I 100% agree with your frustration and feel you are being totally taken care of. Like you, I would not be willing to send the dog off, but I will say that these people would not be on my friends, socialization list. This is really unacceptable.

It is so hard to imagine. 😥

Oh, my! I am so sorry. That is freaking awful!!!

Holy freaking out batman! I thought our 14,000 per day was bad. You have 2.3 times the population of my state so I would have expected that if you were as bad off as us, something in the 31,000-33,000 ish range. But, 60,000???? Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch 😱😰😭

Alert Fatigue. I looked it up. It is a thing. Sigh. I found a place. The Solomon Islands. I am trying to convince Mark that he really does not need me foe the next six months. So far he has reminded me that our youngest is graduating college in April and will not be amused if I miss it. I told him he has to do better than mom guilt! 😁

Sure. I wasn't certain that would work, but if your son has done it, it is definitely worth a try! Here hands shake some, but hopefully she can manage it.

Michigan numbers. Two day total of 28,458 for an average of 14, 229 per day. The health department does not think we will peak until the beginning to middle of February. Our record was set last week at over 22,000 new cases in a single day. Not really the kind of record people should be aiming to break. Sigh. I went to stock up on some groceries and will not do that again for a month. I wore a KN95 and went when hardly anyone was there. Still, I feel like a walking Petri dish.

Hey, you coming to Solomon? Need to get plannin'! 😂

He has ten, and the school is giving them each three. I need to figure out how many hours total they can be used before there is enough degradation that they have to be replaced.

Looks like Samoa and Soloman Islands. Soloman has 99% of their population vaxed. I mean, they only have about twice the population of Iceland, and Iceland hath NOT much, but still. Good.On.Them. At any rate, transmission is pretty low, and my guess is outdoor lifestyle is the key. Now to convince Mark that he doesn't need me around for six months..... 😁

Oy, just looked it up. Sigh. Very sigh. Le sigh, me yikes. Now looking into what I can buy for him to use to disinfect those things. So.damn.tired. There has to be a remote island where I can spend six months on a beach not thinking about this effing virus!

I will check on that. I hope this is not true because if it is, .Michigan just cannot catch a break!

Right. Weather conditions, and omicron, and influenza together create quite the perfect storm. Here though distribution is a real problem because a ton of truckers retired, and no one wants to take their place. The pay is not great for the hours away from family, and it is hard on health. The younger generations are not interested. We need to get back to investing in railroad, and then short haul distribution. But the time to do that was 20 years ago, and now it is too late for the current crisis. It would be nice if leadership would actually lead and make some decisions with the long term in mind instead of whatever makes them an investment buck now! (staring at every politician being bribed by lobbyists which is just about all of them 😠)

Same for my youngest. Vax mandate for living on campus, and off campus students who refused have to test twice per week and are kicked out if they don't. Heavily enforced make mandate, and they opened up a lot of meeting places and added some faculty in order to make sections of larger classes smaller and spread out. Professors have Plexiglas boxes and microphones - for their lecturns. They had almost no covid on campus during the delta surge, and life was pretty darn normal. Omicron may break it. They just got their on campus testing results for the transfer students who arrived Jan. 4-7. 26 cases. They announced this week will be virtual only, and they will reevaluate. They have enough KN95's arriving tomorrow to give every student and employee 3 masks. They are handing out paper bags with instructions for students to store them inside the bag after use, and indicating that they think each make can be worn 5 times, with 48 hours in the paper sack in between. But that is only 15 days worth of wearing. They are going to have to wear them more than that. The one thing going for them is the students will take them off whenever they are outside, or in their dorm rooms. They won't wear them 12 hours consecutively like they would in a medical setting, so maybe they will last longer. I had 10 KN95's to send with ds, and we had some high quality cloth masks doubled with surgical masks which the schools says is okay when waiting for KN95's to be ready for re-use. So he could easily alternate and make a month safely. I suspect possibly more than that and especially if he took his masks outdoors and let them freeze for a day. It is 0 degrees right now at his school! Sunlight and frigid temps would, I hope, weaken omicron a bit. The student body at this school is remarkably compliant. They just want to attend their chosen school, and science and engineering are the largest programs so they tend to be "follow the scientific concensus" type students. We will see how long they go. It is his last semester, and commencement is April 30. I really want him to make it through in person and with at least a short outdoor commencement if the regular one in the dome would not be safe. But I am not holding out a lot of hope.

Okay, so I ended up going between 10 am and 11 am. To tell you how much I don't want to run into people, I called the store first to ask how busy it was. The response was "hardly anyone here" so that was my cue. There were a few gallons of 1% mil left and some lactose free half gallons. That was it for milk. But they had half n half which is what I use for coffee, and we didn't need milk for anything else, so I was to score those. They had sour cream and cream cheese. The produce was, as usual, not great except their portabella mushrooms were fine. I scored one grapefruit for dh, and thankfully really didn't need anything else except carrots. They had a bag of baby carrots that looked okay. I need to ration those out for eating on salads, so I picked up two bags of diced, frozen carrots for my soups. They had no brussel sprouts so I grabbed a bag of frozen and hope they will roast okay. If they are soggy, Mark and so will not be happy! Thankfully, I have a nice supply of dehydrated celery and red peppers from this past summer. I would have liked a bunch of green onions, however, it is fine that I couldn't get any. Salad greens were gone, and I got the last bag of Yukon gold potatoes in the place. They had only one bag of russets as well which I didn't take. I still have frozen broccoli, green beans, and cauliflower from harvest season. Cheese supply was fine, and beef and pork products were fine. Chicken was getting mighty low. I took two packs of chicken thighs and two of chicken breast. I have a turkey breast in the freezer so for fowl, we will be okay for a bit. I didn't need beef since we bought a side this past September. I also do very little with pork, however we do like bacon occasionally so I grabbed a package. I needed sesame seeds, but they didn't have any. I doubt that is a distribution problem though. This particular store is pretty sad when it comes to herbs, spices, and seeds. Bread was low. T.P. was fine. But in the canned products, they only had two cans of black beans and no bags of dried black beans. I took those since my family loves black beans with our tacos. They only had three cans of pintos, and no refried beans. I have dehydrated pintos so I left those cans on the shelf. Dark red kidney beans were in abundance so I picked some up. If one was into going to masker homemade taco sauce, then that was a world of hurting. Almost nothing left of any brand. Junk food, which I wasn't shopping for, was fine except I did want a half gallon of decent vanilla ice cream for floats for funsies, and ha ha ha ha, they did not have a single brand of vanilla. They had some shrimp, but seafood fillets were pretty well gone. I scored a bag of salmon. We are fish eaters so I am going to have to venture 45 minutes away to the seafood market to pick up perch and cod. I am trying not to think about that, and am in no mood to do it today. Gluten free products were drained. I grabbed one box of penne for me to use for my yummy pasta salad. To be honest, with produce, milk, bread, and some canned products in such low supply, I am a little worried about some folks who really can't afford to stock up and are dependent on regular trips to the supermarket. It makes me very thankful to have had our small garden, the ability not put up the harvest and have farmer's markets all summer and fall within minutes of my house, and the cash to put away a half locally grown beef during the season. It is a blessing. We also have whole roasting chickens - 5 yet - int he freezer again from a local farmer. We can eat well throughout shortages, and that is a big privilege that I am well aware of. I may need to share with our son in Kalamazoo if things get tight there. But if I have gas for the car, that won't be problematic. We have an RTIC cooler for camping, and the thing is huge. I can take him a ton of frozen stuff.

Chemistry with someone who loves the subject is quite the pleasant experience. According to the kids at the local high school, back when I was still subbing and had chem class for six weeks while the teacher recovered from surgery, I was a RIOT! 😂 They learned! But when someone with the dedication of Wile E. Coyote and the confidence of Foghorn Leghorn shows up to teach, the students live for those labs! 😆

Something like this would work maybe with a cheap, knit lightweight robe on it. https://www.amazon.com/PNAEONG-Nightgown-Sleepwear-Sleepdress-XTSY108-Cloud/dp/B07Q2HW3PV/ref=sr_1_14?crid=1UP6O95VKUS2T&keywords=womens+nightshirt&qid=1642010969&sprefix=womens+night+shirt%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-14

Since she is 5'1", try searching for a night shirt. They are just above the knee for 5'4" or so women, which make me think below the knee on her.

Oh, the chemistry thing is insane! I am not sure they should even offer it. Most high school science teachers somehow managed top get through their college programs without ever learning a dang thing in chemistry. Nuts! When our daughter was in high school, I paid a friend who was a former chemist for Dow Chemical to tutor her in chemistry which got me very interested in it so I ran off to university to retake the intro to chem I had taken many moons ago in college plus two more classes. Dd's best friend was in high school chemistry taught by someone who had clearly never encountered the subject before, and who also had some of the most abysmal math skills I have ever seen in someone who was NOT the P.E. teacher or football coach! Staggering! Friend was so afraid she would fail and then do poorly in college chemistry that she begged Dd to teach her everything she was learning, and then would go back to school and teach it. Up front, lecturing, leading labs, at the blackboard teaching. The "teacher" was fine with that and read a book the whole time. We helped her make lesson plans on the weekends for each coming week so she could keep the class moving forward in a systematic way. And of course, as the adult homeschooling parent, I was defects teaching that class remotely in actuality. I feel like the district owes me some serious money! I weep for education. So many schools are just failing and have lost sight of what is important. I am truly happy for people who live in areas with good quality schools and for those that work in them. But I throw up my hands in despair for my local ones. And then you add covid on top of it! 😱 It is the wild wild west in education this year. Back in March 2020, when the schools had to suddenly pivot and didn't have enough warning, they sent the textbooks home with the kids, and then teachers followed up with written plans and assignments, lists of recommended videos, links for Khan Academy, and for the young children, a weekly rotation of books picked up each week by the bus driver. Did everyone do it? Of course not. But for the ones that did, I think the education was actually better than what they are getting now, and especially so with the staffing crisis. However, parents have to work and school is their babysitter, not the place they send their children tor an actual education so the expectation is bizarrely low here. They don't care if they are herded into the gym and watch movies all day.

Yes, same here in Michigan. They tied funding to graduation rates, penalizing the schools for failing students. So in my area where parents do not value education and communicate that to their students, you have a large swath of lazy students whose parents support them doing nothing because the superintendent and school board won't let the teachers give failing grades. AP classes were scrapped because they have to follow the college board syllabus, and the superintendent didn't want that. The college bound kids are enrolled full time in dual enrollment at the nearest university. Everyone else is taking remedial or barely more than remedial classes none of which require much of anything. And they wonder why I consider the district high school to be such a joke!!! 😠 But they do have textbooks. The parents did not like the idea of tablets and workbooks so there is that. Sigh.

Hey everyone, if you are on Michigan, Menards is advertising that they have home tests. They also seem to be well stocked on toilet paper and cleaners, and they do have curbside pick up. So you might want to consider making an order from them. We have to go about 45 miles to get go one, but decided it was worth it and have an order waiting for us to pick up.

I am so sorry Katie! I hope she comes through without long covid. Hugs 💓 I am really scared of what Michigan's number will be today. I am guessing between 12,000-14,000, and tests are gone. Mom is flying out for France Saturday, and while not ideal, my sister on the Mediterranean in an area with a forced mask mandate, and people being reasonable, lots of outside things to do because it is not too cold like here, is a better place for her to winter over. She had three KN95 that here doctor gave her to take, and this very sweet physician also made sure she has an appointment Thursday for PCR test with an emergency rush on it. She was boostered in November, Moderna. Her doctor honestly thinks that she is so much better off in France, and she bought a travel insurance plan that will cover everything after the first thousand spent. So if she gets sick there, no worries about affording treatment. Sis's physician, a real sweetheart of a doc, says he is ready for her if she needs anything. Except for the airplane ride over, I feel better about her going there than staying here. It is a Delta flight, everyone has to have proof of vax and negative PCR test, and she is going to eat before getting on the plane, and take a smoothie with her to sip from a straw slipped under her mask so she doesn't have to take her mask off. She will ask for orange juice mid flight to again sip with mask on in order to keep her blood sugar up (type 2) and hope for the best. I am feeding her beef vegetable soup, a big salad, and a bunch of cheese right before dropping her at the airport. We will see if this works. If not, sigh, the mask will have to come off. Ugh! I hope everyone here can stay safe! I am trying to hold out getting omicron until new MAB's that are more effective are available. Trying hard for as long as possible. I don't want to give it another host so it can mutate yet again. But it is getting more and more difficult to do.

It is the most evil, Middle school game of dodge ball ever!

For me, the issue is my dad. Apart from clothes and some cheap jewelry she really doesn't have anything unique to her. Everything is pretty well linked to my dad, and he is the one I try not to let haunt my life.

I just bought a cherry cart with two shelves and butcher block top for an empty spot in our kitchen because the Michigan kitchen is small, and I got spoiled over Christmas at the Alabama house because there is so much counter space. I put the instapot, blender, and kitchen aid (for which there wss no room in the cupboards) on the shelves of the cart, and then had dh hang a new, larger spice rack on the wall so I could empty my spice cupboard and then use that for the toaster and a few small things that were out. The resulting increase in clear counter space has made me feel happy.