Square Foot Garden

This is the season that I pay attention to my gardens.  Roses from a few years back are now on autopilot with no plans for additions.  My focus has shifted to plants for my kitchen.  These will be a combination of vegetables and culinary herbs, planted in square foot format in the back yard or containers near my front door.  Spearmint has revived from last year.  New container herbs planted, some sprouting.  Aerogarden revived with some painstaking cleaning of the plastic tubes, new soil, and cleaning the hydroponic tub beneath.  First germination on its way.

I spent some time looking at square foot gardening options on the internet, though my familiarity goes back a ways to the original paperback and the show with its somewhat kooky host.  completely outlined all 32 squares in the two 4x4 foot beds, purchased the seeds I will need, the tomatoes and rosemary that I have never been able to grow by seed, and planted the near bed over the last couple of days.  Major rains headed our way so I'll let nature provide the hydration for now.  Each bed has weed block which I find mostly positive, though it really prevents me from including root vegetables in the garden.  Weed control has been a more troublesome task.  I've never made much effort at pest control.  Insects can be examined and sprayed.  Birds and mammals have been more difficult to address though they did not seem to harm my cucumbers or bush beans last year.  protective wiring seems more of a bother than I would like to undertake.

So far, off to a good start.

Free Audiobooks

Each half year I set a reading quota:  One novel, One non-fiction, One Jewish theme.  These are distributed among an audiobook, a traditional book, and an ebook.  Unfortunately the audiobook I took out of the library had at least one defective disc.  I have one at home which I've never listed to but it would classify as Jewish theme when I really need non-fiction.  Our closed library to the rescue.  They contracted with a service called hoopla to offer four audiobooks per month, or movies or other downloadables, included with library service.

I enrolled and started searching but have not yet found the optimal opus for listening.  Search by topic.  Search by author.  You can even search a collection of Read by Author.  Should be able to find one.  This has been the one category of my 12 semi-annual initiatives that always gets completed.

Hurts to Move

So don't move.  Morning stiffness has lingered for a while but this seems a more global ache, most notable in lumbar area on movement.  Doctor that I am, I try to analyze the experience.  When I sit quietly in my desk chair, recliner, or bed there are no painful areas at rest. When I change position or press a major muscle, the discomfort resumes.  Getting up seems the most stressful movement reasonably localized to my lumbar area.  Naproxen usually helps but off limits due to upcoming platelet donation.  Massage chair next time I go downstairs.

Optimistic New Week

Restrictions of Covavirus have taken their personal toll.  I had a brief illness with headache, insomnia, and inversion of my sleep cycle.  Mild exertional dyspnea.  No fever so not tested.  I wonder if I was hypoxemic, as this might account for symptoms.  They resolved over a few days and no contacts have become ill as far as I know.  Other than a few days recovery, the strain has been more keeping businesslike.  I get dressed daily, nearly always in the morning.  I have a purposeful list Gof weekly goals and daily tasks that I've pursued about as well as I did when I was working.  Things that are very finite with end points seem to get done, other things slide.  Exercise has become consistent as long as I feel well.  Staying upright through my wake cycle has not gone well at all.  Medscape submissions go out on time each month.  Others are more when I feel inspired to express myself, which has declined in frequency.  My financial reviews have not kept up to date.  My housework largely has, with Pesach imposing some firm deadlines.  And I still wish I got more pleasure from my efforts but I probably don't control this.

New weekly outline, composed first thing Sunday morning as I have been doing for years.  I think this will be the week that my gardens get fully planted.  I have an outline.  The right weather matters.  Maybe I'll go fishing.  And once my financial accounts are outlined, I can cross the project off.  I wanted to become proficient at understanding burnout, but the coronavirus stresses on the active medical people seems to have restored their sense of purpose and blunted some of the antagonisms that contribute to this.  And I'm a platelet donor.  And the evening timer reminds me of the nightly Omer count. 

So there are things to do, though all largely solitary.   Need to keep the end points as specific as possible.

Scholarship Applications

For the past two years I have volunteered to review a few dozen scholarship applications on behalf of the Delaware Community Foundation.  I do my best to blind myself to the personal information and just look at the transcripts, recommendations, activities outside the classroom, and essays.  I particularly like reading the essays.  This year the students had a relatively open challenge of picking a problem and solving it.  Subjects ranged from saving the honeybees to ending bullying to the correction of climate change.  The topic really mattered less than what they did with it.  Some very clever and insightful kids and some that spouted uncritically what they read on the internet.  All but one had a job.  I do not know how many had cars.

I think like a doctor, looking at each presentation as an individual but keeping an eye out for patterns.  I wonder if grading should be more uniform across Delaware.  There were far too many outstanding transcripts that did not match SAT scores, some not even close.  All recommendations got a top score by the person writing the recommendation but what distinguished one student from another may be the detail of what was written or even the caliber of the writing than an accurate verbal portrait of the student. 

These applicants all had motivation and focus, at a time when peers of the same age acquire untreated depression, assaults to their self-esteem, or other forms of rejection.

The people who should be looking at these summaries of achievement might not be me, but professors from the Schools of Education at the University of  Delaware or University of Pennsylvania or perhaps the state Department of Education.  Our schools nurture some very worthy kids but opportunities to design studies that examine some of the results more thoroughly and more systematically can upgrade further.

Staring at the Screen

At mid-morning, my productivity and my motivation have faltered.  I completed by scheduled e-book, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott but still want to read the notes which I think were also written by the author.  The scholarship applications I agreed to review for the Delaware Community Foundation have proceeded on schedule.  And I am only one article short from last week on my weekly quota of two articles.  But I don't feel accomplished.  A major writing piece on coronavirus hangs on my daily not done yet list and my attempt at indoor container herbs has gotten off to a false start.  I should exercise on the treadmill, and likely will as a matter of basic health which I have not forsaken despite my case of the blahs.  Need to check off the to-do items that once done do not return for another week.  There are some.

Excessive Me Time

Like all but a few Americans, coronavirus has restricted activity but offered some beneficial behavioral changes.  I've spent scant money.  It was my intent to have a four day vacation during the OLLI spring break that didn't happen.  Not had coffee outside my house at all, one soda, one slice pizza and two sandwiches.  Zero new clothing.  Got some seeds for my garden, a light bulb for my desk lamp, and replaced a fishing rod & reel.  Needed some omeprazole. Refilled my prescriptions but no copay.  Everything else was either edible or used in the household.  Consumer spending drives the economy and I haven't done much. 

In the absence of new stuff, I have new time.  Obligatory things like Passover efforts largely proceed, those things that have inflexible deadlines and are important.  Most things are not like that.  As I review my daily list, some things like reading quotas have gone very well.  Others like writing or home tidying have challenged me to complete.  Last year I agreed to review some scholarship applications which I am doing again.  While I like doing them, and they have a deadline, I need a means of pacing them, which has gone reasonably well.

There are time sinks.  Facebook needs rationing.  Twitter offers me access to good minds but I'm not really an active contributor to the mental fray.  I listen to more classical music, which I think is good.  Hardly watch TV at all, and what I watch are largely streamed documentaries about animals and wildlife.  Not really a time sink, but nothing to show for the effort when the shows end.

Best option may be to act more businesslike, show up at appointments with myself to do defined tasks.  No reason not to have a stellar garden this spring, a usable basement, a tidy bedroom, or see my name in print. 

Making Corned Beef

Every now and again I go off the deep end.  I wanted to get some curing salt #4 but either did not see a package with a kosher mark or did not want to pay excessively for something used rarely.  As luck would have it, a kitchen store was closing and had Morton's curing salt at half price so I got a package.  There was no instruction on how to use it, as it was white rather than pink.  I inquired with the company and received their curing recipe, which I made a short time later with good success.  The barrier has not been time or spice but the price of kosher brisket.  It apparently sold poorly this Passover with seders largely limited to just a few people, making poultry a better centerpiece than brisket.  Shop-Rite had to clear its briskets, mostly about a pound.  I got the largest of their collection, 1.86 pounds and went about making the dry rub.  It's now curing in a plastic bag to be inverted every morning and evening.  Ready next weekend.

Not Yet Right

This was the week I was to coerce myself into my most businesslike, productive persona.  Quite a number of rest days, too many, not at all spontaneous but did enough to check off from lists what I had done.  And I'm still doing that today.  What seems missing has been any pleasure from the things I force myself to do.  My energy is adequate.  I don't feel sad.  Nobody has been pestering me.  The intrinsic reward for accomplishing something worthwhile just seems elusive.

Change behavior often leads to changed outlook.  We saw that with civil rights where forcing people to allow minorities in restaurants and hotels became the norm even if unpopular or allowing women to vote became the norm.  Maybe I just need to take on some of my big projects and the joy of doing them might return.

Post-Pesach Reset

My keurig machine with Victor Allen Kona blend in a porcelain cup in My Space has returned to action.  A day of returning boxes of Pesach ware to the basement and make a milchig shabbos dinner.  Otherwise an amorphous day and an amorphous shabbos.  We have virtual pre and post-shabbos online but it's magnified some of our shul's resemblance to Hebrew School so I just stay someplace else.  Cyberspace is big.  Usually I review Parsha commentaries on Thursday.  I still can and should and might.  Writing a big essay on coronavirus.  Today or Sunday for submission.

Wednesday/Thursday Yom Tovim just come at an awkward time if your week goes Sunday to Sunday.

Dressing the Part

Like the majority, I find myself mostly at home with a mixture of motivated projects to pursue and some make work.  Each day I go on a daily drive around the neighborhood, which forces me to wear street clothes in place of night clothes, but a couple of days I didn't even do that.  While I can do my treadmill in flannel bottoms if I have suitable shoes, it is much harder to write in a thoughtful way or clean the house if not suitably attired.  Thus after my share of unproductive days, I have started making an effort to appear more businesslike in the hopes of being more businesslike.  Seems to correlate reasonably well.

An Upright Day

It's been a difficult week or so.  First a non-febrile illness that caused inversion of my sleep pattern and achiness with spontaneous recovery, though my energy could be better.  Followed by Pesach, currently at its midpoint, with responsibilities for exchanging kitchen ware and preparing food.  Along the way I passed a birthday that puts me well into the Old Boy Network.  Exercise went on hold due to illness, hopefully ready to resume later today in a reduced form.  I'm not ill but I wish I felt better.  While not despondent, I'm not enthused about anything either.  I'd like to do a number of things but just don't seem to have the motivation to pursue anything.  Start by not being recumbent.

Pesach Next Week

My Bar Mitzvah haftarah, HaGadol, gets recycled this shabbos.  It will be a virtual shabbos, though with other synagogue online participation, I get a more graphic impression of why our Congregation has become a niche product not very attractive to anyone else who might be in quest of our logo: embracing-engaging-enriching.  For me it was none of those things, though the other people on Zoom cyberspace encounters were decent likable people.  What was imparted just seemed dull and pedantic.

But with HaGadol comes Pesach, my favorite Festival.  I've given up on the American Rabbis' platitudes of Freedom but the season of renewal, of hitting the reset button, never loses its validity.  I can prepare what needs to be done, wash a refrigerator or floor that I would make excuse to neglect the rest of the year, plan menus with the enjoyment of others in mind, at one time maybe buy some new clothes in parallel with the Easter traditions, take out an inherited Elijah's cup and my lantzmanschaften kiddush cup awarded to my grandfather when my father was just one year old.  In another era, I would be off from school most of that week.   People gather for Seder and for services and toward the end, for Yizkor.  The most endearing of traditions.  And it's almost upon us.