I'm going to offer a slightly different perspective on the DNA to find family issues. What is "painful family history" for one group, may well be a complete lack of information for someone who was given up for adoption. In an adoption the one person who has no say in what happens, and in most cases has almost no legal rights, is the adoptee. So much of the adoption process is about protecting the rights and privacy of only one side of the adoption. In CA, as an adoptee I didn't even have the right to KNOW that I was adopted. Many of you watched that unfold in real time as I found out. I will admit that I'm definitely sensitive about this, but when I see comments about not wanting to deal with difficult family secrets, I see if from the other side, and it hurts.

Mr. S has been watching his tablet all day. He has a lot of screen time these days, mostly because it keeps him occupied. Yeah, I know

I feel you. There is a lot of screen time built into our daily schedule.

I decided to do the DNA test because I was curious about how well the ethnicity results would match up with family lore (not contradicted so far) and interested in potential medical insights (kind of too many to sort through but all very minor fro what I've seen) but the reason I am now super glad I did it is I turned up as the closest relative found by a third cousin who had been adopted and had virtually no information about her birth parents - my mom was able to tell her who her mother probably was, at least. Feels like I helped someone a little.

You helped that person more than a little. That's the type of help that adoptees are searching for, and it's actually very rare. So many people just don't want to help, or acknowledge anything that is outside of the official family lore.

I tried to call mom. Got a text back saying she will call tomorrow she's been running to the bathroom all day with stomach issues . I told her to call the dr tomorrow if she doesn't feel better.

Mr. S has been watching his tablet all day. He has a lot of screen time these days, mostly because it keeps him occupied. Yeah, I know

Whatever helps the stress level for all parties is okay.

I hope we fins some matches for my MIL. We are very convinced we found her birth father ages ago, but he didn't respond to her letter. Now that he has surely passed she would be happy to connect with any children or grandchildren.

My niece held a graduation party for her daughter this weekend. I know they're not social distancing.

I offered to run the kids out to our favorite ice cream stand to pick up a cone but as we drove by, none of the people standing in line were wearing masks and none of the employees in THE TINY building were.

The kids refused to stop so we went to a place with dive through where all the staff wear masks and gloves.

This shit is never going away.

Yeah. I really worry that the end game on this is simply going to be lots of dead bodies.

I was feeling kind of upbeat for a week or two there that we'd have some kind of 'normal' in the next couple months here -- businesses opening up more, libraries operating, all that. And even though MA is doing pretty damn well, too much of the rest of the country is going to go through the wringer again, needlessly.

The NY area we are in is in Stage 4 of reopening, but honestly everyone everywhere is masked. When I did go get groceries (mountains here no delivery) customers had to bag their own groceries and checkout people had gloves too, in a small very rural town. I expect that the tourist areas are likely much looser, but I haven't gone in that direction at all. I've been 3 places - Lowe's to get a toilet, because necessity, grocery shopping once, and yesterday to the 'big city' of Utica for drive thru Covid testing. Restaurants and bars are all open for indoor service, but of course that isn't happening for us, we haven't even done take out. eta: we did stop at the roadside ice cream place where my son got an ice cream, and they too were behind glass, masked and gloved. Son says his mask looks like a full diaper with his beard.