I got my first shot last week. It was uneventful, which is the best that you can say about anything that is about me + a needle. One example about how these things go for me happened about 7 years ago when my hand was bit after I gave it to a neighbor's dog to sniff and he was not on the same page at all. I slapped a band-aid on it and didn't worry about it until the next morning when it had doubled in size. I went to the doctor and got 2 shots and an oral antibiotic. One of the shots was huge and I swear the nurse was leaning in and pushing with her whole body. After she was done with me, the they left me alone in the room to make sure that there weren't adverse reactions. Meanwhile I had gotten so worked up about getting the shot and so relieved that it was done, that I had a vagal reaction (this is how I learned what a vagal reaction is). I instantly started sweating profusely (think cartoonish spray) and was pretty sure that I was going to throw up. I staggered through the waiting room and sat on the front sidewalk outside to get some fresh air, managed to sit right in some freshly spat-out chewing gum. I then staggered back to the front desk, chewing gum strings stretching behind me and told them that I might be having an allergic reaction. They put me back in the exam room, propped my feet up, gave me two aspirin, and then after I could stand up again-- an ice cube and a blade of some kind so that I could pick the chewing gum off the butt of my jeans before I left. That didn't happen this time. The hardest part was baring my arm while sitting in my car.

The governor has (or shortly will) opened up all age groups for the shot. What's going on in Europe right now is a bit of a cautionary tale. We'll definitely want to keep our guard up, but I think this is going to a big fun spring!

CLI will be pushing back out into the community again soon. We are committed to working with each of our clients to progress toward the outcomes that you want. We know that for some people it's money, for others learning new skills, for other it's social connections. We also know that for some people, it is very important that they have somewhere to go for at least 5 hours, Monday through Friday.

We often get different versions of the question "When will things go back to the way they were pre-COVID". The short answer is that I don't think they ever will-- for 2 reasons.

The first is that this pandemic has changed "normal" and I don't think you can put that back in the bottle. The second is that the reason that CLI had to privatize at the end of 2015 was because the rules had already changed and old-school, workshop-type programs weren't going to be allowed after 2021 anyway. I've always said that I believed privatization to be the easy part, that building a brand-new service delivery model was the hard part.

As we move through the rest of this year and into 2022, I promise that CLI will work with each of our clients to design the services that each wants & needs. For those of you who need at least 5 hours of service 5 days per week, we will work with you to "braid" a full day, full week of services using various service types (STEP, HPC & NMT). We know that it's a little scary ordering customized services vs. a cateteria-style menu, but I believe that together we can make this new normal work better than the old normal for everyone.

Thanks. Keep those hands clean and go play outside!

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