brain also freaks out when it experiences this squeeze. And my brain is like, make a very detailed plan now. We must stay in control the situation. Like it just starts panicking. But then going back to the number one thing I learned, things change. Emotions and the span of the quarantine will change. If someone else tests is positive, whatever else, you can't really make a plan. You really can't do it. But I, I certainly cannot stay in control of something that I actually have no control over in the first

place. It's hard to hold both of those things. So when I felt the chest squeeze and I felt myself itching to make a lot of plans because it's helpful for me to make a lot of plans, even if they don't happen. I said to cause, I just need to remind us both that this is not a scenario where I am very equipped. I'm not good at this. This right now is when I'm at my worst, when I'm trying to make sense of something that I can't really fix. So my love, I will likely need to verbally process a relevant information with you. I will probably make some lists for my own brain to feel better. But I'm telling you now that I will, we don't need to like plan on those lists being actionable in a few hours, probably. But right now I need those lists and these conversations to metabolize

my stress. And I might be kind of intense for the next few hours. Because again, this is not where I shine. I'll shine in a few hours, but right now I'm a freaking mess. And because he's the best, he smiled and he was like, sure, of course, sure thing. He caught all my stressed out words, those first few hours. He let me process out the week where literally 90% of what I like, quote unquote, planned did not happen. And he was patient with me when I talked louder and faster than I usually do, which is saying something, because I'm a pretty fast and loud talker on the average day when I'm doing well. But it helped me so much to say out loud to name how I struggle under stress by calling it out by name. I honored how I processed the world.

But I also took away a little bit of its power, of that negative power by bringing someone else into it and saying it out loud. So name how you're weak under stress. It's again about those expectations. If you know that's how you are, you won't be a surprise when happens. But you won't be as freaked out when it happens either, which will likely keep the stress from spinning out quite as intensely. It all works together. Okay, number four, use phone alarms. Your brain will be at various stages of fried throughout this whole thing. So I just highly recommend phone alarms, something automatic. They saved us. Set alarms for taking temps if you're, you know, monitoring symptoms, for sanitizing doorknobs, if you're doing that, for going out.

side to give everyone like a scheduled reset for whatever you need. But if you need to remember something, especially if it's regular over the days you're in quarantine, please set alarms. You're going to be so glad you did. Like they just, oh, it's just so nice to decide once. Like let that, let your phone make the decision for you of when to remember to do something. Number five, set house rules about how this whole thing will go. If you have little kids, especially, creating some clear house rules will make the process a little easier. So as a reminder, house rules, it's a lazy genius principle for my book, The Lazy Genius Way. The point of them is to make life easier, not more stressful.

But house rules keep what matters a priority. So, for example, when Sam, the oldest, was isolated because, you know, he was the only one with a positive COVID test for that stretch, we had a house rule for. him where he, I mean, because he was isolated. You can't say, though, to like a sixth grader, hey, you have to isolate now. They don't know what that means. So his house rule, he had to be in his room. He had to be in his room. He had to be in the bathroom attached to his room or outside away from people. And the path he walked to get outside was short and singular. No other paths out, buddy. Don't touch stuff. Don't touch not, like all the things. And he had to wear a mask, obviously,

when he came out of his room. When we were all positive, except for my youngest, Annie, that was rough, y'all. That was rough. We had a house rule of masking in the house unless you are alone in your own room. That's when you could take your mask off. We had another house rule. No kids in anyone else's bedroom. We washed tans every hour so that we remember it and therefore do it and prioritize trying to keep everyone well. Now granted, we all ended up getting COVID, right? But that doesn't mean we did anything wrong. We did what we could. We tried to keep everybody well and sometimes stuff happens.

But those house rules we made, it made it easier to support what mattered, which was keeping everyone well for as long as possible. What matters to you might be different. So whatever you end up saying matters to you in this kind of situation, especially if you of kids. Figure out a couple of house rules that will be the like set it and forget it of your time in quarantine. We'll be right back. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our

public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Number six, being outside makes a huge difference emotionally and physically. When Kaz and I were both at like peak achiness and congestion and just like overall grossness, we were both shocked, like shocked. We kept looking each other wide-eyed. Like, how was this happening? when we felt so much better we were sitting outside.

Now granted, weather plays a part here and we have a front porch big enough for the whole family to sit on. So I recognize that. Like we were sick in September, not December and Minnesota. But being outside is almost always a good idea under these circumstances. It's grounding the sun like eases the aches in your body. It's getting out of the house, all the things. So if you are quarantined, please prioritize being outside when you can.

Again, it was, I mean, it was just shocking how much better my body felt physically when I was outside. Number seven, say yes as often as possible. I think this is extra true if you have kids. Okay, so listen, we all did some lockdown stuff last spring when COVID significantly hit the US, right? Like over a year ago, we were all pretty foggy because we weren't going anywhere. We were trying to navigate working from home and schooling from home. and being afraid and confused and so many things. I mean, like, they canceled. All these sports stopped.

Like, it was just wild, right? So I want to say that if you do hit quarantine, you've done this before and you can do it again. But also it's different, isn't it? Because not everyone is doing it together. That was weirdly helpful last year. We were all in solidarity over this together. But when just you or just your family,

or locking down, it's a different vibe. So my advice is to say yes as often as possible. This is a short season, a few weeks at most. When your kids ask if they can watch TV when you normally wouldn't let them, say yes. Say yes to long baths with like double bath bombs. Say yes to your kids asking to turn on the sprinkler, even though it's 60 degrees outside. Say yes to as many things as you can simply because this is a hard season to manage. And also it's not going to look like other times. It's not going to look normal. So often when we're in a difficult season, we try and normalize it as much as possible in the sense that we want to make it look and feel like our regular normal season, even though we're living something different. A quarantine is living something different. It just is. You don't have to have

the same routines or house rules or any of it that you normally do, especially. when, like we already said, those emotions are changing a lot. It's just really hard. So say yes as often as you're able to yourself and to your family. Number eight, anticipation turns to obsession really fast. So be ready for it and be kind. You will have a lot of anticipatory stress. I learned that term from Beth Silvers of Pantsuit Politics a couple of years ago. And it has been so helpful to me. There is stress about what you anticipate happening. And since you're likely already running pretty thin, your ability to keep that anticipatory

stress from spiraling into obsession, that ability is questionable at best. The number of times I felt myself like being so locked up and obsessed, like, gritted teeth over a certain detail about our quarantine, like how accurately we were sanitizing the doorknobs. It's a lot of times. Like I was that I turned to obsession a lot of times. And it makes things worse than your body, right? And for other people. You're tighter, both physically and in spirit. So just know, just know that you're trying to anticipate needs and test results and all that kind of stuff. It will likely veer into obsession, may be quicker than you're used to.

So just be ready for that. Expect it. And then please be kind to yourself when it does. You can go back and listen to last week's episode with Andi Colbert about how to feel like a person for some concrete ideas on managing this kind of feeling. Number nine, how you start probably won't be how you end. If you're any sort of planner or think you should be, especially in a hard circumstance like a COVID quarantine, you will want to make a plan on day one and expect it will carry you through day 10 or in our case

day 21 the chances of that happening are very small when you get hit with the news that you have to quarantine it's like a big drop right it's a long fall it's panic and grief and annoyance anger and it's like just bootstrap time to get it together you know but that energy it's going to fade a little every day. That desperation will fade. That plan that you set on day one, it served you well on day one and maybe even on days two and three and four. But as you get into a more normal, repetitive type of day, a little further into quarantine, how you started, it probably won't be how you end. And I would just want to remind you right now that that's okay. That's normal. Plans are not pass, fail. Remember? They're just intentions. And they're there to serve you and what matters to you until they just

just don't do that anymore. You didn't fail quarantine because you made plans that didn't work out. On day one, I planned to write down all of our experiences every day, partly for this podcast episode, but also to just remember and be able to reflect. On day one, I filled an entire page, day two, half a page. Day three was one sentence. And then I didn't write anything after that. And it's okay. It's okay to not finish how you start. And then finally the 10th thing I learned during COVID quarantine, it was the worst timing and also everything worked out. Now, I'm not trying to sound like a Hallmark card here or dismiss things that didn't work out. I have friends who have lost family members to COVID. That is a very

real horrible thing. I am more talking about your particular plans that you had to adjust or even cancel, like that kind of working out. So for example, when we found out Sam was positive, I was supposed to get on a plane three days later to go on a very exciting work trip that took a while to even schedule because it involved more people's schedules than just mine so when we had to postpone i wondered um if we would be able to or if it would just be canceled altogether so for some context for those of you who belong to the kitchen crew which is a a group that is find kindly so generously and kindly financially supporting a big project for the launch of my next book the lazy genius kitchen you guys have more of a behind-the-scenes look at this project. But there was this, there's this big project I'm doing. And there was a stretch of

days where I thought we'd have to cancel the entire project altogether. I didn't think I'd be able to take any of the trips that I was taking last month and that there was no way we could reschedule all of them. Because it wasn't just the one three days after Sam got positive. There was one that was two and a half weeks after that too. Now, we did have to reschedule two of the video shoots from the project. But it all worked out fine. Now, did Annie miss three weeks of kindergarten only two weeks after she had started kindergarten? Yes. Was last week her first week back a bit of an S word show because she's gone from zero stimulation to literally all the stimulation? Yes, yes. It's like the first week of school all over again. My boys missed their first three soccer practices and their first soccer game and were devastated.

And yet last Saturday they both played soccer and got plenty of playing time and had a blast. You know, we're doing it. It's working out. It was. a legitimate pain in the moment and caused a lot of tears and a lot of grief, but we made it through and things are normalizing again. There's no good time to go into a COVID quarantine. It's the worst timing no matter what. But I want to encourage you that what feels like insurmountable schedule changes and disappointments, they will likely level out eventually. You and your family are more resilient than you probably think. You made it through months and months of of lockdown of some sort last year. And while we are forever changed by this pandemic as

individuals and bigger communities in ways that we don't even know yet, things are settling, right? Things are working out in ways and we're adjusting. We're noticing what matters more than we did before. So again, the final thing I learned is that it was the worst timing for us. It was so awful. And at the same time, everything worked out fine. Some things got rescheduled. Some things were just lost, but we're okay. You'll be okay. It's really hard, but you can do it. And you can be kind to yourself when you're just too tired to do it. That's okay too. And those are the 10 things I learned during COVID quarantine. I hope they help. In the show notes, you'll find a link to that quarantine tracker I mentioned. So you could write down like all the medical things and make it easier to process and remember. There's also a link to an Amazon list of items that were super helpful for us during our quarantine. It's like the lazy genius quarantine list. It also includes our very favorite masks, which were a lifesaver during all those days of masking

in the house, which was not fun, but still very important to us. It was a new mask that we had tried, just like, had gotten them like just a few weeks before. And these are now the mask that my family reaches for all the time. They are just so good. So those are on the list along with some other things that were pretty essential for us, some like practical themes, some really fun things. So take what you need from that if you'd like. And then for a different spin on the lazy genius of the week, this week it's my sister.

My sister Hannah is the lazy genius of the week because she told me during our quarantine to put Vicks vapor rub on Annie's feet and then put socks on those adorable feet to help a coughing Annie sleep better through the night. It was wild how well it worked. Annie had had a rough go the first few days and wasn't sleeping well. but she slept so well, like through the night, night after night, after that first night we put VIX on her feet. So much showed that she kept asking for the VIX even when she wasn't sick. It was kind of weird, but that's how well it worked. Then when I was coughing and feeling bad,

like a few days after her, I tried it and it worked like a charm. We even mentioned it, Annie's pediatrician, when we went to have her tested for the third time. Third negative test, you guys, like what in the world? And the doctor, said that it's one of the weirdest best tricks around. She was like, I don't know why it works, but it does. So there you go. That's a very important tip for anyone who is coughing and not able to sleep. Vicks and socks. It's magical. So thank you, dear sister, for being so smart and lovely, and therefore this week's lazy genius of the week. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you are not on my mailing list, I wish you were. And also, you would have missed the announcement

that we have a brand new lazy genius merch store. We have a digital store with all the products that you can buy to make your life easier, but we also have a merch store with legit, like, high quality apparel. There are five pieces that will always stick around, including a fantastic lazy genius sweatshirt and a t-shirt that says you're doing great, but we'll also have two pieces that change every season. So this fall's limited edition pieces are a beanie with the lazy genius light bulb stitched on it. It is so cute. And a baseball tea with the most like beautiful green sleeves and this cool like slightly retro lazy genius font. It's seriously great merch. Leah, who as I already said is in

charge of all things creative on Team LG. She put all of this together and it's just fantastic. She's worked hard to make sure the clothes are ones you'll actually want to wear. So you can check that out in the link in the show notes or go to the lazy genius collective.com slash merch. Okay, thank you for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra.

I'll see you next week. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.