If we keep him home from school for symptoms that could be covid, we have to show a negative pcr test to come back. But there's not guidance on what to do about vague mild symptoms that wouldn't normally require staying home from school. I guess if he still has them Monday we'll keep him home?

Now, of course, I am feeling vaguely ill myself, in probably psychosomatic fashion.

That seems reasonable to me

Oh yeah, I was feeling sick before I got my negative test back..... Good luck, Dillo!

And I am SO MAD that low-carb/keto makes me feel better, because we have a professional baker living with us.

Yeah, my niece is a baker and there is no sense even visiting her bakery. Sniff

Negative~ma for Dillo! They have a sign at the local pharmacy that says they have the home tests. We were wondering what kind of shelf life they have since it might be a good thing to have on hand.

Yeah, they have dates on them, and they are at least months out, although now I can't remember specifically.

I haven’t seen any of the home tests but if I did I think I might buy a couple.

Atropa, I actually am friends with Adi! But have never been to them for hair, I didn’t know they did a lot of color!

At my CVS, they are behind the counter, so you might not know they were there, for what that's worth.

From a ways back: t Half gallon of sweet apple cider for $11.95? Wow.

After living in the Deep South for more than 11 years, I would happily pay twice that price for real, fresh-pressed, no-preservative apple cider. It's one of the things I miss most about New England. Though we did find an apple orchard outside of Asheville a few years back (maybe 2017?) that had cider - we bought like 4 gallons of it. And they had fresh cider donuts! I think about that place a lot.

Still living in Texas. It's fucking weird here. I thought I'd be prepared for truly shitty state government, having lived in Louisiana under Bobby Jindal, but Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton really take the cake for malfeasance, misogyny, racism, fascism, and greed.

Got to see some friends who evacuated New Orleans for Austin, so that was bittersweet.

We have a new cat, a foster fail ginger we have named Milton in honor of The Suicide Squad character.

Need to get on top of the flu/shingles vaccine soon.

Ha! I should have known you’d know Adi, meara. Go to them for all your hair needs.

Spent a week in VT once again with my friend of nearly 40 years, who still has the ability to make me cringe in embarrassment and/or wonder.

One of the latest examples: I had to instruct her how to light a match... she'd never done it before. (She's 65.)

Her idea of dieting is to weigh herself every morning. And then be happy that she's dropped a half pound between one day and the next.

She is scared of all insects, and paranoid about them getting into the house. (I wisely did not tell her about the thumbnail-size wolf spider I caught and relocated outside.) She wanted us to bag up all food waste in plastic before putting them in the garbage -- OK, so it's her time share/place that I'm visiting, I'll abide by her rules. Except that she then puts unclean dishes in the sink and leaves near empty soda cans all over the place.

She will happily tell me all the details of the pedigrees of her dogs (past and present) for hours straight. She's mournful that the pedigrees of the dogs her parents owned when she was small can't be found.

There really are many things to like about her, not the least of which is the miracle that she's actually taken Covid seriously (and as an obese cancer survivor she sure should) so I'm sure some of the endless chatter is the result of being pent up for 18 months in an apartment with only an elderly misbehaving deaf dog and finally having another human being along for companionship.

A week would have been too much but she sleeps really late (11 is crack of dawn for her) so I had enough alone time to recuperate.