I should state that my college senior is on campus with a college that has a 77% vaccine rate for students (they didn't hand out exemptions except medical so the unvaxed students are off campus commuters), and 91% of faculty and staff. The 9% unvaxed staff were allowed work remote if their job allowed it, or work in the office with a medical exemption, or be fired. Religious and "I don't want to" exemptions were not an option. Unvaccinated students and employees have to test twice per week. There is a strictly enforced mask mandate on campus, very strict, and everyone has been very good about it because so long as they do it without whining at the administration and bucking the rules, life on campus gets to be quite normal. They have gone the entire semester on a campus of 9500+ people, and only seven cases for the entire semester. The quarantine dorm goes weeks without anyone in it. So the thing is, with community cooperation, this virus can absolutely be stamped down. But, this means the community at large cannot be whackadoodle asshats and actually give a frick about it. That seems to be pretty damn rare in my state, definitely in my county.

We do not have a single school building in the county without a significant outbreak. Some have closed because the numbers are so high. The high school in my district as 293 students, and 46 known covid cases. You can imagine the level of exposure. But they refuse to shut down, and there is no contact tracing. They no longer inform the parents. Only 11.5% of eligible teens in the county are vaccinated and the health department estimates that less than 10% of eligible 5-11 year olds will end up vaxed. This is an anti-vax county with actual churches whose leadership preach against vaccines as a mark of the beast. They also preach that about masks too. It is a let it rip county, and routinely overwhelms the nearest city hospitals because our two little county ones are nothing more than stitch and ditch or bandaid stations and have no ability to handle covid much less pediatric cases. Of a population of 52,000 people, yesterday's estimate of probable new cases was 1507. The positivity rate has topped 20% and since most people refuse to test until they are very sick, that number isn't even close to the true picture. We are fairly hunkered down. We have to grab some wood today for some Christmas woodworking projects, but have ordered it from Menards for outdoor pick up. We will wear KN95 just to roll down the window to talk the the employee because the county we have to go to in order to get the wood is worse off than our county! We will also travel a bit of distance for a curbside pick up of groceries from Kroger because Meijer and Walmart, our closest grocers, have eliminated curbside pick up due to staffing issues. The last thing I want to do is spend time running around a packed out big box store. Dh gets his dose today. We had to wait for the local pharmacies to get stock and it was slow coming in. He was JnJ back in April and is getting Pfizer. Our son who is JnJ also will be home from college on the 19th, and gets a Pfizer on the 20th while I will also be getting a Moderna booster same day. I wanted to get one sooner, but they just got Moderna in, and I have to do some things the next few days for our elderly mothers, things which cannot be put off. Since I am a reactor, a terrible any vaccine will make me ill for two-three days kind of reactor, I needed to get this out of the way and then be ready to hunker down and be miserable. However, I have to drive to the U. P. the 19th to get our son and can't be sporting a fever while making a 14 hr round trip. So I put it off until the 20th, and we will go together so that I can be jealous of the fact that he gets vaccines and may as well have been injected with tea because they don't phase him, while I look and feel like something the cat barfed up, and my arm will be sore for five days, and burn at times for a couple of weeks. Sigh. The county is imploding. And we have no county health department director. The county commissioners forced ours out. She could not take the pressure from them. They are all covid is a hoax people, every one of them, and wanted her to lie about the numbers, lie about the disease, lie, lie, lie. She wouldn't. They called her HORRIBLE names in public! It was awful. So now they want to hire someone who was an Army Corpsman, and has a master's degree in emergency medical administration which would be a qualification for being an administrator of EMS, but does not meet the state requirements for public health. The county hired lawyers - don't even ask me how I feel about the use of my tax dollars for this - to sue the state for the right to hire whomever they damn well please to the position. So no one is at the helm. The county medical services director has been doing everything he can to blow the whistle on the county commissioners, but this very right wing area just loves them! And the current "has at least one dose of some covid vaccine" rate is only 39% for the adults. I live in a f*cking Petri dish in which even the measles and HIB vaccination rate for kids has fallen below 60%. Children are the sacrificial lambs to the political and religious gods, and the parents are proud of it. 😠 I have three great nieces who have not received a single vaccine in their lifetimes. One needed stitches this summer and her parent refused to allow her to even have tetanus anti-toxin. According to the local health department employees, this is becoming a big thing here as they hear from the stitch and ditch that an increasing number of parents will not allow them to give it when minors are injured. I am so DONE with this place!

Epic!!!

It looks lovely!!!

I just don't take crap on the chin anymore. I have wised up. The larger picture is that women have been conditioned to be meek in this patriarchal system. So if they reach the place they are not willing to take it, they are then labeled angry, b$tchy, and a shrew even though it is perfectly acceptable for men to do the same. I experienced that light bulb moment when I realized I had been culturally and religiously trained to put up with a boatload of manure, and it was long before menopause. So I don't think it had anything to do hormones. It was more to do with being able to really step back, see things for what they were, and have the courage to change and make my voice heard.

This has occurred to me. My asexual adult child has been maintaining since the age of thirteen that it is immoral to have children so long as no major steps to reverse climate change are being enacted. I can't rule out that it is a factor.

Tell that to the preschool 17 miles.from my house that has 42 out of 77 students age 3-4 out with covid, 3 children hospitalized, and has closed down for two weeks with an unvaxed, very much loved teacher on a ventilator. Teacher is going to be taken off the vent tomorrow. I know because she is the sister of one of my niece's baby fathers, an aunt to my great nieces.

My brother's wife is an "alternative health" person. So no vaccines, and is actually making my brother stay away from our mom for eight weeks starting tomorrow because she is getting her Moderna booster, and sister in law thinks the vaccine comes with some sort of zombie bacteria that lays dormant until the government "activates" it. 🙄 She thinks she can cure E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. with vegetables, vitamin c, and essential oils. Sigh. My brother is type 2 and has had a stroke and a heart attack. And of course, he believes her crap. (I wish she could be put in jail for her foul medical advice.) So no vaccine, no mask, no nothing, just taking vitamin C and snorting diffused essential oils. He hasn't gotten covid yet mostly because he is IT and has a permanent work remote situation. However, it is only a matter of time because she sees "clients" in her voodoo shop and is exposed. Our county has ticked up really badly, some of the worst statistics yet. They are just so convinced. Vegetables, vitamin c, and essential oils. I just can't wrap my brain around the depth of their stupid. But, I guess the bright spot is she is against all allopathic medicine in every situation, even for animals so she won't be stuffing him full of ivermectin from TSC. She is still mad at him for being treated for his stroke and heart attack at the hospital. She thinks she could have rubbed oils into his temples and healed his brain, and then had him drink some potion to stop the heart attack. My head hurts when I think about it too much. I swear it makes my BP go up!

I know, right! So variable. I am so glad my casual to a fault son went into anthropology. Apparently that is the long hair, cut offs, paint shirt, birkenstock sandal crowd where a new hoodie means dressed nice. 😂 His undergrad profs came to class looking they rolled out of a 1969 VW bus. I am really hoping cargo pants and a clean t shirt will be "interview" clothes after he is out of graduate school or we may have to tackle him, and drag something decent onto his body so he actually gets a job in his field. 😁

Funny how different things are! The lawyer in Huntsville who completed the closing on our asked if we would all be okay if he took his suit coat off. Our realtor and the seller's realtor were wearing business dress. The receptionist was in business dress. The office was in a set of suites with a variety of businesses represented in the building and as we watched folks come and go the only employees not wearing business dressy were the employees we saw in the hallway coming from the office and they were wearing scrubs and lab coats with masks and face shields. I think these things are very individual from business to business. It just seems like there should be an employee handbook to consult because none of us can really know what the environment is the interns workplace.

Right. This is a grandparent that won't even let the family mask inside when no one else is masked, and isn't being asked to do so. We had a child that had to spend two years rather isolated to keep him healthy so his heart condition could stabilize. My parents back in 1999 when masking was most definitely not a thing would wear KN95s at work, at church, in the grocery store, you name it. They did not hug other people or shake hands. They washed their hands religiously. They did not want to bring anything to DS if taking reasonable mitigations could prevent it, and they wanted to do that for ds. The grandparents in the OP's situatiom really don't give a fig. That is not an attitude I would be willing to deal with on a holiday, especially one so important to kids. Zoom works. Phones work. Facebook chat works. And for the record, because my father in law smoked a pack a day in his house. We stopped going there. He was not welcome at our house unless he smoked outside and never with the kids around. He was also a horrible driver so we had a rule that our children could not be in the car with him when he drove. My niece is not welcome anywhere near us because of her drug use and alcoholism because we are not willing to be the reason she heads out driving under the influence, which by the way, she does all the time! 😠

LED flashlight, they make some nice pocket size ones. Very handy. Bertie is Every Flavor Beans Glow in the dark shoes laces. I kid you not, I have three boys in their twenties and they still like silly string, and will go outside and have silly string wars! We've been known to go outside, pull up a chair, and watch the hijinks. Audible credits

Thank you. It is available otc for livestock and that is the formulation these loons are taking and in horse size doses too because apparentnLy they think they have quarter horse chromosomes lurking in their DNA. This is not the human formulation which requires prescription and docs are not prescribing. People are even trying to sneak the damn horse med into the hospitals around here so now there are no visitors allowed, back to hospital lockdown because of morons. I am tired of people defending them, and being all sensitive about the feel feels of people who are killing themselves and attempting to kill their loved ones out sheer, willful ignorance. So done. It is livestock medicine. Horse reworked is the appropriate name for what it is people are O.D'ing on and melting their intestines and bowels with.

This, and the Delta variant is NOT some wilting cold. It is more transmissible to and from children, and causing more complications in children than alpha or beta did. So this is a risk and especially to the unvaxed four year old. A bit like taking your baby to someone who insists despite the fact they may have RSV, they are going to kiss that little infant. No thanks. These people could test twice and meet outdoors while OP and family mask. They are willing to do nothing! These are not good people. If the grandparents die without seeing the grandkids again, that is on them, not the OP. And while it might be upsetting for the kids to have that happen, it would be way worse to have something happen to their sibling. On top of which, it is actually very covid responsible for OP and family to not visit grandparents who refuse to vax, won't mask, won't quarantine for a visit, etc. If one of the kids transmitted covid to their grandma who has comorbidities plus age against them making death or severe disability more likely, how will that child feel? It isn't just a one way street here. Plus, the possibility is way worse of something happening to those grandparents because what we are seeing here is that the "covid is a hoax" people are refusing remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies, and already saying they will not take the new Merck drug because politics comes before being alive. This is wide spread. I would not go near them.

For our pre-teens and teens, we used to give batteries. Sounds boring, but they always had things that needed batts all the time and they liked having their own stash. We also did things like Dairy Queen gift cards. They like blizzards.

A lot of harm can be done to children as they age when they realize who their toxic relatives are and what they did and caused. These don't sound like good people for your children to be around. Sad to say. But not all grandparents are magical people much less good. It is okay to limit contact. Given their beliefs which run entirely counter to what you are trying to teach your children about how to act in a pandemic/crisis, personal responsibility, etc., the best I would suggest offering is A phone call on speaker phone so they know they are being supervised, or a zoom call with all of you so you or your dh can shut it down if they start into an inappropriate topic like, "Your parents are so mean and won't let me see you."

LOL, don't start me on coons! They are such a menace here, and their population way too high so the dratted things are always a problem and often diseased. Ugh. They are also another "oh look isn't the baby coon so cute? We can't leave it to die!" animal that people want to bottle feed. And then they get big and mean, and climb the drapes, and...off to the woods they go only they have gone from naturally not particularly scared of humans to "hey, give me a twinkie and a cigarette or else" not afraid of people. It occurred to me if epidemiologists want to study human transmission of disease to wild animals, we should talk about that Tiger King show! 😜 Those people could definitely be the cause of something like this. Not saying they are, just that if some disease shows up in big cats that definitely came from humans, look no further..... Oh, and I looked it up. we do have a farmed venison place.here for restaurant supply. The property is fenced and netted. But given that wild deer can come right up to it and get nose to nose with the farm deer, I can see that being a source of transmission.

I think a lot of this can be regional. Some of what seems to be okay with casual clothing in some regions would not fly here. So it is difficult to know how to advise because it differs from region to region, and of course from corporation to corporation.

This is a likely scenario. Around here people do not keep their dogs inside, and they run the fields. Deer tend to use communal watering holes, and I have seen dogs drinking from them. Scientific American had an article July 2021 that highlighted a UK that seemed to indicate dogs and cats can get it from their humans. Deer come to eat in my mother in law's yard, a yard that my own dog has spent time running around. We also have a problem here with folks who find orphaned bambi's, and instead of calling the DNR to remove them, they get sheep milk replacer and bottle feed them. Then about the time they get big enough to be a problem, they turn them loose in the woods. Bambi goes to the watering hole. This past summer five people in my county were fined for keeping them illegally. All it would take is for one of those households to have covid and set a covid infected deer loose, and it would spread rapidly. The deer often drink together practically nose to nose, and during years when the DNR allows hunters to bait deer, they come in groups to eat, nose to nose, from the bait pile. All of those carrots, beets, etc. having been handled and coughed on by the hunter, and droplets hanging in the air. Deer here a very tame. Deer love beets, although apples will make them show up in even larger numbers. Hunters have reported that a doe and baby ave been known to only stand 100 feet away from the hunter replenishing the bait pile, and appraoch to eat it the minute he/she is 100 feet away. So though outside, I can see it happening. I don't know that this is how it happened, but I can understand how that could easily be the source of transmission.

Roadkill. This time of year the hunters have the needs on the run. We have a lot more deer/car accidents and the driver gets out to confirm that the deer is dead, and if not, call a hunter friend or the police to come end its life so it doesn't keep suffering. The deer, if it dies from a broken neck or a shot to the head but does not have internal injuries that make the meat no good will take it home to dress out or to a deer processing facility. Many people in my area eat venison. Then we have several organizations that have hunter supper gatherings on first day of gun season. So anyone who came in contact with a live, infected deer then could expose everyone at the gathering. This whole thing is made worse by the scores of hunters who invite all their buddies to deer camp which is a weekend or longer festivity of hunting and drinking. (I am not exaggerating. Drunk with gun is a big thing here. It is a freaking miracle more of them do not kill each other.) So they live together, track deer together, video tape each other's hunt, help each other dress out their deer. There is an entire culture around it. So we are talking about thousands of guys hitting the woods between youth hunt in September, bow season, rifle season, and then musket loader season. Then they all go home and transmit to their families, work colleagues, the cashier at the supermaket....really easy for me to see how it would jump from deer to humans and then spread like wildfire.

I am relatively new to all of this and still learning. So I probably do not communicate well. No worries. I may bow out of the discussion and just read the thread to try to learn more of the nuances. That said, my asexual child who is actually comfortable with sex identity assigned at birth just not interested in actual sexual relationship has not found a home at all with the LGBTQ community nor other asexuals because it isn't acceptable in that community on that college campus to be asexual and not also come out as transgender. It is very frustrating and isolating for my child.

Depends on the field. Business casual for my husband is a pair of nice chinos and a polo shirt or a button down oxford with no tie, loafers or wingtips. For the women, it usually means a comfy pair of dress pants, a blouse that is NOT a tee or anything like that or a sweater, and ballet flats or other type of flat that is close toed. They do not wear sandals. Or at least before his department went entirely work remote, that was the dress code for casual Fridays.

This this this this this! So OP, it would be a 100% hard NO to these grandparents. I am sorry they are this way.

Insurance where you are may cover it. That is not the way it is every where. And for those on medicaid, access is heavily regulated at the state level. Point two I will take under advisement as I am still learning. However, I still think some of this is culturally made - ie penis means typical male societal things etc. - and wonder if some suffering could be eliminated by not gender sorting everything in our society, and if that in turn would help folks feel more comfortable with the bodies their bodies, not everyone of couse, but some. Again, I am willing to admit I am just learning.

One of my four children is asexual, and they would tell you, you are not wrong! It is very, very sad to me as their mom, by of course worse for them.