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.

I've done a DNA test, but not for any particular family mystery, although it may help with my one set of great-great-grandparents, who managed to have a kid and then die between censuses like assholes.

It's different here (3 active cases on the island), and we're probably going to keep having our small game night for a couple/few weeks before going virtual again (travel restrictions are easing, so we'll probably start importing cases from Oahu and then the mainland, and people are gonna be dumb on the 4th), but the lockdown has, I think, really done a number on my kid's social/linguistic development. I worry about his whole cohort, really, most of whom aren't going to be getting interaction outside of their immediate family during a lot of their sensitive period for language. We've started arranging playdates for him with some of our (10 or so) social bubble friends. He's always been such a social baby with everyone who's not us, so being stuck with just us for a quarter of his life...sigh...

That's a real concern, Db.

A lot of adoptions aren't so much 'throwing away' as 'being told their only option is to throw away' for teenage women of past eras. Not to mention various horrible scenarios that can result in orphaned babies.

I suspect it's a better idea to let some time pass until it's all interesting anecdotes rather than dreadful personal history.