I told him to stop buying TP or he'll have nowhere to sleep.

What do you want to bet a mattress ticking stuffed with toilet paper rolls is more comfortable than one stuffed with straw?

Ahahahaha!!! This just made me do my loud donkey laugh. (I *knew* I was keeping this C-PTSD around for a reason!)

Right? Some of my behaviors that contribute to my panic disorder, particularly contingency thinking, are suddenly useful. Growing up in a co-dependent situation, I'm skilled in the art of doing the worrying for others, which has helped keep my family healthy. I'm also ready with a wisecrack at tense moments.

When I have to go somewhere, my old friend, Denial, gets me there and back home again, where my overdeveloped concern about contamination keeps us safe.

Oh my goodness me, Small Mean Cat vs. Big Hunk o’Bun was exactly what I needed to read. Thanks for that great story!

This will be the first Thanksgiving of my life when I didn’t get together with a big crowd. We lived in a university town where both parents taught, and Mom felt sorry for all the lonely kids away from home for the first time. We always hosted a giant party for the students and they were so happy to be home for the holiday it was a giant buzz of goodwill for all.

Then when we came to California to live with our Dad and met his brother Bill and sister with four kids in our age group who loved Star Wars as much as we did, we became fast friends and and ate a lot of turkey dinners together for many years.

Then when we got married, we invited everyone to our house so we didn’t have to split the days between our families. It worked out that all four parents liked hanging out so much they often did it without us when San Francisco was just too far away to get to on a work night.

Now both dads are dead and the old women are too medically compromised to have visitors, my sister is going through chemo and I’m just going to stay holed up at home with my sweet baboon and defiantly eat a non traditional Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t enjoy turkey all that much... it’s so much better in the form of sandwiches.

OK, I think I counted 4-5 ayes to Nilly's idea of a zoom gathering in honor of DX (more here: [link] ).

Is that enough to start? Should I also post this in Press/other place so that more people will be able to see and decide if they want to join?

(Pre-coffee, apologies if I'm not being very coherent).

Nilly is suggesting a gathering on Zoom, to say our goodbyes to DX. It'll have to be on Saturday, but not on Shabbat (it ends ~17:30 PM on Israel time on Sat, which translates to 10:30 AM on the East Coast). And she's volunteering her university Zoom's account. It will also be so good to see your lovely faces and say hello.

I am also down with this! Press would be good, Shir.

The Zoom sounds like a great idea.

I'd be interested, but I know that I'm a logistical outlier.

I would like to join, too!

Living 'my life in fear' is basically what I've been doing all along, so I am well practiced at managing such awful uncertainty.

For historical reasons if anybody comes back to reread about us during the Pandemic and election, et cetera, I'd like to mention that yesterday Moderna announced their competing vaccine proved 94.5% effective in trials, so we have two good vaccines coming online in not all that long a time away, and also we're going to be getting rational national leadership installed on January 20th of this coming year, so two months off.

Managing fear is a lot easier when you know you can take effective steps yourself, and that external factors are moving to relieve the situation. I wonder how much of the "I won't live in FEAR!" reaction is jumping directly into hopelessness rather than dealing.

Clarified with my ER doc friend that our tday plan with my folks is to eat outside on their porch and she gave us the ok to do that.

I created a Doodle for The Nilly Zoom, but can anyone please confirm which hours they're seeing outside of Israel? (I can't change timezones to test that on work computer). [link]