Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

The LFT (home test, antigen test) photo announcing someone has covid feels so old school now doesn't it??

I saw one on Facebook this morning and realized it felt like it'd been a while!

The seLFTie was from a fellow USian émigré has also been back to see her family. Her unmasked airport selfie left me taken aback.

I'm sorry she has covid. But it also makes me so glad that diffrentcolours and I -- putting up with the ostracism of my parents and his severe sensory issues with masking, him coming along at all was motivated by the desire to give me access to food that didn't depend on my restaurant-loving parents -- kept ourselves and our families uninfected on a very similar trip.

I don't want to seem selfish. I don't take any joy in seeing this person get covid. I don't want anyone to get covid!

It's just...seeing this did make me think that what D and I did was worth it. Avoiding restaurants despite it adding a new dimension of awkwardness to the parental visit, masking the whole plane journey except when eating or drinking, buying a good co2 monitor and carefully heeding it, doing all kinds of things that were uncomfortable when the much easier option would've been to do nothing.

We didn't do that for nothing.

We worked hard and that's no guarantee it'll pay off but this time it did, for us.

I'm so grateful and also so proud of all of my household for making this possible and convincing me it was worth it for me to get to see my parents again.