I'm very glad I'm living with two cuddlesome cats, to be sure. But aside from massages, haircuts, and pedis, I don't really touch others much anyway. Family, sure, and friends I haven't seen for a few months, they get hugs. But that's hardly an every day thing. I expect I'll be ok until June 2021.

Just got back from the grocery store. I had a headache and now it's worse and my internal temp is 100.3. I'm getting some fan time to cool off before making dinner.

I'm totally willing to stay home until they make a vaccine.

It's a huge pile of privilege, but we have jobs we can do 100% at home and resources to do stuff like order in groceries and a once-every-couple-of-weeks meal to break up the monotony. We even get wine and coffee delivered on a regular schedule. Somehow, while we weren't paying attention, we came up bougie as fuck.

But the lack of people contact other than each other is starting to wear. It's still deeply weird to have the conversations, but we do about whether we can safely do an outdoors distance hangout if everyone is transparent about who they've been in contact with and we only do it no more than every couple of weeks (current feeling: yes). Or whether we need to require everyone to get covid tested within 2 weeks before a slightly larger gathering in a couple of months (again, yes). Or whether the garden center feels safe yet (dear god no).

We're going to finally see my in-laws tomorrow, and I'm vaguely terrified because while they've individually been fairly conscientious, I'm not sure of their (republican, churchy, more rural) social circle.

And we can't even see my family because NY will rightly lock us the fuck down for two weeks, which I support as epidemiology but ... yeah. FaceTime just ain't the same.

But in spite of fraying at the edges, vaccine is the only way forward.

I'm tempted to quarantine for two weeks and then drive to my parents. Just for things to be different.

I'd like things to get back to normal, but it'll be awhile for sure. I was going to go back to the office in a couple of weeks, which I was looking forward to, but I might try to get out of it now. I'm not sure.

Meanwhile at the three grocery stores I went to, I'd say about a quarter of the people were wearing masks and some of employees who I believe are required to wear masks had lowered them below their nose or all the way to the chin.

DNA testing is why I now know the identities of both my birth mother and birth father, and actually am building a friendship with my birth mother. I'm looking forward to eventually meeting some of my half siblings.

Gud, are you sure you should be making dinner if you have a fever?

In my extended family there is a person long suspected of having the "wrong" father. My biggest concern is that this trend not hit me personally until people who would be broken-hearted over this have died.

Gud, are you sure you should be making dinner if you have a fever?

I was gonna say. Gud, have you been tested for COVID-19?

My dad started searching for family and wants to know more of what happened to his mom during WWII. My dad also doesn't speak to 3/4 of his family because of "bad memories". My dad has been asking on heritage sites for information from family, including the 3/4 he does not speak to. He doesn't see this as conflicting and is generally not good with processing information he doesn't want to acknowledge. While I too want to know what happened to my grandmother and family during WWII in Poland and Germany and Hungary (older generations did not speak of what happened there), I backed out of the search because this is a setup to madness.

And yeah, count me in the "data privacy concerns" camp too.

Gud, please take care of yourself.