Christmas and New Year's
Jan. 8th, 2024 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn-We spent Christmas with D's dad, I sang in D's dad's church's choir with him, and after Christmas we saw D's brother and wife and the five kids in their blended family (I think there are two more who are grown-ups that I have never met).
But most of what we did... We flew out on the 23rd, getting there mid-afternoon, at which point we found that there were piles of papers (not neat piles or stacks, but just... piles), mostly mail, on every single horizontal surface in the kitchen. This included counter space, the kitchen table... AND THE STOVE. Yes, there were papers piled up ON THE STOVE. (To be fair, the rest of the house was tidy, though not clean. BUT WHAT.)
We had intended to cook Christmas dinner for him (D does meat and some side dishes, I do other side dishes) and we did do that but first we spent hours triaging and cleaning up paper so that we could have surfaces to cook on. (D's dad said he wanted beef, so we ended up making a slow cooker pot roast, with sweet potato casserole for holiday ambience.)
D's sister is worried about dementia but my best guess is actually that D's dad just has no freaking idea how to deal with paper and organizing it. Some of that paper dated back to D's mom's death, which was 4 years ago. Not much of it -- and apparently a friend came by three years ago and helped him with putting papers in actual stacks -- but yeah, some of it. I also think he used to be better about throwing mail away but at some point started getting overwhelmed.
I am super side-eyeing every single person in D's family, including me. D's sister and D and our families have not been to visit since D's mom's funeral. (Like... wtf. It's true that we have seen him multiple times when he came to visit us or we hung out together during summer vacation, but really??) D's brother (who lives three hours away) has been to visit but apparently the piles ON THE STOVE only mustered some vague worry -- he called D before we flew out and told him he was worried, but did not actually explain that there were PILES OF PAPER ON THE STOVE. (I'm clearly still not over this. I am not very organized myself but... wtf!)
D's brother says that now that we have done the triage job, he can help maintain it. I hope so. (He also needs a cleaner and we all represented to him that he needed one.)
Also in theory D's dad has wireless but in practice he doesn't know the password and the two passwords D found didn't work. Fortunately my kids are pretty good at amusing themselves, and they found Risk and are apparently bent on world domination, so. For Yuletide I wrote my recip comments with my phone hotspot.
Also on Christmas Eve there was a power outage for about eight hours, so we were driving around for a while after their church's Christmas Eve service looking for anywhere that was actually open to serve us food. (Even the Chinese restaurant was closed!) Finally we did find one place, which was extremely backed up due to not expecting everyone in the area to come in on Christmas Eve because of the power outage, but they were very friendly about it.
-So anyway, I was pretty excited to see my family, who may have a lot of flaws but at least have working wireless. We stayed with my sister, who has a girl six months older than A and a boy who is about three years younger, and the three of them had a great time with Legos and playing board games and video games. (A: Can we get a TV? Me: Sure, we've meant to for a while. A: Can we get an XBox? Me: Hmm....) Sometimes E would deign to join in and then often had a good time too. I did Yuletiding and D did a fair amount of work.
My dad is doing surprisingly well, actually; he seems better than he did this summer. (There are reasons for this that unfortunately are somewhat fragile, but crossing fingers.) I did take a day to go see a couple of assisted living places with them, and I can see why mom and dad would like to stay in their own place as long as possible, especially dad. (Their house is very nice, and really quite well set up for the two of them.) I think as long as he can, we should try to make that happen.
I got to spend some time with my sister's kids, which is always fun for me as they're the kids for whom I get to be the Fun Aunt. (D's nieces and nephews were almost all born before I had kids, so I was mostly Awkward Aunt with them.) I got to do crochet chains with O, and she and her brother and A. spent some time hunched over a US map with me where we talked about all the states and cities they knew about and where we'd be flying through, and I played a couple of hilarious games with the kids. Due to my sister's chronic illness and her husband being caught up in trying to make the household run, I think the kids are a little low on unstructured adult time, so it was nice to do a little of that with them.
We also did a little musical Christmas concert with all the kids for the parents, and had her kids play "The Holly and the Ivy" descant for little kids (E forever, then F#, then E) and we had my kids play the "Silent Night" descant that sister and I learned when we were kids and played every year, and sister and I played the Gesu Bambino that we had played every year at church when we were kids. It's the kind of thing that I don't remember liking or disliking much as a kid -- it just was a thing -- but now as an adult I have fond memories, and so I'd like our kids to have that too.
-We did make two unforced errors here (one of which probably had no effect).
First, the kids desperately wanted to go to this one museum, so we went, and it occurred to none of the four adults involved that maybe doing this in the middle of a COVID surge was a bad idea. Second, my sister desperately wanted to go do this seven-course tasting dinner with me, so the two of us did that as our Christmas present to each other. (It turned out that the chef was gone... so we did a four-course dinner instead.) Then, three days later, my sister got sick, and on hearing she had a fever that evening, I immediately insisted that she get a covid test, which she tested positive for. Fortunately, as she is immunocompromised, she was able to get Paxlovid the next morning and that helped a lot.
This was right before we flew home, and we masked all the way home which I'm really glad about because I got sick the day after and tested positive the day after that. No one else got sick in my sister's family until three days after she got sick, and no one else in my family got sick until three days after I got sick (A got sick then, probably due to still not being great at isolating; D and E are still fine), so... I'm suspicious that it was the dinner and not the museum... even though the dinner was a much smaller set of people; but on the other hand, the museum was not the kind where you stayed in one place for very long, and the restaurant was, of course. Sister has told me that she would have wanted to do the dinner even if she'd thought about there being a COVID surge, so... I guess it's good she has no regrets!
A and I both had one day where we felt pretty crummy, like the flu, but then (unlike the flu) after that felt pretty reasonable, except for needing to sleep a lot more than usual, which is hopefully tailing off a little now (I still took a nap today, but they are getting shorter).
Anyway, I'm really glad that it looks like we did not pass covid to anyone else (except our kids, haha), and in particular that we did not pass covid to D's dad! (Which I was worried about because so many people around here had covid the couple of weeks before Christmas, and I am finding out, during Christmas as well.)
But most of what we did... We flew out on the 23rd, getting there mid-afternoon, at which point we found that there were piles of papers (not neat piles or stacks, but just... piles), mostly mail, on every single horizontal surface in the kitchen. This included counter space, the kitchen table... AND THE STOVE. Yes, there were papers piled up ON THE STOVE. (To be fair, the rest of the house was tidy, though not clean. BUT WHAT.)
We had intended to cook Christmas dinner for him (D does meat and some side dishes, I do other side dishes) and we did do that but first we spent hours triaging and cleaning up paper so that we could have surfaces to cook on. (D's dad said he wanted beef, so we ended up making a slow cooker pot roast, with sweet potato casserole for holiday ambience.)
D's sister is worried about dementia but my best guess is actually that D's dad just has no freaking idea how to deal with paper and organizing it. Some of that paper dated back to D's mom's death, which was 4 years ago. Not much of it -- and apparently a friend came by three years ago and helped him with putting papers in actual stacks -- but yeah, some of it. I also think he used to be better about throwing mail away but at some point started getting overwhelmed.
I am super side-eyeing every single person in D's family, including me. D's sister and D and our families have not been to visit since D's mom's funeral. (Like... wtf. It's true that we have seen him multiple times when he came to visit us or we hung out together during summer vacation, but really??) D's brother (who lives three hours away) has been to visit but apparently the piles ON THE STOVE only mustered some vague worry -- he called D before we flew out and told him he was worried, but did not actually explain that there were PILES OF PAPER ON THE STOVE. (I'm clearly still not over this. I am not very organized myself but... wtf!)
D's brother says that now that we have done the triage job, he can help maintain it. I hope so. (He also needs a cleaner and we all represented to him that he needed one.)
Also in theory D's dad has wireless but in practice he doesn't know the password and the two passwords D found didn't work. Fortunately my kids are pretty good at amusing themselves, and they found Risk and are apparently bent on world domination, so. For Yuletide I wrote my recip comments with my phone hotspot.
Also on Christmas Eve there was a power outage for about eight hours, so we were driving around for a while after their church's Christmas Eve service looking for anywhere that was actually open to serve us food. (Even the Chinese restaurant was closed!) Finally we did find one place, which was extremely backed up due to not expecting everyone in the area to come in on Christmas Eve because of the power outage, but they were very friendly about it.
-So anyway, I was pretty excited to see my family, who may have a lot of flaws but at least have working wireless. We stayed with my sister, who has a girl six months older than A and a boy who is about three years younger, and the three of them had a great time with Legos and playing board games and video games. (A: Can we get a TV? Me: Sure, we've meant to for a while. A: Can we get an XBox? Me: Hmm....) Sometimes E would deign to join in and then often had a good time too. I did Yuletiding and D did a fair amount of work.
My dad is doing surprisingly well, actually; he seems better than he did this summer. (There are reasons for this that unfortunately are somewhat fragile, but crossing fingers.) I did take a day to go see a couple of assisted living places with them, and I can see why mom and dad would like to stay in their own place as long as possible, especially dad. (Their house is very nice, and really quite well set up for the two of them.) I think as long as he can, we should try to make that happen.
I got to spend some time with my sister's kids, which is always fun for me as they're the kids for whom I get to be the Fun Aunt. (D's nieces and nephews were almost all born before I had kids, so I was mostly Awkward Aunt with them.) I got to do crochet chains with O, and she and her brother and A. spent some time hunched over a US map with me where we talked about all the states and cities they knew about and where we'd be flying through, and I played a couple of hilarious games with the kids. Due to my sister's chronic illness and her husband being caught up in trying to make the household run, I think the kids are a little low on unstructured adult time, so it was nice to do a little of that with them.
We also did a little musical Christmas concert with all the kids for the parents, and had her kids play "The Holly and the Ivy" descant for little kids (E forever, then F#, then E) and we had my kids play the "Silent Night" descant that sister and I learned when we were kids and played every year, and sister and I played the Gesu Bambino that we had played every year at church when we were kids. It's the kind of thing that I don't remember liking or disliking much as a kid -- it just was a thing -- but now as an adult I have fond memories, and so I'd like our kids to have that too.
-We did make two unforced errors here (one of which probably had no effect).
First, the kids desperately wanted to go to this one museum, so we went, and it occurred to none of the four adults involved that maybe doing this in the middle of a COVID surge was a bad idea. Second, my sister desperately wanted to go do this seven-course tasting dinner with me, so the two of us did that as our Christmas present to each other. (It turned out that the chef was gone... so we did a four-course dinner instead.) Then, three days later, my sister got sick, and on hearing she had a fever that evening, I immediately insisted that she get a covid test, which she tested positive for. Fortunately, as she is immunocompromised, she was able to get Paxlovid the next morning and that helped a lot.
This was right before we flew home, and we masked all the way home which I'm really glad about because I got sick the day after and tested positive the day after that. No one else got sick in my sister's family until three days after she got sick, and no one else in my family got sick until three days after I got sick (A got sick then, probably due to still not being great at isolating; D and E are still fine), so... I'm suspicious that it was the dinner and not the museum... even though the dinner was a much smaller set of people; but on the other hand, the museum was not the kind where you stayed in one place for very long, and the restaurant was, of course. Sister has told me that she would have wanted to do the dinner even if she'd thought about there being a COVID surge, so... I guess it's good she has no regrets!
A and I both had one day where we felt pretty crummy, like the flu, but then (unlike the flu) after that felt pretty reasonable, except for needing to sleep a lot more than usual, which is hopefully tailing off a little now (I still took a nap today, but they are getting shorter).
Anyway, I'm really glad that it looks like we did not pass covid to anyone else (except our kids, haha), and in particular that we did not pass covid to D's dad! (Which I was worried about because so many people around here had covid the couple of weeks before Christmas, and I am finding out, during Christmas as well.)
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Date: 2024-01-09 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-10 03:19 am (UTC)