Scrappy Blog

Source: Early Release – Contact Tracing during Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, South Korea, 2020 – Volume 26, Number 10—October 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC

This large study from a place that has done very thorough virus control and contact tracing, found that children can be and are vectors for transmission of COVID.  Sure, kids under age 10 are “half as likely” as adults to be the vector, but they’re by no means immune.  And above age 10, they’re just as likely as an adult to pass on the disease.

I hope this will have major impact on school planning for the upcoming Fall semester.

 

Seen on a neighborhood walk. Fortunately, we were not attacked by any Trojans.

Source: COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool

So yesterday’s decision to consolidate all those years of writing meant I spent a lot of yesterday evening and this morning reading through it all. Which was An Experience, really.

Some of it makes me cringe. It’s clear to me that I am not the same person I was 15 years ago, and some of the posts made me cringe a bit. The intervening years have made me a lot more … well, I don’t like the term “woke” very much but that probably describes the change. My professional life has certainly evolved considerably.

I was far more naive about sharing personal “identifiable” details online and will want to delete or edit some things to be a little less hackable, I think.

But, it was a lovely trip down memory lane to see references to people who are still a central part of my life. And to be reminded of stories and experiences and ideas and projects.

And I might have wept a little at stories about Koshka, my sweet little Manx cat who passed away years ago but will always hold part of my heart.

On the whole, the read-through made me aware I am not the person I used to be… but to be the person I am now, perhaps I had to be that other person first.

It makes me wonder who I will be in another 15 years.

So first there was LiveJournal. And I wrote stuff there… apparently a fair amount of stuff. Then there were bits of writing on Blogger and Facebook. Then I started this blog.

I realized today that it’s possible to import posts from LJ and Blogger into this forum, so I did that. I figure maybe it will be fun to have a longer record of my creative output. Now looking through those old posts, to make sure there’s nothing too terribly revealing or embarrassing there!

My beloved inspired me in this writing prompt, because he shared with me some things he does on unmotivated days. Which is a lot of days for me, lately. I like staying home, and have plenty to do, so this COVID thing shouldn’t be that much of a hardship. But when there’s nothing scheduled outside the house, each day looks so much like the next that it’s easy to drift through life without ever doing much at all.

I do manage to exercise every day. I really don’t like exercise much, and lately it’s worse because I’m on a medication that makes my body stiffen up and hurt when I sit still for long. I’ve learned those symptoms improve when I get moving, so exercise is the best choice… but it really is hard to convince my hind-brain that the treadmill is the right place to be when it’s insisting I should crawl into my den and hibernate until I feel better. So, I trudge up the stairs to the treadmill, muttering “fake it ’til you make it” at my husband, and my workout starts with sluggish, low-resistance movement. Until I start to feel better, and then I’m OK with cranking up the speed and resistance to get a real workout.

On that same philosophy, my sweetie notes that it helps him to keep a short list of small, achievable tasks that will move him toward bigger goals. So, when he’s adrift, he commits to doing something from the list. Maybe that’s all he manages, but it’s something. And maybe once he gets started, he’s inspired enough to keep going. That sounded pretty smart to me.

So, in response to that, here are some small, achievable things I could look to do when I’m adrift?

• Small household tasks
  • Water plants
  • Clean the kitchen sink
  • Clean toilets, sinks in bathrooms
  • etc. Probably I should write up a long list of such tasks and do them in order, then I’d never need to clean house.
• Something physical to loosen me up
  • 5-10 minutes of yoga, stretching, or exercises to strengthen one core muscle group. Write out some routines and keep them on hand nearby the rug where I do yoga? RIght now I’ve collected some ideas on Pinterest. But having something right at hand would probably help overcome the barrier to start moving.
  • Walk around the block, so I’ll also get some vitamin D and get outside the house.
  • See aforementioned housework tasks.
• Handicrafts
  • Crochet a square for an afghan project
  • Sew a couple of repair blocks on a quilt that needs repair
  • “recover” a discarded clothing item by taking it apart for materials (rip seams to free up salvageable fabric; remove usable zippers, buttons, buckles; unravel knit items and wind the yarn for future use)
• Learn something
  • Do a unit on Khan Academy to refresh my knowledge of math, physics, chemistry
  • Do 15 minutes of Spanish practice on Duolingo
  • Look up articles or YouTube videos about how to do bigger projects that are currently intimidating to me
• Organize and archive
  • Scan a folder of items in my filing cabinet that don’t need to be kept in hard copy form.
  • Work on organizing and labeling the photos and documents already on my hard drive
  • Do a complete inventory of one spot in the house (eg all the furniture in a room, all the books on a shelf, etc) for insurance records.
  • Copy an old posting form social media or other more ephemeral place, store a copy on my hard drive and post a copy (back-dated) on this drive.
• Work on art skills
  • Do a zentangle or other doodle
  • Find a youtube video about how to draw or paint something and try to emulate it
• Write something! Here! In this journal!

So, that’s my list in response to his.

Also, I’ve signed up for an online class with regular meetings, as a way of providing some externally-enforced goals and deadlines in my life. I expect I will write something more about these in future.

I have a friend who has many demands on her time and energy, who challenged me to describe the easiest possible backyard herb garden. Her challenge was a “for dummies” approach that “a toddler could do in two hours”.

Not sure that exists, but it made me consider how I might tackle the simplest plan that might be successful over time. Note that as with so much in life, quickest and simplest are not synonymous with cheapest.

Challenges to be overcome with an outdoor herb garden in Houston:

• Heat and dryness: herbs will need to be watered daily to survive the summer heat. They might also need conditions a bit different than the books say – for example, I find some of them do better with a bit of shade rather than full exposure to our punishing summer sun.
• Terrible soil: our heavy black gumbo clay is the opposite of what herbs like.
• Growth control: once you provide irrigation and the right kind of soil, certain of the herbs tend to grow like mad and take over, unless there is something controlling their spread.
• Weed control: likewise without some effort, the weeds will grow out of control and choke out your good stuff.

So the not too cheap but quick solution to these things probably involves automated watering with a sprinkler system, a substantial layer of weed barrier on the ground, a shipment of good quality garden soil, several raised beds separated enough to let different herbs grow lushly without competing with one another. And herbs bought as seedlings from the nursery rather than starting from seed.

The order of action might be

1. Planning: List the herbs you want, make a plan for how many different containers you would need and how they might be arranged. Identify a site that gets regular watering from the sprinkler system. In an ideal world you would use drip irrigation but that goes beyond the toddler two hour rule.
2. Shop and gather materials
   • A large supply of flattened cardboard or newspaper (might be optional. See below)
   • Some sort of edging between your garden and the lawn.
   • Weed barrier fabric
   • Raised containers of some sort. See below.
   • Dirt. Needs to be listed as soil for growing, not just topsoil. Get something appropriate for container gardening.
   • Some sort of attractive pathway material… mulch or pebbles (I suppose this could be optional?)
   • herbs. And maybe a few flowers to intersperse among them to make you smile.
3. Install edging around the planned garden area
4. Cover the whole area inside the edging with several layers of newspapers or cardboard. Water each layer thoroughly as you go to eliminate air pockets and get solid coverage.
5. On top of the paper layer, set out your containers with enough space between them that you’ll be able to navigate among them when they have big bushy overgrown plants. Fill them with soil.
6. Cover the ground around and between the containers with weed barrier fabric, then cover with mulch or stone to make nice walkways.
7. Then plant your herbs. From here they will just want water, maybe occasional slow-release fertilizer, and weeding (hopefully not too much thanks to the barriers you put up).

There are several easy options for containers, and the ones you use will determine whether you need a layer of cardboard or newspaper under your weed barrier fabric. Basically, the idea behind the paper is that it will be solid enough to kill off weeds and grass for just a short time (maybe a few weeks) but then will break down enough that plant roots can grow down through and past it. So if you choose any sort of raised container that is open to the soil at the bottom, you want a layer of paper or cardboard under it to kill off the grass and weeds. On the other hand, if you go with big pots that have a solid bottom, they can just sit on weed barrier. Theoretically they could sit directly on the lawn, but they’re hard to mow around.

Some ideas for containers

• Garden centers often sell raised beds.
• You can buy big buckets (5 gallon) for just a few bucks and drill holes in the base of them. Get the ones listed as food safe.
• if you buy dirt in plastic bags, you can cut off both ends of the bag, fold it over on itself, and resulting soft tube with soil.
• You can buy big pots or whiskey barrel planters
• You can arrange cinder blocks to form beds. The holes in the blocks can hold smaller herbs or decorative flowers.

When positioning plants in the garden, remember that big bushy plants like basil, fennel, dill will block light and sprinkler spray so put them towards the back (or the center of a middle of the yard garden with multiple sprinklers). Then put a layer of smaller upright plants and finally put trailing plants like oregano or thyme right up front where they can cascade down over the side.

Really invasive herbs like mint need their own pot, unless you’re prepared to continuously manage them.

So, that’d be how I set up an herb garden quickly in a Houston backyard. Of course, I would probably wait until cooler weather to do it, because I am a wimp…

On my mind today: Learning to shop in a world of remote retail. (inspired by Walmart’s new bid to compete with Amazon Prime, plus by COVID).

It took COVID to get me buying more things online with delivery or curbside pickup, even though I’ve disliked in-person shopping for years – that is, it can be fun to shop with a friend, or to go on a hunt for ideas about new and unique stuff you never realized you needed. But shopping just to supply yourself with basic stuff… every step from parking lot to checkout is fraught with irritation.
But I kept doing in-person shopping because I knew what I was doing. I had years of accumulated sense of where to go to find my desired item in-stock at a competitive price and usable quality. Also had some sense of the politics and ethics of the stores I used, both locally and (for chains) overall.
Online shopping… well, There’s a lot to learn.

Key questions:

• Practical questions about shopping itself:
  • Where to get the best deal (including costs like shipping) for various products, including but not limited to household goods, craft/sewing supplies, tools, gifts, etc.
  • How to assess quality of an item you can’t pick up and inspect.
  • Who has the best layouts for shopping sanely for products. For example, in shopping for clothes, I would like a site to let me select for items available in “tall”. Seems like every site offers a filter for “petite”, but few do for “tall”. Fabric should be filtered by relevant qualities like woven versus knit. And so on.
  • Who is reliable as far as delivering when promised, handling returns honorably, etc.
• Financial and information security: How to navigate security for online payments. Safe enough to enter my credit card info? Should I be using a third-party payment arrangement like PayPal, or does that just add another point of risk? How to manage the possibility that one’s address, telephone information might be sold for advertising purposes or worse?
• Ethical and political considerations: How to support the sellers and companies whose values reflect your own? How to find those who treat their employees and suppliers well? What about political contributions, to candidates or causes – how to uncover those details? How to identify the most environmentally responsible approach to buying? What’s the online equivalent of the small, family-owned business?

No advice, here, just questions…