Y'all need to come to my little town in Texas. People here are no longer wearing masks. No one is sanitizing anything anymore. My store stopped handing out wipes at the door for carts. Half of the clerks aren't wearing masks. The town is planning a 4th of July parade and fireworks show and "recommends" that people wear masks and socially distance, but will not be enforcing it. If anyone questions why people aren't wearing masks, you get yelled at that if you are too scared, then maybe you should stay home, or better yet, get out of Texas.

My family lives 1200+ miles away. If I am to see them in the next year, it will involve either a 2.5+ hour plane ride (longer with boarding and waiting at the airport), or a 22+ hour car ride. While I am concerned about picking up the virus, my bigger concern is that I cannot easily resolve a problem so far from home. What if I went to Chicago to see family and couldn't get back for some reason? Flight gets cancelled, sudden strict lockdown in either state that means I can't get home, someone gets sick and we have to quarantine for who knows how long, the hotel has to temporarily close to decontaminate...There's a lot of weird stuff that has to be considered right now. I have zero solutions for any of that, which means we can't visit until some part of this dumpster fire of covid-19 changes for the better. It's one thing to get sick 2 hours from home. It's a whole different thing to get sick 12+ hours from home. Your husband and in-laws plan stinks because they aren't considering that anything could go wrong and they have no backup plan in the event something did go pear-shaped. Ther'es no way I would go, and I would throw down hard about taking the kids.

I know one of the people on that list. Dr. Peter Sakas was an exotics animal vet in Niles, Illinois. He was a fantastic veterinarian. This is a huge, huge loss to the veterinary community there. Everyone knew and respected Dr. Sakas. 😞

Omg, this is so sad. Now I want to call this guy and chat with him about his day. Only half kidding, but if he wants a new email/fb buddy to check in on him, this random middle aged lady in Texas would be happy to do so!

If their family was so great and strong, no one would have been able to "destroy" it 😉 I doubt your MIL has the self-awareness to realize it, but the reason they don't like you is because you've probably exposed the problems in the family. If only you hadn't shown up and acted like a normal person, then no one would have had to change! As for your original question about Mother's Day, I don't remember the day being particularly about the grandmother's. There was usually a "family dinner" at someone's house, and maybe flowers or cards were given, but it wasn't a big "This is my special daaaaaaaaay!!!!!" type event.

Right, that was my point. Toxic people will call you selfish and mean when you don't give them what they want. It's not selfish or mean.

Sometimes, the right thing is to be selfish. Selfish does not equal being mean. I think a lot of times, people will say "That's selfish!", but they say it in a way that really means "I think you are mean!" A variant meaning is "I think you are mean for not doing what I want!!!"...which is actually selfish. What's the worst that happens if you act with your and your immediate familiy's best interests at heart? What would happen if you "owned" the selfish label and stopped worrying what they thought about you? Do you even like these people? If not, then...maybe it's ok to not sacrifice your own happiness for them.

I don't know of a graphic on it. What I know from my immunology relatives is that symptoms typically show up 5-6 days after exposure. You should be tested within 3 days of showing symptoms, because that is when there is the highest viral load in the upper airway. If you wait longer than that, the virus is moving out of the upper airway into the lower airway, and there isn't as much virus sample for them to collect. This would make you more likely to get a false-negative test result. You are also most contagious just before showing symptoms and for a few days after symptoms develop. You can still be contagious after your symptoms resolve and you feel better, so the recommendation is to wear a mask and social distance after you start feeling better. Most people are no longer contagious 10 days after symptoms have resolved, but wear a mask for 14 days after symptoms resolve, just to be safe. Like with any illness, there are outliers. Some people will show symptoms earlier or later than 5-6 days. Some people will be contagious for longer, some people will be contagious for less time. Here's a link from Harvard about it. It's a bit long. Harvard Covid Stuff

You definitely want the textbooks! My kid loved them and also would read them before bed. We usually did 4 pages in the practice book every day, and a quick review of the relevant guide book pages. My son had read and re-read the guides so often that he really only needed a quick re-read to know what to do for a lesson. I think 4 pages would probably be too much if a child was reading the relevant guide pages for the first time before attempting the problems. We usually also had some other math "thing" going on in addition to BA, either a random workbook that caught his eye, a fun math story like "The Number Devil", or something from the "Key to..." series (Key to Fractions, Key to Percents, etc). Level 5 has been really challenging, and we can only get through 2 pages a day most days.

How are things going, @Ottakee?

We went to this school, too. 😕 Had to cut the drywall out 2 feet up the wall and then rounded up every fan I could find plus a big ole dehumidifier from Home Depot to dry the house out.

Yeah, they are part of why I want to move away. MIL is still close enough that she can hijack Christmas and cause drama. She also hints that she wants to move in with us, and there is no way that can happen if DH and I are to stay married. MIL will never leave Texas, so if we move, that issue will resolve on its own.

Three days after we arrived in Texas, we went to see MIL. I walked in to her house to find it filled with moving boxes. I asked what was up, and she laughed and said "I am moving! And so is SIL and cousin-in-law!" I must have looked like I had been hit by a bus, because MIL laughed again and said "Look at your face! You're looking like 'I just got here and everyone is leaving!' ha ha!". My MIL has moved 5 times in 6 years, always a bit further away from us. She has bipolar disorder, and moving is part of her manic phase. Everyone just sort of goes along with it, rather than try to talk her out of it. I dont understand this dynamic, and I have been told rather pointedly to mind my business. There is a lot about how my in-laws function that I do not understand at all. I have decided none of it is my problem and leave it 100% to DH to set up any visits with his family and deal with his mom's mental health. It feels like a cold way to handle this sometimes, but it's the only way I can keep from feeling bitter about it. 😕

It probably depends on the industry. A lot of tech jobs are already shift work. But, a lot of tech jobs can also work remotely. My junior high had split school shifts due to overcrowding. It sucked. It's a really, really long day for teachers and a really, really short day for the students. Our class sessions were 37.5 minutes long, (Yes, they counted that half minute), in order to accommodate both shifts of kids AND keep the teachers from working 14+ hour days.

Oh, I'm so sorry. 😞 It sounds like she's been handling this with so much grace. I hope something goes her way very soon!

We moved to Texas to be near the inlaws. Long story short, they promised a lot of help with DS and lots of fun family time and togetherness. That did not come to pass because they all moved away within weeks of us getting here. We see them once, maybe twice a year now, despite me trying very hard to build a relationship with them and between them and DS. I was not at all happy about them moving, because I gave up friends, my family, and a job I liked to move to be near them. It felt like they pulled a fast one on us. None of the people moving did so because of jobs. They just felt like living in a different city, several hours away. DH was really hurt and disappointed. I was really confused for awhile, and now I feel like "Whatever" when the in-laws moan and groan about how they never see us. Now I want to live closer to my family. Probably not in the same state as them, (taxes are too high there), but within a day's drive would be great. I feel vulnerable here without family during a pandemic. If something happened to me and DH, I have no idea who would look after my 11 year old and no fast way to get him to my family. We've lost some friends as a result of me speaking out against the Plandemic video, we don't have family ties here, and there aren't any of the types of educational opportunities my son enjoys. My husband can work remotely, so there's no great reason to stay here. Time to go!

We won't be early adopters, either. I'm very pro-vaccine, but I want to see how real people respond over time. I have a sister and an aunt that are immunologists, and both said they'd be waiting 6 months after a vaccine release before getting it. I was surprised they would only wait 6 months; I thought they'd want to wait a year. I'll have to ask them why 6 months is their magic number.

I want to hear more about all the good things in Ohio! It is on our short list of places to move to in 2021.

We're doing a similar search, and are looking closely at southern Ohio and Pennsylvania. Parts of Indiana and Kentucky might fight the bill for you, as well. Unless you are a "Yay, winter!!!!" type person, I would not recommend Michigan, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. My sister lives in Illinois, not far from the Wisconsin border and winter is long. I consider winter to be "months where snow is possible and very likely". First snowfall is usually around Halloween and last snowfall is usually around Easter. This year, the last snowfall was April 17. The area isn't blanketed in snow the entire time, but snow is a possibility for that long. I lived in the suburbs of Chicago for several years, and the winter wore on me. By February, everyone is in a bad mood because it's been grey for so long.

I would dig into how much of the urge to move is driven by nostalgia for how things were 30 years ago vs what the area currently offers. We made a nostalgia move to Texas, my husband's home state. He had been gone for 15 years and was really missing home. I can't say that living here has been terrible, but it definitely did not work out the way he dreamed it would. It turned out that much of what he missed were experiences he had with people from his younger years. The desire to move here wasn't about what the area currently offered, but how he felt when he remembered living here. It's worked out mostly ok, despite some quality-of-life issues not panning out the way we hoped. In some ways I'm very relieved to be riding out a pandemic here than in our previous location (Cook county, Illinois), but when it's safe, we have plans to move out of Texas and head back to a northern state.

My husband's employer sent us a 10 pack of masks. I thought it was a nice gesture. They've been really, really great throughout this whole thing and have sent other goodies to us, too.

Not much happening here. We've been watching a pair of birds build a nest on top of my front porch. My neighbor tore up his backyard for the 3rd time in 18 months (septic issues again. Stop using so much bleach!). I found a little checkered garden snake by the chicken yard. Better move on, buddy! My girls will eat you up! Husband has decided he wants to grow microgreens as a hobby, and is in the middle of putting together a shelf with grow lights. In his misspent youth he grew the Devil's Lettuce, now he wants to grow real lettuce, lol. 🤷‍♂️

It's not legal here, but I know of many families that partake and it annoys me. Like, really, really, really annoys me. I'm sorry you had to deal with that on what should have been a nice day.

Even if a company got a vaccine to market in the next 6 months, you probably will have to wait to get it. No one company has the production capability to make 7+ billion doses of vaccine quickly. You are likely to have to wait a year or more to receive a vaccine due to production limits. By the time it is available to you, there will be a lot of data on how real live people have responded to it.

This is so worrying. 😞 We used to live in Cook County, and I still have relatives in Lake, DuPage, and Winnebago counties, so I've kept one eye on what is going on there.