Blah blah blah. Are you married or dead yet?
Hope you stay safe. Have fun.
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Welp, my mom might not be acknowledging me as a son anymore, so here we go, Am I the Asshole, Covid Christmas Edition.
So, having moved, my girls started at a new daycare earlier this month. They seem, like, pretty decent when it comes to covid protocols, but kids under 2 arenât supposed to wear masks (for their own good), and itâs hard to know how seriously the other parents there are taking this, so this is still a massive increase in the risk weâve taken on lately. Itâs not anywhere close to Chiefsplanet pozz parties, but relative to where we had been, itâs a big increase. I had sorta been thinking a Zoom Christmas anyway, but then Saturday my littler girl comes down with a low grade fever and a runny nose, but no cough. Like, probably not covid, but itâs not like thereâs a ton of documentation about its manifestations in the very young. Getting a test is proving difficult, especially since we havenât gotten a pediatrician yet, and none will really take us on until a full new patient exam, which wonât happen until the new year. So, I tell my folks, who now live within driving distance of us, that weâre going to do Christmas on our own and via Zoom or whatever. They are obviously unhappy about it, and they at least need to drive down some gifts. Fine, they can drop them off the evening of the 23rd before bed time, they can drop most of them off in the garage, maybe the girls open up one or two things early while weâre on opposite ends of our very long front porch, cool. We hadnât vocalized a plan, but this seems to be along the lines of what we all had been thinking.
Fast forward to tonight. Theyâre running way behind schedule. About an hour after they said theyâd arrive, they text to say theyâre going to be 2 hrs late. My older girl was already throwing a meltdown tantrum from being obviously overtired (even though it was just a touch early for our usual bedtime), and my younger girl would be throwing a meltdown tantrum a half hour later as Iâm trying to get her pajamas on. My folks arrive as Iâm putting the younger girl down to bed, because Iâd finally gotten her settled somewhat (Polar Bear Wish is an A+ book with my girls). They text that they want me to open the garage so they can put gifts inside, and I text them to say Iâll need a minute. Meanwhile, my wife is downstairs reading to my older girl. She got the message and let them into the garage, and my older daughter did get to wave hello from our family room that has a door to the garage.
I come down, and I figure I would go out to meet them after my wife takes the older girl up to bed. She briefs me that they have brought some big stuff. She saw a 4 foot, hand made Christmas light star to hang on the house, presumably one that matches the one my folks made first for their church 30ish years ago, and then for their house, and now they made one for me. As I go out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. They brought a HUGE BOUNTY, a massive pile of gifts sit on the side of the garage as theyâre struggling to get out of the car some sort of almost certainly hand painted, 5â tall wood dresser/vanity mirror thing adorned with the Frozen characters, loosely and poorly wrapped with, like, disposable plastic picnic table cloths. I said something inartful here, but I donât recall my exact words, something like, âWhat in the world?!â (There is some backstory here, as my parents getting huge gifts for the girls has been an ongoing source of tension. For example, they bought a huge combination slide and swing set for the backyard at our old place that was a pretty awkward fit in our small backyard, but yes, we had to take it, and we even were expected to MOVE it, despite the fact that we had more shit than could even fit in one big truckload. Setting it up in the back yard was explicitly something I was to do first thing, despite the fact that it rains all winter here). So, mom asks me to help dad move it, and then she says no, not to. Sheâd do it. She is obviously LIVID, with absolute daggers for eyeballs. Sheâs wearing a mask. Dad is not. Dad wants me to help find a place to set that star in the garage (itâs fragile and has to either hang up or lay flat; it canât sit on edge without likely breaking some of the lights off of the frame). Mom hardly says anything to me, except to mention how bad it was that the 3 hr drive turned into 4, a bit about which gifts are what and then goodbye as they drive off. I have hardly ever seen her more mad in my entire life.
So, obviously, they were thinking BEST CHRISTMAS EVAR, and I ruined it. Worse than that, I also ruined their shitty consolation prize. They get basically no time with the girls, and itâs all my fault.
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Sucks man. Momâs forgive though, Iâm sure sheâll come around. If either of them died youâd carry that around for the rest of your life.
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Seems pretty clear theyâd rather have died than have this Christmas spoiled.
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At some point in every parent-child relationship where the parent grows old, the child becomes the more responsible one. Seems like you hit a certain point in your relationship.
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We have more childrenâs books than our bookshelves can hold, but I have not heard of that one. Maybe itâll be a birthday present, as itâs not happening this year.
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In the US, if you get the vaccine, the one you get is on the consent form.
If youâre in one of these first groups to get vaccinated, I doubt you will get to choose which one, it will just be whatever the facility has. Iâm guessing if youâre in a later group, you might actually have a choice when you show up. I guess if you have multiple facilities and you find out which they have, you could kind of choose that way.
If I had a choice, I guess Iâd choose Moderna, but itâs a slight preference. If I could get a vaccine, Iâd wait up to about 2 weeks to be able get the Moderna. Any more than that and Iâd just take the Pfizer. This is really just based on my feels and gestalt based on the reading Iâve done.
Iâm also contemplating the wisdom of getting both when we get to the point where there is more than enough to go around. There are so many people who donât want it, that I think we will get there sooner than anyone thinks right now.
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Vaccine question here.
A and B live together.
Person A is vaccinated.
Person B is not.
Person A is obviously safe if Person B is pozzed.
Is Person B safe? Meaning, can Person A be a carrier even if vaccinated?
ITT, consensus seems to be that Person B is safe as âit would go against the basic principles of virology for the vaccinated to spread virusâ but scientists / governments add the proviso that itâs too early to be 100% sure the vaccinated wonât transmit
So, most likely safe⌠how many days after vaccination is person B safe? 7 days? 30 days? I donât think anyone can be sure on that yet either.
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Cliffs: It could be theoretically possible to still spread it, but, at the very least, being vaccinated should reduce your ability to spread it. We havenât really been studying it enough to have conclusive data.
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Yea I can imagine it being too soon. Hopefully they know in a few months.
Yeah. I mean, all of the theory and knowledge from past vaccines indicates that it will significantly limit (though perhaps not completely eliminate) transmission (thatâs why the entire concept of herd immunity through vaccination is even possible), but the scientists (understandably) arenât going to say anything is 100% conclusive without the data.
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China bans flights to and from UK
Beijing says it will follow other countries in banning flights to and from the UK indefinitely, after the emergence of a new highly-infectious strain of the coronavirus.
The announcement came from foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin who cited the âexceptional nature of the virus mutationâ in Britain and its potential impact.
In recent months, there have been eight weekly flights between mainland China and the UK, including two operated by British Airways.
Your parents are 100% the assholes here, on multiple dimensions. For starters, you should adopt a pre-approval policy for all presents weighing more than 10 lbs.
EDIT: Youâre 2-3 years out from receiving an actual, living white elephant. âOh, she just loves animals so much, I thought it would be nice for herâŚâ
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Is person A really safe? The way I understood it is that the vaccines do not confer 100% protection.
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People are really irrational right now so I wouldnât sweat it. My parents just had to come down yesterday and hand deliver our gifts even though we has told them no Christmas this year. I called my mom in the morning and told them to come earlier because we were planning on doing it all on the patio and a cold front was supposed to come through. My mom assured me they had been very careful. Only one large wedding and a few indoor dining experiences (that she admitted). I told her it would be enormously dumb to get covid right now with the vaccine coming and the hospitals jammed. That did not go over well. She also informed me that she was not getting the vaccine because it was made out of fetuses. And they of course were also extremely late and we got to sit outside in extremely cold windy weather. Fun.
It was nice to see them but pretty much forcing coming down on us and then explaining they were late because they had to stop by a bunch of friendâs houses to drop off other presents on the way kind of defeats the purpose of what we are trying to do.
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You should not have agreed to meeting them.
Oh I agree but the stopping by friends houses part was dropped on us about 10 minutes after they rolled in. I did actually suggest they mail the stuff yesterday morning but they were insistent because my sister had given them a box of letters from her students to my wife and fellow health care workers to bring down. Why that couldnât be mailed I have no idea.
Ohh wellâŚ
Young cousin got dampness in his front living room, he had to move into the parents, so mum offered to take the kids to school this week (It was only 2 days).
Brother has decided to bring the new wife with kid & her boyfriend to mums too for Xmas.
Hey Atleast thereâs no secret santa this year on boxing dayâŚ
Iâm going to work the whole weekend & hopefully make a wage for once this year⌠Dropping off presents at mums before anyone arrives & stand at the back door the whole time using my vape to ward off stupid pensioners. 
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