• There is just too much death.  There has been too much death.  The best teacher at DC1's school has been absent all year because of some unnamed illness that put him in a coma (he was the one that got covid last year shortly after we saw unmasked people in his class) and seemed to be recovering but then suddenly died.  Our department secretary's father died of Covid a few months ago and she's left employment though we weren't told why.  Our administrative assistant under her lost her father and almost lost her brother to Covid a bit before that.  Her husband had a heart attack a couple years ago and just got a heart transplant, but it didn't take so now he's in hospice.  So much tragedy in such a small amount of time.  I have a big box of sympathy cards now but I'm tired of sending them.  So many tears.  Life is so precious.
  • I want good things for everyone except people who hurt other people.  And for those people I want their power taken away.
  • I don't believe in zero sum games for most things.  I prefer rising tides that lift all boats to shrinking pies.
  • DC2 (who is allergic to red dye or something red dye adjacent and also apparently caramel color) threw up twice over break.  The first time we traced to the seasoning FIL put on broccoli (DC2 LOVES broccoli) and the second time we assume was the take-out we got from a Mediterranean place.
  • I thought I would have plenty of time to myself during this most recent Christmas vacation with the in-laws but boy was I wrong.  Completely forgot how having toddlers around means there's no time for any adults.
  • Also 6 hours is a lot of driving in the middle of a holiday (from MIL to AirBNB and back again).  I underestimated that.
  • There was definitely not room in the AirBNB for MIL's extended family on top of SIL's family (2 adults + 4 kids) and our respective families (2 adults, 2 adults + 2 kids).  And with all the kids there not yet having gotten exercise I was seriously worried something was going to get broken.  If we host all of those kids next year I think we'll have to go for one of the big farmhouse retreats outside that city.
  • Some gas stations had a lot of people masked and some gas stations had nobody masked.
  • DH met one of his relatives outside and masked when we were first at MIL's.  While we were gone at the AirBNB his relative got really sick for one day, sore throat, fatigue, etc.  And then his (adult) son living with him got the same thing and was still sick with it when DH met with the relative again at the end of our trip (also outside and masked).  They're both vaccinated and triple boosted, but were not aware that those were the Omicron symptoms for vaccinated people.  We should have given them a couple of home tests, but DH didn't put that information together until after he'd left and the relative had gone off to visit more relatives (most of whom are unvaccinated but got Delta over Thanksgiving).
  • I assume with both kids back in school there's no way of avoiding Omicron, but at least we can try to avoid spreading it to other kids whose parents are selfishly not letting them get vaccinated for whatever reason.
  • I bought 100 BOTN masks because they were on a massive sale ($1/each) but only if you buy 100.  I handed out a bunch of them and was a little astonished that it isn't mainstream knowledge about how well KF94 work, especially compared to cloth masks.  I was also astonished about how appreciative people have been about the two (one black, one white) I've given them--I assumed people would just think I was weird like my colleagues clearly do.  I was less astonished that people didn't know you can reuse them and use them for at least 40 hours because I didn't know that until recently either.
  • I think our current plan for the kids is to have them in paper masks (BOTN KF94 medium for DC1, a variety pack of options for DC2 until zie finds one zie likes best, I'm guessing the Tiger KF94, but we have several other types to get through) until the omicron wave dies down and then they can go back to Enro (which is waaaay less effective than paper masks, according to Aaron Collins) once they're back to 0 new cases per week.
  • On day 2 of staying with us, the cousin closest to DC2's age definitely had some sort of upper respiratory thing and wasn't that careful about nasal fluids.  (Also both toddlers had drippy noses because toddlers have drippy noses.)  After we got home, DC2 developed a sore throat.  We have covid tests so we could just test, but I don't want to waste a test on a false negative.  After talking it over with a friend who keeps up on this stuff, she pointed out that if DC2 isn't going anywhere and we're not planning on going anywhere, and DC2 continues to have mild cold-level symptoms, and we've already all been exposed to whatever it is and won't isolate a 9 year old, then having a diagnosis doesn't actually matter.  So we will wait to test.
  • The last time our health department reported county-level covid rates was December 22nd.  At that time we had been doubling case numbers for I think 4 days in a row.  They just don't report numbers during vacation.  When they get back, they will have a backlog of reports to sort out but they will not do it quickly (because they had a backlog of over 1000 cases a couple months ago).  I wonder how many other local health departments are in this situation.  So much inaccuracy in data collection.  (Also our county cut the number of people working on pandemic data and information dispersal early on so we also don't get updated numbers on weekends.)
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