Oh yeah, I did get my hair cut in June? July? One of the warm months. And I see neighbors out on the street, and chat with cashiers and stuff, staying apart. But even for my introverted, online-oriented self it’s been rough. You extroverts have my genuine care and sympathy.

The only person other than Tim who I've hugged since March is my brother when he was here in August, and that was because I launched myself at him without thinking, hugged him, remembered, flung myself backwards and said "OH MY GOD SORRY SORRY SORRY!!!" This was on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop in my neighborhood, so my hugging faux pas had plenty of witnesses.

My single normally huggy self can list the hugs I’ve had since March.

In mid-July I hugged my sister and her children when I went to their house to dog sit so they could go down the shore for a week. We’d all been locked in our respective houses since March and hadn’t grocery shopped (our only exception) in two weeks. Haven’t touched them since. When they got home we met up outside with our masks on. In October we had a picnic - we ate six feet apart and were masked the rest of the time. Three days later they came down with colds and I did not so we clearly did something right.

In early September at a socially distanced outdoor wedding one of my good friends (also a hugger, also drunk) spontaneously grabbed me with his big muscular arms and clutched me to his big muscular chest. Fortunately his masked face was a good foot from my masked face.

In October while taking a walk with a friend I started to cry and she lost all control and grabbed me for an entire second before we realized it.

Finally, right after Thanksgiving, I was saying my farewells with a neighbor who is moving. He spontaneously hugged me good-bye which was lovely as he’d had a nasty bout of the virus in April.

Other than drying dishes and otherwise passing things with my roommates the above is my only physical human contact in almost nine months. I think it’s making me a little crazy. Er.

I think my best friend's wife is the only person I've hugged since the outbreak began. I've pointedly not hugged Mom, though I'm generally confident enough in the safety measures I'm observing that I don't think doing so would endanger her.

Timelies all!

Went into work to process samples this morning. I'm taking all of this week off, in an attempt to use all my use-or-lose leave before the year ends. Probably will still end up losing some.

People: if anyone still wants to vote on when we're having the holidays zoom, please do it in the next 12 hours. I'll announce time and date tomorrow (well, my tomorrow. It's already Sunday night here). [link]

(cross-posted with Bitches)

(Ohh, I missed typing "cross-posted with Bitches").

I think I am going to make cookie plans and use Bonbon’s spreadsheet idea from thanksgiving to figure out how much of each ingredient I need. But now I have to decide which cookies I want to make. I want all of them!

I have made three kinds of cookies and one kind of bread this weekend, and I may never bake again.

....give me two weeks.

Ok this is really sweet. M is playing soemthing on Xbox and he's chatting with someone.. and I hear "oh your about the age of one my nieces" and then "no, you won't fail all your classes, you'll do fine...... well, do the best you can and you'll be fine... Oh , in THAT case prove them wrong !" and various forms of encouragment.

Aw, that is sweet.

We just had BBQd spare ribs. They were yum.

Or, really, spare ribs w/ BBQ sauce. We did not BBQ them.