So, what are your plans?
We’ll be having parents-in-law (both sides!) over, early (noon-ish/two-ish, in order to eat outside before it gets cold (yes, 60 degrees is cold!) and dark. And two kids and their significants-other.
Turkey, same way we always do for T-Day and X-Day. Some extremely fattening mashed potatoes (cheese and heavy cream). Salad, some other cooked green. Dessert.
This is my wife’s family’s “turn” for T-Day (we alternate T-Day and X-Day each year between my family and her family). My mom just informed her kids, G-kids, and one G-G-kid that she will not be hosting X-Day this year, as they fly in from three directions, so we’ll bring her to my brother’s-in-law place for a meal and presents-exchange.
We’ve cancelled all visits. Normally my brother in law and his family come from Canada for US Thanksgiving (we normally travel up there for Canadian Thanksgiving) and then we travel to my parents for Christmas or MLK weekend, with a trip to the father-in-laws’ for the other one.
This year will just be at home for all of them. Putting up the Christmas decorations over the next week or so instead of the normal Thanksgiving weekend.
We were absent from Thanksgiving last year, for two reasons: 1) the last time we went my mom couldn’t keep her racism in her brain instead of out in the open and 2) my grandma’s Alzheimer’s progression had my grandparents move into an assisted living place instead of their own home where we all used to congregate.
I think if not for 2, we might have still dealt with 1, but because of 1, when 2 happened, we decided that we’d prefer to spend our Thanksgiving making good memories instead of bad. I don’t expect to have Thanksgiving or Christmas with my mom again until I have grandkids. It’s sad, but freeing.
I’m thinking of going to Vegas like I have several times before when I didn’t feel like dealing with family… Fly in on Sunday, fly out Thursday pm when the airport and planes are empty. Can’t take my sister out of the nursing home, can’t eat with her there. Nearest brother is engaged to a woman with 4 kids ranging from 13-23 and I don’t trust them to not be mixing it up with all their friends.
My mom’s health is poor. I don’t know if she will be able to join anyone, but if she can, this might be the last year she can.
So I plan to stock up on Thanksgiving stuff now, and to quarantine for two weeks before the holiday. If she’s well enough to join us, we will host her. If not, oh well, we were stuck indoors a little more than we have been.
I asked the sibs, but BIL is an HVAC repairman, and can’t quarantine, and SIL is immune compromised and doesn’t trust us. Other brother probably doesn’t want to join us, but hasn’t explicitly answered my question. (And I don’t trust his wife to quarantine.)
We live about 700 miles from the nearest family (well, other than a cousin). We have no plans to travel there, and nobody has any plans to come, so it looks like it will just be me, the wife, and the kids.
A choir I sing with always has its Christmas concert the first week of December, so sometimes my parents or in-laws will come for Thanksgiving and stay till the concert, but that isn’t happening this year. We are recording next week (video - most of the audio was recorded in February) and there will be a streamed “concert” in early December. I’m planning on posting more details when I get them (it will be free).
Got a turkey breast, going to be just us this year. We had tried to pull that off the last two years without success, so even though we are only doing it this year because family gatherings are a primary driver of COVID case increases and we aren’t going to be a contributor to that, it’s nice to have the excuse.
This is similar to our plan. We’ll be stocking up on anything we need and going on full quarantine for 15+ days, and having dinner with wife’s parents. Her father has COPD and some breathing difficulties, so this virus would be a death sentence.
It’s not like we’ve been engaging in risky behavior for the past 8 months, but we’re not even going to risk grocery trips or anything for the 2-3 weeks beforehand.
everyone’s safety plans are way more elaborate than mine.
My mother wants me and my sister to go to Staten Island and stay over for Thanksgiving. This involves an express bus from Manhattan, which makes me somewhat nervous. Thanksgiving is gonna be catered food. My father lives downstairs and my mother upstairs. My father will likely stay downstairs because he can barely walk and therefore can’t really come upstairs, so I guess my sister and I will have to go back and forth between the floors. Thanksgiving is gonna be:
mother
sister
father
father’s nurse is invited (she’s my childhood friend). I’m assuming she won’t be there the entire time cause she has her own family, but lately I think she spends waaaay more time with my mother and father than her own family. I call her their favorite child now.
mother’s friend
also stopping off, but not staying long -
trumpkin uncle
trumpkin aunt in-law
autistic cousin
I told my mother that if Biden loses the election, I really want nothing to do with aunt in-law. Even in normal times, I want as little to do with her as possible. I caught her trash talking me and my mother on social media under a fake name saying the most nasty shit possible, so want as little to do with her as possible. My mother is making me. I can stand it if Biden wins, otherwise nope nope nope.
uncle, aunt in-law, cousin, and father have COVID antibodies. the rest of us are a walking COVID risk.
not planning to quarantine for 2 weeks before. i kinda can’t. i’m doing physical therapy right now and i don’t want to stop it just to quarantine. hope for the best. my concern is more with the bus ride though than the physical therapy.
my sister is way less careful than I am, so she’s likely a bigger risk than me. also, nurse friend works at a nursing home part time in the covid wing, but she gets tested weekly as required for her job, so hopefully she’s safe. throughout this entire pandemic, she magically never caught covid.
So the in-laws are basically in our bubble at this point, and more risk of us spreading to them than the other way around and they want us to go to them so we probably will.
Still have the drive vs fly dilemma… will probably drive, but we’ll see what last-minute fares look like. MIL will need surgery very soon so we definitely won’t be booking anything until we know when the surgery is happening so we can time it.
If it’s pretty close to Thanksgiving then one trip for both, but if it’s enough before/after that we can’t fit into one trip then will plan the Thanksgiving visit to lean the opposite direction.
expensive, but it’s a possibility. I might bring it up to my sister and see what she thinks. Unsure how crowded the express bus gets on Thanksgiving. I’ll probably go the day of. The day before is the biggest travel day of the year, but I don’t think the day of is. I don’t remember though. I never had to pay attention to that as much in the past with it not being a danger to my life and to the lives of everyone I’m visiting.
I did take the express bus to staten island on fathers day and somehow it was empty, but technically I think on fathers day, NY still had a stay at home order and I wasn’t really allowed to take the express bus, but did it anyway.
Also took it the last weekend in September and also wasn’t bad. Then it was allowed. Thanksgiving might be worse though.
My brother and mother moved to Florida this last year. They are asking my family to make the 10 hour drive out to their places for Thanksgiving. It would only be 6 of us total (one of my kids was a flat no). We’ve discussed, but haven’t yet gotten back to my mother that “that’s gonna be a no for us, dawg.”
Just need to figure out the messaging, since she’d not understand our “we’re not too worried about catching anything but would rather not kill my mother”.
If it was a 1-2 hour drive, we’d likely go. Too many stops along the way, and too much cross-contamination from our area and theirs. AND we’ll not be able to 100% fully quarantine the two weeks before or after, and I do not trust them to even try to do so.
So having done a road-trip post-Covid, I exclusively ate either stuff I’d packed or stuff I picked up at a drive-thru. The only need to go inside a building was to use the restroom. And for that of course I wore a mask and others were pretty much wearing masks, even in Covidiot territory, and you’re only in the building with the restroom for 5 minutes or so, perhaps less if you are a fast pee-er. I washed my hands obviously, and then used hand sanitizer when I got back to my car.
It wasn’t that bad. It really wasn’t. The real issue, IMO, is that once you’re there you’ll be in each other’s bubbles and how comfortable are you with that? Can you have everyone on both sides get tested?