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.)