I have a cold. It hasn’t been a particularly bad one as colds go…but it is the first one I’ve had since before the pandemic started. I forgot how lousy colds make you feel. I’m on day 8 and ready to start feeling better. I’m sure I’ll be on the mend tomorrow. Because that’s how my colds go. I don’t know where I picked this cold up. I haven’t been around anyone that seemed to be sick…nobody coughing or sneezing. I mask up when I go anywhere, and while I don’t engage in hygiene theater by dousing my grocery bags and mail with sanitizer, I do wash and sanitize my hands more often now than I ever did. And still, I got a cold. Janet was worried when I first started sneezing back on Monday that it might be COVID. We have some at home COVID test kits because of our travel, the accurate kind from Abbott like they use at the test centers. She asked me to take a COVID test, so I did. It was negative…I have a cold.  Yesterday when my cold entered the coughing phase, right when I expected it to based on every other cold I’ve ever had, Janet again asked me to take a COVID test. So I did. It was negative. I have a cold. But here’s the thing…as careful as I have been with masking, hygiene, and keeping my people interaction limited, I still caught a cold. And COVID is many times more transmissible than the rhinovirus that causes colds. There’s no vaccine for rhinovirus, but there is for COVID. I’ve been fully vaccinated since April, and I even got a booster shot almost two weeks ago. So I got a cold. I can live with that.