No, the children according to their parents, were very healthy.

Yes, that is the thing that is sometimes forgotten. And some bacteria, like strep can have big time, long term consequences.

Also, really just what others said, this is about the living. When fil died, it was after a long, long battle with cancer that left mil utterly, physically spent. Of course her church expected an immediate funeral, but she was just not mentally or physically capable, and none of her children, in laws, or grandkids could come because we all lived out of state and had spent vacation time to visit him while he was alive. So she told the pastor NO and why. He was wonderful, and so respectful. He told everyone on a mass email and call list that they were not to visit her for two weeks, and it would be he and his wife only doing well checks on her so she could rest. The first day after fil died, she slept for 14 hrs, got up and had a sandwich and large glass of water, and went back to sleep for another 8 hrs. She spent two weeks caring for herself. Then the pastor simply had Sunday service in which the obituary and eulogy were read, and she lit a candle for him. The church provided a flower arrangement. No luncheon, but she was showered with groceries, casseroles, and restaurant gift cards. When she told them she was coming to visit us, families donated enough money to buy her plane ticket and then some. It was PERFECT! I cannot emphasize enough that people should do what is best for them and their immediate family. Be creative. Traditions do you no good if they are not helpful personally.

I do not know anyone who has a child with long term, adverse vaccine damage. I know of two families each with a child that has long covid. Neurological and heart damage, extreme fatigue such that they are not able to attend school, church, etc. and only leave the house for medical appointments. At this time, so little is known about long covid in children, there is very little the doctors can do for these children. Parents are just trying to help build them up with vitamins and minerals, very healthy food, taking them outside for fresh air, but really just no treatment plan at this time. One child is 7, and the other is 12.

The number of airline flights being canceled here in the US due to staffing issues is crazy! Locally, services are way scaled back due to staffing shortages from the sheer number of cases and exposures. This is what "let it rip" means, but the people complaining loudest about the disruptions are the ones who never wanted to do anything but "let it rip" in the first place. I have told a few of them to "suck it up buttercup, this is what you wanted now pay the piper". I am not popular with them, and I don't really care either. I am trying not to think about the numbers when school resumes next week. So much large gathering parties in our area. These school buildings are going to be plague riddled. I don't see how they will be able to function through the month of January. And no masks. The parents were determined to have ZERO protocols. So no notifications when exposed, no quarantining/isolation, kids coming to school sick because their parents don't want to take time off work. It is going to resemble and episode of Walking Dead by the middle of January.

I would do the public school. If he wants to major in music, he needs to come from a decent performing arts program. Music in college is very competitive, admission is not a guarantee even if someone is a "good player", and absolutely no merit money is going to follow coming from a poor fine arts program. Tutor personally or hire tutors to help with the academics as needed, and use the ps dual enrollment program to get him things like college comp and college algebra or a couple other standard GEN Eds IF these are being done with actual college professors and not high school teachers instructing. The colleges have a lot of accommodations for LD's, and it demonstrates readiness if the school is widely known to be weaker. He needs to flourish musically. I cannot emphasize this enough. An music therapy programs are crazy competitive to get into so if he aspires to this, you have to prioritize his music and a wide depth of musical experience. If he can assist in some way with children, work with the elementary school music teacher, volunteer counselor at Fine Arts camp, similar type things, all the better. I do not recommend sacred music as a career at the moment. Many churches saw a huge fall off of donations during the pandemic and let their paid musicians/directors go. In my experience, once those salaries are eliminated from church budgets, congregations rarely add back in the future and spend the money on other things. There is a dearth of highly qualified church music directors out of work now, and many of them are going to remain out of work in that field for quite some time. When he graduates college, he will be the one with no experience up against 200 other people with experience trying to get that one advertised church music director job. When this happened back in the 70's during the energy crisis, it took more than a decade to sort out before there were enough churches wanting paid musicians again to make it a viable career choice, and in many instances it was only churches with parochial k-8 schools hiring which meant needing a sacred music degree plus a music education degree and license. A ton of protestant, non-liturgical or less liturgical churches did not go back to paid positions, and the number of parochial schools has dropped like a rock in recent years. I really think he would have a hard time carving out a career in sacred music even if it is 8 years from now when he needs a job. But music therapy is a wonderful field, and he should be able to find a position that pays decently and comes with benefits.

Tonight Mark is making a big batch of Ableskivver, and the boys want to watch movies and play some pinnocle so that is the plan. Tomorrow we will got to MIL's place and have French dips at lunch, and then snack foods throughout the afternoon while we do some things for her and play Mexican Train (domino game) which is her favorite game, and she still mostly has the mental capacity to play. For snacks, I am making stuffed mushrooms, Chili/cream cheese dip with corn chips and celery sticks, berry bowl with kiwi garnish, taco salad, and crockpot of chicken tortilla soup.

I am sooooo sorry! But really, what you propose is not in any possible light, horrible. Please do not feel that way.

A neighbor died of long covid. Had covid, very mild like a cold, back in March - so Delta variant - and then began developing neurological and heart conditions all linked to covid. His conditions were difficult to treat, and his heart kept getting worse and worse. He eventually had what his wife says the cardiologist called a "covid heart attack" and they could not resuscitate him. He was 49. Long covid worries me more than a case of ICU covid ending in death right away. It could devastate us financially as BCBS of Michigan spends a lot of time finding ways of weaseling out of paying medical bills. And if DH got long covid, he would eventually lose his job and that means losing our medical insurance. Even if he could get disability and medicaid, I would have no medical insurance, and the pandemic has so completely gutted the fine arts that the chances of me finding a job in my field that offers group medical or enough salary to float us along AND pay for health insurance for me and our two sons still on our policy is next to zilch. So we are still committed to being as careful as we can hoping to not got it during this wave and especially because the hospital system in our region is collapsing.

Neither of those things are horrible. They are practical. You will actually save money waiting to do the headstone because if you place one now with just your mom's info, you will pay the labor to have it altered for your dad's info and then reset at the grave site. And not going is fine. We all grieve differently. My mother is obsessed with visiting my dad and her parents' gravesites. I on the other hand find it deeply distressing and somewhat creepy so do not except when my ds asks me to go with him to cemeteries to record genealogy information. If I could have possibly gotten out of it without creating a huge scene, I would not have attended my own father's funeral much less the burial. I find funerals to be bone, tired, exhausting and for me, of no value because I require privacy and quiet in order to process, and my extended family values big, huge crazy events that I hate and causes me great anxiety. My mother does not know it, but when she dies, my sister and I have agreed we will not pay for a funeral, and if our brother insists on one, he will have to pay and we will not attend. We will have a backyard barbecue privately, reminisce about her, just talk, and 1 nephew and his wife, our honorary sister "L" plus my sis and her hubby, my kids and their s/o's plus my hubby will be the ONLY invitees. The other sibling and his wife, and four of his five children and their s/o's will not be welcome. (Lots of really toxic dynamic in our brother's marriage and relationships with his kids.) It won't be popular - my mom attends a large church that will have "expectations" - but we don't care. You do what is best for you and your family. Life is for the living. The dead have no idea, and their wishes should not extend beyond the grave in a way that negatively affects their family if it can be helped.

Many hugs to you! 💓

Michigan has a two day average of new cases of 12,900 each day. Sigh. I just don't know how our HCW's are going to survive. Don't come to Michigan folks!

I am so relieved! I honestly thought she would get away with it.

Agreed. Our son's college has a quarantine dorm, and food service is provided as well as daily checks by campus health. So students do have to leave their dorm rooms, but they have a place to go.

This. For me, I would want it in my medical records. And then the other issue is I want to be a part of the medical and scientific community having more information/data to work with so it is important to me that home test folks still follow up with PCR.

I get that. I live in Mid-Michigan, and it is a 9 hour drive to our northernmost university in the state which still doesn't get one to the Wisconsin state line, another 1.5-2 hrs. We are a LONG state! We have friends who have just been assigned a new church in a town no where near the highway on the Ohio border with MI. Their daughter is going to MTU in Houghton. It will take them 11 hours to get to her and not leave the state. Some of our states are just so huge or long or wide it is startling to think about traversing them!

I have had facials that were not great, and then one that was AWESOME. It included scalp massage, neck and shoulder massage, as well as face massage and steaming. I fell asleep! It was the best nap, and I was sooooooo relaxed and refreshed when I woke up for the last part.

No, because hospitals are utterly overwhelmed in our area. Healthcare workers are desperate for a break. We have people here dying of other, treatable illnesses and injuries because there is no one available to help them. I simply cannot in good conscience contribute to that.

I would PCR test if I could get it simply because if I had it, I would want it to be in my medical records for the future, and it helps with data collection and analysis on the virus. From the standpoint of medical insurance, if I developed long covid, I would not be eligible for treatment being paid for without documentation of having the virus, and the home test would not meet that requirement.

I am so sorry! Thinking of you throughout the day. 💓💓💓

I am so sorry. 💓💓💓

My dad had delusions and hallucinations due to oxygen deprivation going undiagnosed by his primary care physician. He had a collapsed lung, and his primary kept saying he had asthma. It went on for weeks. He became violent because of the delusions, but once diagnosed, and treated, he never had them again. I am sorry you have to ask. 💓

For me, watching my community/region become militant, worse humans who literally are some of the most selfish, aggressive, nasty people now, I have found my faith in humanity waning and not likely to recover. There just isn't a whole lot of hope for the planet when half the people don't give a crap about anyone but themselves. I started out 2021 with more hope, gleefully seeing my mom and mother in law vaxed, eagerly getting in line for mine, and seeing my husband, sons, daughter, and son in law gladly get theirs. And to be honest, we had a good spring and summer. We are embracing a more outdoorsy life anyway. We went camping with our sons, and had an absolute blast. We went camping with a beloved nephew and niece in law. We van camped just the two of us, and we bought a home we love on a mountain summit with a gorgeous view, marvelous yard for our grandsons, and plenty of room for all of us to gather. We are in fact all here today, the last of a 12 day trip, for our eldest grandson's sixth birthday having had a lovely Christmas together. So it isn't like it was all bad. Not at all. However, it is still very difficult for me emotionally to embrace the sheer magnitude of how I feel about interacting with the public, my neighbors, just going into a store. My job in the fine arts was gutted. It is never going to recover. My very satisfying start to rebuilding a music/arts career is toast, and it is never coming back. My community choir, children's choir, local artist gallery shows, student art exhibitions, student theater, drama class, music students, hand bell ensemble, piano recitals...gone. It just isn't going to come back. It is very depressing to me. Additionally, mother in law's health is declining, memory is getting bad. We purchased this house with the idea she would be able to enjoy some time here with us on the mountain, but she isn't going to be able to travel, and soon will need a staff. The pandemic has prevented me from going to France to see my sister or her coming home. It has been four years noe since I last saw her, and I don't see that changing for 2022. We do have things to look forward to, and I am trying to cling to that. Our youngest graduates from college this spring, and we are taking all three sons (who have all graduated back to back semesters 2020/201/2022), on a big trip west immediately following commencement. Yellowstone, Glacier NP, Badlands, and the Danish American Museum. We have rented cabins/lodge houses for the whole trip and will cook all our own food, taking the camp cooking equipment with us into the parks so we can picnic. It will be a covid safe vacation. In June, I am taking my eldest son and mother on a road trip for research for a book he is under contract to write. Mom is so excited to be included. It is another socially distanced, outdoorsy vacation. In August, we camp with darling nephew and wife, and then at the end of the month move two of our three sons to their respective grad schools. In between, once the weather is decent on the Great Lakes, we will sail on the weekends we aren't traveling. So I am holding out hope for 2022 to be a good year for our family minus the issues with mother in law, and assuming I can suck it up and stop caring about my job/career. However, I really do not have a lot of hope for the world/society/America in general. This country is regressing, and a significant portion for the country is very happy with that.

Thanks. I am used to it. Our youngest is at college 7 hours from us, and so it is not uncommon for me to do 7 up, move him into the dorms, and 7 back. 14 hours driving in a single day but broken up by the move in process. When I drive to Bama, the only breaking up of the 12 is bathroom/gas stops, and pulling over to eat the sandwich and veggies I brought so the day actually feels longer than the 14 hour day.

I drive 12 hours in a single day to make it to our Alabama house without paying for hotels.