It’s 2022 - Happy New Year!

[Taitai]

Wishing all the O17 families a happy new year, and I hope 2022 is starting off well for everyone. We’re counting down to our departure from the USA to head back home - fingers crossed we can make it without having to do a 2 week hotel quarantine upon arrival!

[duskymonkey]

OMG! Taitai you must already be back! How was your journey back? I hope your last weeks were better and everyone is safe.
August Blooms how are you recovering. I am so sorry your province wasn't prepared and not responding to the surge. Ugh! same situation down here, like the writing was on the wall and you didn't prepare for it! like WTF!  Sorry for not checking in everyone I hope you had a good NYs and as good as start to the year as you can have. So what's going on O17?
It's like loony bins at the dusky house the past few months. A quick run down, I must have angered the puking deities, a week before Christmas, DS' school had a Noro outbreak and took out most of the 2nd graders including a teacher. Luckily it lasted no more than 12 hours overnight of course for him and I was cleaning sheets and blankets throughout the night outside in subzero temps - we ended up just keeping him home the rest of the week from school, DNW a reinfection. Glad I am OCD so none of us go it. Soon after, lil fella caught a cold, I was waiting for me to get it but hubs caught it, DS was spared too. Over Christmas break, I discovered 9 of DS' masks had holes and wearing thin, guess he's been chewing them. Luckily it was triple layers so 2 were still in good shape. So the past 2 weeks I've been busy fixing that mess. Lil fella was exposed early this week in his class and the new guidance from the county is no quarantine from exposures so I was struggling with the decision of keeping him or sending him to school because of his school issues so I cried in his school hallway this past week due to that and he also had a rough week plus me hanging around in his school increases my risk to exposure as well - I basically have a surgical mask over my 4 layer cloth mask so.... He did start therapy though but it will take time to get to the root of the problem. August Blooms has your D1 been able to see a specialist yet? 

[Taitai]

duskymonkey Yes, we made it back okay! How we managed to do that and not catch COVID (despite being exposed so many times and having to travel in busy airports), I don’t know. But I am super glad that we made it back and tested negative on all of our PCR tests (we have to do 3 tests total - one within 72 hours of departure, one immediately upon arrival, and a third one 5-7 days after arrival). If any of those were positive, we either wouldn’t have been able to fly, or we would have been shipped off to a quarantine hotel (or possibly a hospital isolation ward) for 7 days over on this side of the Pacific. Thank goodness none of that happened. International travel is so, so stressful for us during this pandemic.

Omg - you all have been through the wringer with sickness lately! Like was for nobody else in your family catching noro virus. That is really impressive. When it came though our home when DS1 was only 1 year old, we all fell like dominoes.

I hope that things get better for your little guy, and it’s great to hear that his therapy has started. I hope that they make steady and smooth progress to achieve the goals you have laid out. I’m also so impressed with your mask sewing skills and you keeping everyone taken care of in your household despite the craziness. You are a great mom, and your boys are so lucky to have you. Hoping for a good school week this week!

[curmudgeon]

Oh wow duskymonkey y’all have been through a lot!! You need another break! DS1 has had a couple kids in his class test positive for Covid and same here, he does not have to stay home. I’ve been sending him and just hoping for the best. I asked him a million times if he sits near these kids or plays with them. He says no. So I’m hoping that will help us avoid it longer.

We got rear ended on Monday. At a stop light and I saw it coming so I was tense and now my back hurts. 😫 Other than that, thank goodness everyone is fine. It caused a chain reaction to 4 cars! I was so mad at the guy who hit us bc he was obviously texting. I stayed in the car with the kids because I was going to lose it if I spoke to him. H handled all the exchanging of info. But now I’m paranoid he’s going to try and blame it on us somehow. The insurance lady scared me when she mentioned he may dispute it. I’ve never been in any sort of accident so I don’t even know what to expect or do.

[duskymonkey]

Taitai wowza! I am so glad you are all safe back home which sadly is much safer than here. I couldn't do what you did and be sane. Like my anxiety will blow off the roof being around crowded airports. My friend who's a virologist said the same thing when they traveled back to TX over the holidays which was a very short flight from here but due to airline madness here during that period she said their flight got rebooked and their 2 hr flight turned into a 4 hr flight with layovers through MSP for several hours and she was certain they were doomed but miraculously nobody got sick. She did say they all had N95 and her youngest had a KF94 on and they just stayed away from people as best as they could. Anyways I am so glad you made it back. Also lil fella's PCR came back negative! Thank goodness. We test again tomorrow to be certain. Oh also we got notice on Monday, his class has a head lice case...haha! Hubs and I laughed, least of our worries. 
curmudgeon Ugh! about the accident. People suck! I was super pissed when we got hit on the highway when I was pregnant if you remember. Anyways the 2x our poor car got hit we didn't have much of an issue with claims. It was just a PITA to get it to the body shop. We're mostly angry about the resell value since it was no fault of ours. I forget, is your DS1 vaxed? From what I am reading, Omicron isn't as severe and affects mostly the upper respiratory which personally makes me feel a little better about it. DS friend caught it over the holidays ( she is fully/newly vaxed ) and she recovered in less than a week. That's what keeps me going.

[Taitai]

duskymonkey Like was for your little guy’s PCR test coming back negative - that’s good news! In terms of omicron being more mild (especially for kids), I think that’s true. So many of my relatives in the usa with young children all caught COVID over the holidays (the kids seem to have picked it up and spread it at school/daycare - especially unvaccinated ones under 5). All of them had mild cases - and we’re talking about 12 kids inder 10 in my family and extended family. They all recovered within a few days, and most in the 6-10 age range (who were vaccinated) had almost zero symptoms. Hope that gives you some comfort, in case there is an outbreak at your school.

curmudgeon Ah, that sucks about the car accident. People who text and drive are just plain reckless. Unbelievable. I hope your insurance works it out quickly. Are you in a no-fault state? Sometimes that can be good, as nobody is assigned fault, and the insurers then just take care of their own policy holders. Either way, good luck on working through that, and I hope you recover from the back pain soon. Glad that none of you were seriously hurt - a 4 car chain reaction makes it seem like the guy was going pretty fast to generate that much impact. So sorry again.

[Taitai]

So good news - the government here decided to do away with arrival hotel quarantines (again….hopefully for good this time), which means that we can go back to the USA this summer without having to do an arrival quarantine over on this side. I’m super happy about that. Fingers crossed that by this summer, Omicron will have burned through everywhere and things will be a bit more normal.

Also - we had 2 birthday parties to go to this weekend for our kids, and these were kind of different from the over the top parties people normally throw over here. For one party, the hosts/birthday kids showed up to their own party 45 min late!!! For the other, they had no water (only alcohol, which of course the kids can’t drink - plus, it was 90 degrees outside and adults need water too), and the only food was popcorn with absolutely no flavoring (not even salt or butter) and pretzel sticks. No chairs for adults to sit on either, so H and I found some in another area of the venue and schlepped like 15 of them over, so there were places for people to sit or put their bags. WTF!

[curmudgeon]

Taitai those bday parties sound…different. Lol I would have left the first one after 20 min. And I can’t believe the 2nd had no child-friendly beverages. They must have had brain fog when buying supplies!

We had 2 parties this weekend too. I ended up skipping the first because the drive was 1.5 hours one way and roads were expected to be icy. The 2nd was nice, at a park. But no chairs either. It wasn’t too bad though. But no bathroom facilities. We were told to go across the street to a TJ Maxx. 😳

[curmudgeon]

We are going to have to buy a new car. The cost of repairs is greater than the value of the car so insurance is giving us a check for the value, which won’t buy anything. We had a lovely paid off SUV in perfectly fine working condition and now we have nothing. 😫 In the worst time ever to buy. Im just so aggravated at this whole thing. It feels like we are being punished when it was clearly not our fault.

[Taitai]

curmudgeon Oh man, I’m so sorry about your car situation. That really sucks, and it’s totally not your fault! I’ve heard that it’s so hard to buy both new and used cars in the states right now, so I wish you luck in finding something that works as a replacement. I also hate care shopping in general - hopefully you are better at it than I am.

Over where I live, one interesting thing is that there is no negotiation or haggling over car prices. Everyone pays sticker price, and what you do negotiate over, is how many “extras” or free upgrades they will throw in, like leather seats, stereo, tires, stuff like that.

[Taitai]

danvers CoachTsWife August Blooms Hoping you are all having a good start to 2022! Curious to hear what you ladies have been up to if you have a chance

How is it already almost the end of January!?! There is a school break next month, so we’re heading for a beach vacation for a week. After a pretty crappy trip to the USA which was mostly spent isolating in cold weather, I’m so ready to hit the beach with my kids. We have a day long boat trip booked as well to explore some islands, and I am really looking forward to taking my boys on that one. Fingers crossed there are some hermit crabs on the beach we are staying at - DS1 and DS2 love to catch them, feed them, and build hotels/roads/cities for them. Somehow the crabs all manage to escape by the end of the day, and my kids are like, “Don’t go crabs! Let me love you!”