Yes. I already was yesterday; and then we woke up today to *exactly* the kind of day it was 20 years ago -- cloudless sky, warm not hot, no breeze, a surreally perfect September day.

re regionally understood code Fair enough; the thread's made clear that "black tie, blue jean" does, indeed, instantly convey an established look to at least a portion of the guests... much as "garden party" or "nautical" would, as well. As my fellow Yankees immediately above made hilariously clear, the code hasn't yet completely crossed over, LOL... but I expect it will in due time.

So many hugs. And echoing... if *you* feel worried and drained and exhausted and stressed... it's worth trying to find a therapist. Not to fix your kid. To help *you* find and use strategies that help *you* deal with what's on *your* plate.

I LOATHE those kinds of dress cues. The absolute worst, and most common, is "black tie optional," but there are any number of other irritants. Just.tell.me.

Whole family, and our octogenarians and extended family above 12 yo, all vaxxed. 1. No. We're in the midst of High Holy Day season. The synagogue has a mask policy and compliance is 100%; every congregant I know personally (I'm on the board, and very active) is vaccinated; we spaced the seats; we threw open the doors on all sides; the clergy both took PCR tests the day prior to RH... and still I was twitchy, and spent a lot of time in the foyer "ushering" rather than in the main sanctuary. If it were only 20% masked... no way. 2. No. We were eating inside in restaurants during a brief window after vaccination and before Delta, when I briefly felt like Wonder Woman as I briefly believed the light was at the end of the tunnel in the US at least. But now with Delta we're back to outside-only, and as the weather turns on us we'll go back to takeout and delivery. Sigh. And our positivity is only ~3%; 15% is HIGH. 3. Sure. Masking is... just not a terribly big deal IMO. You find a type that fits well, you put it on when you're around others. I remain baffled why it's so freaking controversial.

IANAL, and this is a *bit* of a tangent off topic; but I believe the relevant term for prevailing US labor policy, to this point, is "at-will employment." Employers hire and fire at their will, and aside from proven discrimination based on a handful of legally protected classes, can fire for any reason or no reason. Disinclination to vaccinate is not among the short list of legally protected classes. "Right to work" refers to a different US labor policy prevailing in many states -- that unions cannot require employees to pay dues. Both practices tend to serve employers' interests -- "at will" allows ease/speed of firing and "right to work" prevents the sort of collective action that could bargain for termination and other benefits when firing or layoffs occur... but they're not quite the same.

The two COVID data consolidators I use most are Johns Hopkins' (for cases / deaths / testing / positivity) and Bloomberg (for vaccination). Both have gobs and gobs of information if you delve into the sub-pages and drill down to particular countries and states. To the first bolded, prior infections: As of today, JH reports that in the US there have been a total of 40,282,910 confirmed cases. As the US population is ~330 million, that would work out to a prior-infected rate of ~12%. (Adjust upwards for cases that were never clinically confirmed and thus are not counted; then adjust downward for people who've been infected twice and are thus double-counted... but I don't think you can plausibly get anywhere close to "over a third.") To the second bolded, vaccinations: As of today, Bloomberg reports that in the US, 58.8% of the total population has been vaccinated with at least one dose (you can scroll down and use the pull-down screens to get more granular and state-specific numbers). But as previous pp have noted, we can't just add the ~12% prior-infected folks to the ~60% vaccinated folks, because there is a LOT of overlap between folks who were infected early on, and folks who got vaccinated once the vaccine was available. In the early-hot-spot, now-highly-vaxxed region where I live, literally every single individual I know who was infected early on, has been vaccinated since, aside from the kids <12. To the third bolded, "herd immunity": As well, two issues are confounding the concept of "herd immunity" -- the virus is quickly mutating, and also, terrifyingly, immunity seems to wane. The early confirmed cases were of the original strain of COVID, and the vaccinations were developed around the original strain of COVID... but now we're dealing with Delta. And increasingly it's looking like immunity conferred from EITHER prior infection OR the vaccine wanes over time. But to the fourth and ultimate bolded, why isn't this going away... the way I think of this question is that the virus, so far, is adapting to us faster and better than we are adapting to it. There's a long form and a short form version of this. The short and somewhat anthropomorphized form is: It's a race. The tools that COVID has to continue flourishing are: more efficient transmission that increases its ease of spread, and rapid mutation that enables it to evade immunity to prior strains. The tools that WE have to combat its spread and continuance are: behavioral (distancing, masking, ventilation, avoiding crowded gatherings, avoiding travel) and science (testing followed by rigorous contact tracing & quarantining, and above all vaccines). So far, COVID has utilized the tools it has to win. And so far, we're lagging in using ours. So COVID is still winning. Until we're willing to the tools WE have, it isn't going to "go away" anytime soon. At this point, we're basically just hoping that as we let it rip across the globe, it will burn out (like 1919 influenza) as it mutates into less-virulent forms. Maybe, but equally, maybe it will mutate into more-virulent forms that continue to evade waning immunity to prior forms of the disease. Hope is not a strategy.

re hospital overload being unevenly distributed That's roughly where we are in CT as well. We were a very-early hot spot, and our hospitals were overwhelmed back in April 2020, but we've never (knock wood) approached those levels at any point since: Schools just opened late last week, and everyone expects cases to balloon because of that; and in a few more weeks the weather will drive folks indoors. But hopefully high vaccination (we're at 71.1% of the state total population all ages, only VT, MA, CT and WDC have gotten over 70%) and good masking will keep too many cases from hitting the hospitals.

Sharing a passage from this morning's Mishkan Hanefesh that knocks me over every year (I think I've shared it before): They went forth from Egypt in a single night... but next time the miracle will be different. Once two Sages were walking very early in the valley, and they saw the light of the morning star. Said one to the other: "This is how the redemption will be. The dawn breaks with a single ray of light - and bit by bit the sky is illumined, until morning comes and the darkness is gone. So the redemption will occur little by little, growing steadily until the world is full of light." Do not wait for a miracle, or the sudden transformation of the world. Bring the day closer, step by step, with every act of courage, of kindness, of healing and repair. Do not be discouraged by the darkness. Lift up every spark you can, and watch the horizon for the coming of dawn. Look closely! It has already begun. May your year be filled with sweetness and light, my imaginary friends. Shanah tovah.

so much this Some of them are distinctly seasonal/ timebound, so those ones HAVE to get done (I organize our town's statewide or municipal debates; I have various recurring synagogue commitments around the Jewish holiday cycle; I'm on the board of another civic organization that has two annual events; I plant in spring and put-the-garden-away in fall). But without that kind of exogenous structure... a fair percentage of my other Big Ideas face significant completion risk. Oh well.

re access to in-home tests in areas where local stores don't have them My husband recently ordered 2 sets of 2 (PCR and antigen) from CVS so as to have some on hand. It said to expect delays (as it does right now) but they arrived within a few days. https://www.cvs.com/shop/content/at-home-covid-tests-education?icid=coronavirus-lp-nav-home-testing We have pretty easy access to self-referred in-person testing here, so I don't know quite what circumstance we'd use them, but having them on hand seemed to ease his mind a bit.

"RVing" vs "camping" LOL. Indeed. Indeed again. My husband -- who adores spending weeks at a time on boats (his fantasy is the Great Loop) -- is solidly on Team Not Roughing It. And I do think spending time RVing is similar in many respects to living on a boat. I'm somewhere in between... I have very fond childhood memories of canoe camping, for instance. But it was my parents doing the schlepping. And while I don't need a dishwasher on boat or RV for a week or two... I really, really really like hot showers. And if I were to do it for more than a week or two, schlepping laundry would pretty much make me lose my everlasting mind. (Your free range life is pretty much living the dream. I remember reading your blog when you were afloat. Wowza.)

One definitely does get better at not-booking iffy campsites. There's a definite learning curve, LOL. And what @SeaConquest describes is... not camping. Awesome beyond words, but not camping! For me and my husband, who grew up in decidedly different socioeconomics doing decidedly different activities, the RV is a way to sort of cut the difference. If I do a good job selecting the campsite, I can get a burbling brook, see constellations, and get real (day)hiking in. He OTOH can have a real refrigerator, sleep on a real mattress, and take a private hot shower in the morning. All else is gravy.

re "I can see that you're saying words, but..." LOL. My favorite part was "well, my MOM and I did Eagle Scout...." This is true, but it does vary by region (we pulled right into full hookup sites RIGHT ON THE GREAT LAKES in the Upper Peninsula with less than a month's planning; Cape Cod sites are GONE the day they open)... and it also varies by degree of service. Full hookups, and particularly drive-through full hookup sites, do book up the day the cycle opens. If you're able to manage electricity-only (which we're fine with) it's much easier to find sites. I prefer the quieter/ more private / less service sites. In the Northeast, the National Forest (not Park) sites are pretty barebones service-wise but very, very lovely -- often on rivers -- and very sparsely used. Within the state park systems in our area, we're often able to use tent sites which are almost always nicer (because we're only 24' -- that's often the cutoff-- and don't require hookups). Commercial campgrounds vary *widely.* We only use those when we're being utilitarian and need to be in a very particular spot bc we're going to an event or dropping someone off etc. They also tend to be much more $$$$ than state, which tend to be more $$ than federal. It *is* nice to travel with dog. Our dog leaps with joy when we move his dogbed into the RV. I'M GOING WITH THEM!!! THEY'RE TAKING ME!!! ALL MY PEEPS ALL TOGETHER IN ONE ROOM, ALL IN MY LINE OF SIGHT!!!

I grew up tent camping, and my husband.... let's just say, did not, LOL. RV trips are not camping. Much more like being on a boat, which my husband quite enjoys. He likes the tinkering and problem-solving and temporarily-fixing things with duct tape and dental floss as well.

We've had a class C, which is 24' long with a bump-out, long before COVID. It's good for two adults and two smallish kids. We have 3 kids, no longer small. I don't think we ever used it with all three of them at the same time, but in various combinations of 2-4. My eldest (26) takes it with her friends at least once a summer. We got it after renting two mondo huge As for an extended family trip 10+ years ago in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which was wonderful. Definitely rent first! Parking anywhere but campsites is a pain. Possible, but it takes a lot of planning. And I never fully relax if I'm the one driving. The advantage of the C is that it's small enough to fit in tent-only sites; the downside is that you have to pack everything back up and secure it all if you want to go to the store or trailhead or whatever. And you have to figure out whether you really need full hookup (which definitely limits your options, and also tends to put you into less charming, more closely-packed spaces). We've figured out we really only need electric -- any park that has electric hookup can fill water going in and dump waste on the way out... and since we have the C, we're going in and out regularly enough that that works out fine. We, and our family/friends, have used it a LOT during the pandemic -- from driving kids to distant college rather than flying or staying in hotels, to camping out in my mother's senior residence in the days they weren't letting visitors inside, to just using it like a mobile bathroom when we went to the beach / distant parks / etc.

As other pp have already pointed out... the design logic has to start with the plumbing. First egress (particularly how the toilet will connect -- if the space is directly above the laundry, it'll probably be cheapes to put the toilet as close to lined-up to wherever the laundry egress is) then the shower/bath. The sink is easiest to put in whatever space is left. Also, pocket doors can help a lot if there are issues with inadequate room to swing (two doors swinging into a small room is not great, but depending on the configuration of the bedrooms there may not be room to swing out. Pocket doors rock.)

Indeed. Many thanks for the update.

re gradual process of facing reality Well, if this is the evolution... but it ends here... All right then. That will help. Too little too late. But still, it will help. It's really hard to shift a worldview. More so when the surround-sound is exhorting you to hold to the prior. I have empathy. But truth be told, it's wearing thin. And if I were a health care worker in a Texas hospital I expect it'd be gone by now.

re COVID lurching slowly toward flu-like status If COVID plays out like 1919 influenza did... it may eventually burn down to something like regular flu, as it runs out of hosts around the world. But current hospital overwhelm where it is at the moment, it obviously hasn't yet gotten to that point. And so long as it's finding hosts, it'll keep on mutating into new variants, some of which will evade both "natural" immunity from prior infection with prior variants, and also vaccination developed around prior variants. All over the world, until it runs out of hosts all over the world. It's a race against the emergence of new variants. And at the moment we are still losing the race.

I am grateful for every single tool in the COVID toolkit. Vaccines. Masks. Distancing. Private sector nudges to encourage vaccinations, from $10 gift cards to college fee rebates. Celebrity nudges like Dolly Parton's and civic organizational nudges like church groups and faith leader nudges like the Pope's. Public policy nudges to encourage vaccinations, from tax incentives to all the above private sector nudges to state lottery awards all the way to, yes, assault rifle raffles, know your audience. Employer requirements to test and/or vaccinate. Business requirements for patrons to test and/or vaccinate. Travel measures including test/vax criteria for entry/quarantine. Advances in treatment of the sick, from low-cost interventions like patient positioning through to high-cost interventions like Regeneron. Every.single.tool. And I am grateful that the former President, and his attorney, and his Secretary of State, and his transition team advisor, and a fairly long list of other allies, have all been able to get access to, and benefit from, a still-scarce promising treatment in their hours of need. Truly: I am grateful. And I truly hope that others -- particularly "essential workers" like the health care workers and teachers and meatpackers and agricultural workers and service industry employees -- also get access to this still-scarce promising treatment if and when they need it. I truly hope that access will not be gated by insurance or citizenship or other gating criteria. And who knows, perhaps this plague will provoke a transformation in how we think about health care, and preventative vs emergency procedures, and where and how costs should be borne between taxpayers & premium payers & private businesses & private pharma/medical device makers/for-profit health networks & individuals. It's possible. In the meantime: I hope Abbott and other individuals who are lucky or connected or wealthy enough to get access to promising experimental treatment recover in full. And, simultaneously: that isn't a solution to the real problem at hand. Any more than naloxone is a solution to the opioid epidemic that once upon a time, back in the BeforeTimes, we used to consider a problem.

Lord know, I hope you're right. I'll miss the Old Normal, particularly travel. But I certainly can live within a stable New Normal that lets my kids attend in-person school and lets me spend time in person with family and friends. I've had an unusually blessed life; and certainly can comfortably live the rest of my New Normal days more circumscribed than my BeforeTimes days. But I'm not sure why Delta ubiquity necessarily provides any particular assurance against (say) Gamma virulence. I hope you're right, but seems to me it's not over til it's actually over.

re establishing objective parameters around how much to dial back / forward, instead of thinking in terms of "endgame" Not to be a Debbie Downer, but... I really don't think there's any true "end" anywhere in sight. After Delta, we'll get Epsilon, or Phi or Gamma or whatever. This is global. So long as one of us is in chains, none of us are free. So I'm trying to figure out reasonably objective markers, of when to dial towards tighter or looser. At the moment, CT's cases are pretty much back to late Feb 2021 (which unlike most of the country was not our worst point; our worst point was at the very beginning, April 2020). Still low in absolute terms compared to the worst states, but pretty dang bad for us. Our 1-week rolling positivity has crept up to just below 4%, again low compared to other states but creeping upward (and at this point it's quite clear to me that states with more, and particularly more surveillance, testing like we have, are not comparable to states that are only testing quite-symptomatic or folks presenting at hospitals). Our hospitalizations OTOH remain well below prior surges, though definitely still ticking upward (we had hospital overwhelm in April 2020; did not in Dec-Feb 2021): and we're the 2nd or 3rd most highly-vaxxed state (we keep trading places with MA)... and pretty much everyone is masking back up in stores although thus far the state mandate hasn't been reinstated for public spaces (it has been, for K-12 schools). We're vaccinated. All my kids are vaccinated, and anyways after this weekend they'll all be living in other states. Literally all of my local friends and fellow congregants that I do thinks with, are vaccinated. And so even though throughout most of this ordeal I've been more COVID cautious than most... at this point, I'm still going to outdoor dining (no longer indoor); I'm still doing indoor shopping (now, masked again) rather than relying on deliveries, I'm still meeting up with friends (now, outdoors again). I'm still seeing my mother in person, indoors. And after all this time, I'm loathe to give all that up... again. I know the time will come, that I will. But I haven't quite figured out what is the benchmark that will drive the cutoff switch. And I FEEL different this time around. A year and a half ago, I felt all Victory Garden we're-in-this-together, it sucks but we're resilient and we'll hold each other up. This time I'm just pissed. So much of this time, was preventable.

re access to in-home administration of EUA treatment in still-limited quantities... when hospitals throughout the state are so overwhelemed that they are curtailing elective surgeries and diverting patients Sure. It's good to be the king. The treatment *does* look promisting -- it was just about this time a year ago that the then-POTUS received it when he was substantially more ill than Abbott, fortunately, seems to be. But treatment doesn't stem transmission. At best it is a reactive and very expensive band-aid. Better than no band-aid to be sure, to individuals with the bad fortune to fall ill and the good fortune to get access to it. But it can't solve the problems that are plaguing our overwhelmed hospitals, or burnt out HCW, or schoolchildren falling ill, or still-disrupted labor markets and supply chains, or still-deferred travel, or or or or or. Every tool in the toolkit is a blessing. This one does not mitigate the larger curse.

re fine line between "making your partner happy" vs "ensuring your right to say no when no is what you're feeling" vs "ensuring your right to your own pleasure when yes is what you're feeling" In my conversations with my own kids -- and we talk a great deal more than I ever did with my own parents, which isn't to say the conversations are easy -- I try really hard to convey that agency includes both the right to say no (even within a relationship, even to This Action even if you've already done This Other Action, even mid-stream after activities have started, even within marriage) and also the right to expect that pleasure is reciprocal.