Not thrilled with today's Mondayness and lack of doughnuts, but at least I have a caftan to wear

All of that travel and family stuff sounds brutal, Laura! Glad you made it home, hope everyone is OK.

My brother and brother-in-law and their fancy house got featured in a magazine.

They are so fancy!!

woke up today with sinus drainage and soreish throat. 99.5% sure that is allergy and general FALL tep drop nonsense that I get every year. post nasal drip at night = soreish throat in morning. STILL. everything is tinged with COVID panic.

I have found that I often have a sore throat the day after I do stuff, but I think it's from mouth breathing under a mask for an extended time. It definitely feels different from a sickness sore throat, if that makes sense? Anyway, it's not COVID and I have stopped worrying about it.

I also don't have doughnuts, but I did have chocolate babka for breakfast, so that's something.

I thought we were over this—he made it through the night for at least a week!

Sigh. Yeah. My dog who was sleep peeing is not doing that anymore, but is now needing to go pee late at night or in the night and is not waking me up, but instead peeing in the house.

NOT COOL, MILEY.

Your family is so fancy, msbelle! Their house is gorgeous

Oatmeal needs to become a habit. bleargh.

FWIW, JZ and I do a half mug of oat bran every morning. Because oat bran is more efficient at removing cholesterol you don't need a big bowl of it.

It has the added benefit of being very filling because any liquids you drink cause it expand in your gut many times over and make you feel full.

(Our diet went on and on about this effect referring to it as the "bolus" which is how we refer to this portion of our breakfast now.)

It's a recommended part of our diet plan but it has a lot of virtues.

(I tart ours up with a bit of Stevia, Kosher salt, a drop of maple syrup, cinnamon, blueberries and pecans.)

Oh, and I don't cook it on the stove. I just heat up a tea kettle and pour boiling water into the mug. Easy Peasy.

I have a feeling my family's T-day plans are going to wind up canceled at the last minute. As of today, we are planning a similar arrangement to our summer vacation which is everyone gets tested within 14 days of coming up, and everyone from out of state quarantines inside the rental house except for going on hikes. But warnings about Thanksgiving gatherings becoming super-spreader events have us all on edge.

I mentioned the possibility of quarantining in advance of Thanksgiving so we could be less vigilant during to my mom, she was not enthusiastic but willing to consider. Although now I realize I will be working the outlet sale exactly 2 weeks before Thanksgiving so quarantining couldn't start until after that...IDK

But it's just three of us and we can sit at opposite ends of the long table to eat and wear masks when we're not eating and that is all not that bad, really.

We're getting together this Saturday to drink beer and eat sausage & cabbage (my local Rotary club has a beer garden sort of event every year that I have never been able to go to because it conflicts with something else, but this year it's just "pick up a collection of beers and maybe get a totebag" so I'm bringing said beers over to my folks' to share on their deck) and have pumpkin pie, so that'll be a nice warm-up/test run. I've seen them face to face since this all started, hm, once in June, that time when the fire was scary close to my house, once in September...is that all? I think that's all. Weird.

It'll just be Emmett and his mom coming over for Thanksgiving, so we'll finesse that with a bit of testing.

But Emmett already had COVID back in April so he's not much of a concern, and EM has been tightly bubbled.

We haven't seen mr. flea's 81 year old parents in a year now, for various reasons, the most recent 7 months of which being covid, but... we could not leave the house for 14 days and then drive straight there to see them, pretty easily. But it would be a damned tight fit to sleep in their ranch house, all 4 of us, and staying in a hotel would invalidate all that nice quarantining.

They seem to be doing pretty okay, all things considered. But I worry a lot.

The rest of our family is much trickier to see safely due to travel distance, and most of them are doing a lot more public interacting than we are.