What in-person things are you doing right now?

[ScoutTN]

Work - I tutor in person 8-10 hrs/wk. 

School - Ds goes to school; Dd goes to a tutorial one day a week. Also piano lessons for both kids. All masked.

Scouts/AHG - mostly outdoors, masked.

Church - masked and distanced, 250 people in a cathedral sanctuary that seats 1200. 
 

Grocery shopping - mostly pick-up. Occasional quick trips in. All other shopping is online orders or curbside pickup. 
 

Counseling and some doctors - essential to physical and mental health. 
 

Recreation/exercise/social time - outdoors- essential for health. Ds plays airsoft, kids go to an occasional bonfire or hike or other event with friends. 

Choices to go in person vs virtual or nothing depend on what is effective and necessary. Worship via screen is 100% worthless and ineffective for us. Same for counseling. Ds needs as little screen time as possible. 
 

School and work are necessary. Risk at outdoor events is minimal.

My family is under horrendous, enormous strain, completely aside from the pandemic, and we simply cannot just stay in our house all the time or our family would disintegrate utterly. Personal interaction with other people and meaningful activity is absolutely necessary. 

Everyone except me in my family had covid in January. 

Edited February 20, 2021 by ScoutTN

[HSmomof2]

There’s nothing wrong with doing what you need to do for your family’s health—mental and physical. 

We’re doing little indoors right now because we can. But, the mental health part is starting to wear on my teen, so we’re weighing risk/benefit of including some activities for her. 

[matrips]

12 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

School, work, lessons, sports, appointments? 

What are you and your family doing right now? 

What are you basing your choices on?  Positivity rates?  Mutant strains?  Mental health?  Needs?   Indoors or outdoors?  Small groups? 

My teens are going to school, and doing sports, clubs, and plays after school, along with volunteering on a periodic basis. Tonight their Cyber club had a movie night; less than 10 people and masked. I shop and run errands as needed, volunteer delivering Meals on Wheels, and go to church daily.  Dh goes to work. We don’t have friends over inside, nor go to other homes, but we will get together outside.  We spent the day at the beach on Monday with friends. 

we’ve never eaten out much due mainly to cost, so we rarely eat out.  Maybe once a month is all.  I don’t like the unmasked risk indoors. Everything else is done masked, and everyone else I see seems to wear a mask as well. Life has seemed mostly normal since early summer; everything has been open.

Covid is out there; we get periodic emails from the schools with fyis on recent positives.  Transmission seems to be within friend groups outside of school and activities, and not at school. There do seem to be more cases in the last month or so than there were last year.  

we follow the recommendations to mask and wash hands and take our vitamins.  

[Storygirl]

More than I am comfortable with. Though we try to keep our outings to things that are necessary, that ends up being quite a bit.

DH works from home until whenever his company decides to let people back in the offices. Probably will be related to people getting vaccinated.

DD19 is away at college, with some classes in person and some online. When she was home for an extended winter break, she worked at Chik-fil-A.

My other three teens attend high school in person five days a week, and each participates in track/cross country and/or band. They are not going to youth group at church, and we attend Sunday services online only (the church is open, but we don't go).

We have had dental, eye, and doctor appointments, as well as both in-person and telehealth mental health appointments.

I do grocery shopping about once a week and fill prescriptions at the pharmacy there, while shopping.

I have done a little in-person shopping for clothes that we needed for two family funerals. And we attended the funerals, which made me nervous, but was necessary. DH and I both interacted more with extended family during the weeks that our mothers were dying than we had over the past year, but again this was needed.

I have applied for a job at the library that would require in-person interactions with the public. I wish this opportunity had not come along until later in the year, after more people are vaccinated, but I needed to grab the opportunity when it arose. We have to pay for college times three over the next couple of years, and this is an ideal job for me. If I get it, I will wear a mask, stay socially distanced, etc.

If I were able, I would stay completely huddled away from others until people are vaccinated and the pandemic is over, but we are having to find ways to stay as safe as we can while still being around others sometimes. Thankfully, the older generation in our family is at least partially vaccinated, and my dad just got his second dose.

I'm anticipating that all four of my teens will have summer jobs this year. Last year, we only allowed it for the oldest, who had already been working at CFA for a few years. I'm not thrilled about having that much exposure and hope that DH and I will be able to be vaccinated by then (we are over 50). Definitely DD19 and DS16 (who will be 17 before summer) will work, because their jos are already lined up. I'm not expecting things to be back to normal, by any means, by this summer, but I'm more willing to consider letting the kids interact with others outside the home than I was last summer. If DH and I can't get the vaccine by then, we will probably impose more limits for the kids about work.

My kids do get invited to do social things with their friends, and we weigh each invitation, but usually have to say no. I'm longing for warm weather, so that we can let them do outdoor things with friends sometimes.

[BlsdMama]

Life here is completely back to normal - ortho appointments are back (and extended her time wearing them by six months) classes, haircuts, etc. Or numbers were some of the worst in the country early on, but are very low now. A young man from DD’s church died yesterday after being hospitalized several weeks for Covid. Got the text while at DD’s senior photo shoot. 

 

Masks are still being worn, for now, but the only unusual remnant is that we will still have regional and state mock trial over Zoom. 
 

 

[Ausmumof3]

Things are basically normal here so all the usual sports, library and library activities, groceries, church.  We don’t eat out much.  We do have to check in basically everywhere we go for the contact tracing.  We don’t eat out much due to cost but I wouldn’t be worried for now.  I do think we’d find it harder to change back if we had to now.

[Hoggirl]

We are empty nesters, so no kids in our equation. 

Other than going to medical and dental appointments, I am not doing much of anything.  I do curbside pick up for groceries twice a week. I had my mammogram last week and my annual physical in January.  I have a dental appointment in March, and a dermatologist appointment in May.  We sometimes have friends over who sit outside with us (spread out) on our balcony (we live in Florida). Alternatively, we hang out with them down on our beach.  I have not had my hair cut in almost a year now.  I have always exercised at home. 

Dh does more.  He goes to his office each day (quite large and only three people).  His job sometimes includes meeting with folks from outside their office, but he always masks.  When we need a huge batch of paper goods/cleaning supplies/ bulkier items, he goes and gets those in one big trip rather than my including them with our grocery order. 

I have done no in-person recreational shopping. 

[alisoncooks]

Church: in-person, 1x/wk (masked, every other row)

Teens church group: 1x/week, masked, in the leader's home

Orthodontist, dentist, occasional haircut, etc. (masked, 1-2x/month)

Occasional stops into stores, the mall, post office. (masked, 1x/wk or so)

Inside a restaurant - 1-2x/month (used to be several times a week in the before times)

[AngieW in Texas]

I am a public school teacher in Texas, so I am teaching in-person and virtually at the same time. I teach high school in a Title I area, so our in-person rate is relatively low (about 1/3 opted for in-person). I teach one class that is predominantly 12th graders (one class fully virtual, one class with 9 opting for in-person but only 4-5 actually come, and another class with 6 opting for in-person but only 3-4 actually come). I teach another class that is predominantly 9th graders (10-13 opted for in-person in each class, but usually about half are in quarantine at any given time). My football players rarely manage to be in-person for more than 2-3 weeks at a time because we have had so many cases in football (by far our biggest sport).

Covid is rampant at my school, mostly spread through lunch and sports because my district has said that students don't have to wear masks if they are engaged in physical activity and obviously they aren't wearing masks while eating lunch. We have one teacher who has been in a coma for more than a week. We don't know if she is going to make it or not. It is really quite terrifying. My school had already gone full virtual the week before snomageddon happened because we had so many teachers out for covid (either positive or quarantining due to direct exposure) that we didn't have enough teachers available to cover in-person classes.

I do go in-person to do my grocery shopping, but that is pretty much all that I do. I get some kind of take-out food 1-2x/month for the family.

My oldest works retail. My middle works at a grocery store full-time. This year my youngest has left only for doctor appointments and actually has a surgical procedure this week. My two older kids have done some shopping in person, but no dining out. They have picked up food to bring home.

I was able to get my 1st dose 1.5 weeks ago. None of my kids are eligible yet. My middle dd's neurologist told her that she should only get an mRNA vaccine becuase he thought that was less likely to trigger another autoimmune Transverse Myelitis attack.