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Friday, July 8, 2022

Friday night odds & ends

  • BIL called last night to tell us that... Younger Nephew has covid!!!  This was bombshell news for our family. Dh & I are pretty careful -- a lot more careful than the majority of people we know -- but Younger Nephew & his wife leave us in the dust in terms of covid precautions, lol.  Believe me, if HE can get it, ANYONE can. :(   (They think he picked it up at his SIL's house on Saturday -- she has two small children, and they are all sick right now too.) 
    • Relevant note: Earlier this week, the province's Chief Medical Officer of Health admitted that Ontario is now in a seventh (7th!!) wave of covid (fuelled by the extremely contagious Omicron BA.5).  :(  
    • The last time we saw Younger Nephew and his wife was a week ago, on Canada Day (last Friday, July 1st) at BIL's house -- and they actually asked us all to rapid test first as a precaution (oh, the irony). 
    • We immediately tested again last night after BIL called (before we learned Younger Nephew almost certainly picked it up on Saturday, after we'd seen him). Negative again. 
    • I'm running out of free rapid tests, and I don't think the provincial government is handing them out anymore (although you might be able to find a box or two at one of the outlets where they were available, if you searched around enough). (And of course, free PCR testing at a medical facility has gone the way of the dodo bird unless you meet a very strict set of criteria.)  Since we're at the start of yet another wave, which seems to be the most contagious one yet, I ordered a couple more boxes to have on hand from this supplier (recommended to me last year by Turia).  We can afford to buy them, but what about people who can't?  
    • Meanwhile, with covid all around us (again)(still?!), we are heading to stepMIL's 80th birthday party on Sunday afternoon (!). Not sure how many people will be there -- but the weather is supposed to be nice and so I'm hoping we'll be able to stay mostly outdoors. 
    • Of course this is NOT a good time for me to get sick with covid (or anything else, for that matter...!), with two long-scheduled surgeries/medical procedures coming up, the first in a little more than two weeks' time...! 
    • SIL said, "I think we're all going to get it, sooner or later." Yeah, but even if I can't avoid it altogether, I'd prefer to prolong the inevitable for as long as I can, lol.  I've already gone 2.5 years without getting infected, while some people are on their second or third round -- and the damage done to your body can be cumulative -- so I'm hoping that even if I get sick, at this point, I'm slightly ahead of the game. Plus, as time goes on, the vaccinations and treatments keep improving, and that helps too.  
  • Great article from The Guardian: "Keeping mum: TV’s problem with women who don’t want kids." Subhead: "Nearly 25 years after Sex and the City, TV still has a hard time accepting child-free women. Post-Roe v Wade, that needs to change." 
    • "So, where are these nuanced stories of child-free women on our screens? It shouldn’t come as a shock that you can be a loving, successful and mostly happy person and still not want to have kids... The lack of TV that positively depicts women who decide not to have children is particularly disappointing... " 
    • "...the conversation has barely moved on from one of the biggest breakthroughs for child-free women on screen: Sex and the City’s televisual debut, nearly 25 years ago... The fact that a series aired over two decades ago – which, retrospectively, got a lot of things wrong, and was very “of its time” in so many ways – is still the best portrayal of women who don’t want to have children is exasperating. And right now, we need to see the contemporary, positive stories of child-free women more than ever." 
    • (And where onscreen are those of us who wanted to have children but never got them?? -- and positive portrayals, at that??) 
  • And... hot on the heels of "Should we tax the childless?" (see my post here), another British newspaper, The Telegraph, offered up an opinion piece this week with this click-bait headline: "Child-free travellers should be banned from going on holiday this summer."  (!!!)  (Can you imagine the outcry if the headline targeted any other minority/diversity group??)  
    • I've seen some suggestions, on Twitter and elsewhere, suggesting this was meant as satire, or tongue-in-cheek. Even so -- it's just not that funny.  
  • One more response to the Times piece, from Glamour (UK): "First we're told we're selfish for wanting children; now we're being told we should tax the child-free:  As women, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t." (Yep.) 

1 comment:

  1. I thought there must be a typo in the heading for that Glamour piece! When have women been told they're selfish for wanting children? Or is it the issue of having a LOT of children she's referring to. More clickbait. And The Telegraph. Grrr. How stupid are they? One of the joys of being childless is being able to travel OUTSIDE of peak times! We don't need to be banned. We ban ourselves voluntarily! lol (That's aside from the insanity of asking for a ban. Clearly the newspaper thinks that childless bashing is their next big earner.)

    Hope your tests are negative. I was going to travel domestically in two weeks but I'm thinking twice about it, simply because of the growing wave of infections here too. And this - this is why I'm happy not to get it yet ... "as time goes on, the vaccinations and treatments keep improving ..."


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