Gleanings of the Week Ending May 14, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Why human brains were bigger 3,000 years ago – Some possible explanation: human populations reached a large enough size to share/divide labor and knowledge with others, writing….however, brain size/IQ relationship is not deterministic.

Operating rooms are the climate change contributor no one’s talking about – The health care industry accounts for 8.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Operating rooms represent 70% of waste in hospitals and 3 to 6 times as much carbon as the rest of health systems.

Where tornadoes strike most frequently is changing – More erratic tornado activity and the broad impacts of climate change.

Do you have a lost twin? - The rate of twins among live births is only about 1.3%. But as many as 12% of all naturally conceived pregnancies may begin as twin pregnancies.

Wild fox kills 25 flamingos and a duck at National Zoo – We see foxes in our neighborhood. They seem to have adapted to the suburban environment. This one was very efficient to kill 25 birds, though.

A 10,000-year history of geo-ecological change in Yellowstone’s lower geyser basin – A study using a 26.5-foot core from Goose Lake.

US could cut transport emissions by 34% b 2030 – The current trend will reduce emissions by 19% but a bit more focus would provide a bigger reduction.

Garbology: How to spot patterns in people's waste – We’ve been getting rid of a lot as we prepare to move. I try to do as much as possible via donations and recycling…but there is still a lot going in the trash. Some of it came from Texas with us back in 1983…and was still in the same box!

6,000-Year-Old Slate Rings May Have Symbolized Relationships – Friendship rings? Careful analysis revealed the rings had been intentionally broken…and shared (i.e. pieces of a ring were found in two separate burial sites).

How Taipei discovered an active volcano on its doorstep – Disconcerting. Even of there is some ability to provide early warning of an eruption…could the city be abandoned quickly enough?

26 Months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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COVID-19 cases in Maryland are increasing but all the counties in the state are still green in the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Level map. Most of Missouri is too. Still - the positivity is 5-8% in Maryland and 8-10% in Missouri…not low enough for me to be comfortable in crowds or in indoor spaces without a mask. How does that translate into our increased level of activity?

Buying a house. Both my husband and I wore masks when we walked through the house we had bid on and then the next day when we talked to the inspector. There was a meeting in the realtor’s office where we wore a mask as well. During our travel, we masked at rest stops and in registration/hallways of our hotel. We brought an air purifier into our hotel room and got takeout for meals.

Birding. We masked at the Harriet Tubman Byway visitor center and the registration/hallways of our hotel. Otherwise - the activity was outdoors, and we didn’t mask. All our meals were picked up from drive through windows.

House maintenance. We’ve had more people in our house for maintenance purposes in Maryland…preparing the house to be sold. We mask while they are here, and they do too.

Broken tooth. I have an appointment with the dentist because a molar cracked…needs repair. Hopefully the precautions the dental office has in place are effective. This seems like the highest risk situation of all the things I’ve done recently.

And we are moving over the next month! I am realizing that the precautions I have in place (following guidance re boosters, masking when I am indoors other than at home, avoiding crowds, keeping hand sanitizer in the car, taking an air purifier with me on road trips) are probably going to be my strategy for the foreseeable future unless the infection rate drops dramatically. So – this is the last of the monthly posts even though the pandemic is continuing. I’m not getting complacent…I’ve simply accepted that this is the prudent way to be…nothing new to post about every month.

30 years ago – May 1992

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The highlight of May 1992 was the birth of my second niece. My daughter and I were in Dallas within a few weeks of her birth. It was a learning experience for my daughter who was very interested in babies at her daycare but had never seen one as young as her cousin. We all noticed the baby’s REM sleep when she was positioned in her carrier in the middle of the large dining table while my sister’s daycare swirled around the kitchen and den.

There were more mundane events too: doing the family grocery shopping every week together, my husband traveling for work using a back brace to make the longer plane trips tolerable, me with an ear infection after catching my daughter’s cold (she was outgrowing her tendency to get ear infections), my daughter trying to figure out the difference between ‘an accident’ and ‘on purpose,’ and a sister discovering that her new house had bearded iris in one of the flower beds.

As I read back through my notes of the time, I realized that it’s easy to remember the high points of out lives without them but not the details of how much energy keeping up with a 2.5-year-old took. Just reading a list I made of what we did on one Saturday was a potent reminder of how exhausting it was.

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge

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The Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge field trip was our second April visit to the place (I posted about our visit back in 2017: part 1, part 2). A new visitor center was under construction and the old one no longer had feeders (where we saw goldfinches last time) and the purple martin houses had been moved to another area, so we didn’t see them either. The field trip still started with a look around the visitor center grounds. It was a cool morning. There were several spring flowering trees (dogwood and redbud)…and birds flitting from the trees to the grass to the man-made structures.

We started around the auto tour route. There had been a lot of rain in the days before our field trip and the water level in the ponds was higher that I remembered. We also learned that because the area is tidal salt marsh, the water levels are not as easy to control as in some other refuges; the refuge management is challenged to maintain the marsh as sea-level is rising.

There were plenty of birds around: northern shovelers, red-winged black birds, green-winged teal, and mallards were a few I photographed.

There were relatively large numbers of great blue herons. They don’t nest at the refuge but come here for food.

There were also great and snowy egrets in mixed groups.

I took a sequence of a great egret landing.

There were bald eagles too. I photographed a scruffy looking juvenile settling on an almost submerged log.

The big surprise of the morning was a roost of black-crowned night herons. From the place we were standing…they were on the other side of large pond; they looked like fuzzy places in the trees…

I thought tent caterpillars at first! With binoculars and big camera lens, the birds were easy to identify. My husband provided a magnified/cropped image of one of the birds. There were over 70 birds roosting!

What a thrilling finale for a Bombay Hook field trip!

Harriet Tubman Byway/Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

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The 2nd of 4 Delmarva Birding field trips was Birding the Harriet Tubman Byway. It was a mixture of cultural and natural history of the area around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and Cambridge, Maryland – an area Harriet Tubman knew well as she was growing up and returned to after she escaped slavery to help others make their way to freedom. There is a map of the byway available from the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center (we stopped there before the field trip…great orientation for the cultural history portion of the field trip) of the sites along the byway; our field trip visited a handful of them with excellent guides. From a natural history perspective - two species that are gone for the scene that she would have known are the American Chestnut and Carolina Parakeet.

The birding at Blackwater NWR was spectacular – just as every time I visit the place; it is where I saw my first Bald Eagle in the wild (in 1990 when my daughter was a baby). This year there were several Bald Eagle pairs that are nesting at the refuge. At one nest, the babies had evidently just been fed and were sleeping off their meal; the adult was still at the nest watching over them.

Osprey are making use of the nesting platforms and snags. There are more snags that ever because the water level is rising at the refuge…killing more trees that remain standing for a few years.

The muskrat mounds in the marsh were numerous. The color of the mounds is good camouflage for small birds. One of our guides commented that sometimes an eagle wll perch for a little while on a mound. If the muskrats are home…they probably go very still until the large bird leaves!

Rusty, the screech owl, is a well-known resident along the wildlife loop. The bird has a favorite perch in a pine with an hollow which provides protection for the bird’s back/sides. The hole where the bird might ‘live’ and raise young is in a nearby tree. The eyes moved while we watched but the bird was otherwise very still.

There are still parts of the refuge where the water level can be controlled; small fish swam in the shallow water….good snacks for some of the birds we were seeing.

Great Blue Herons are nesting at Blackwater. They like the tall pines just as the eagles do.

Great Egrets were also fishing in the shallows. I learned that they too were nesting at the refuge, but I didn’t see those nests.

Somehow moss and pine needles seemed an appealing mini-landscape on the spring day.

Redwing blackbirds were noisy….defending territory…finding mates.

The field trip group continued into Cambridge to the courthouse – a place where the laws governing slavery in Harriet Tubman’s time were administered. The short lecture and conversation were thought provoking and heartbreaking. Fortunately, the field trip ended on a happy note at the nearby Harriet Tubman mural in Cambridge.

Stay tuned for my posts about 2 more Delmarva Birding field trips!

Phillips Landing Park

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My husband signed up us for 4 Delmarva Birding field trips as a last excursion to the eastern shore before we move to Missouri. The first field trip was at Phillips Landing Park near Laurel DE. It was a weekday so most of the other participants were retirees like us; we had two guides that were very familiar with the area…so we saw more than we would if we’d gone on our own.

Shortly after we started, my camera had a problem and I was challenged to work around it by using the eye piece rather than the screen for the rest of the morning….not what I usually do so my focusing/composition was not as good as usual even though the skew of pictures toward botanical rather than birds was probably about the same as it would have been with the camera working perfectly.

The plants are at the height of their variety in the spring with blossoms and unfurling leaves – the bright greens of mosses growing rapidly in the new warmth – unfurling ferns….good for photography although my eyes were itchy from the pollen laden air.

The high point of the botanical sightings: One of our guides pointed out a native orchid in bloom beside the path. They aren’t the large showy orchids of warmer climates; it takes a sharp eye to notice them!

There was an area near the path that looked like an egg laying site for a reptile….but something had found the eggs before they could hatch. There were eggshells among the acorns.

I did managed to photograph a few birds: courting cowbirds in the parking lot, a yellowlegs among the reeds, and a prothonotary warbler high in a tree.

The park was a good mix of habitat – watery area near the parking area (Broad Creek that flows into the Nanticoke River nearby) and a path through forest.

As we returned to our car, I saw a tiger swallowtail flit across the grassy area nearby. A good finale to a morning field trip!

Unique Aspects of Days – April 2022

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So much happened in April that was unique – or at least something we had not done in over 25 years! More that half the ‘days’ featured this month’s post are related to our move. I’ve listed then in the order they occurred and am surprised at the move milestones that occurred in April:

1st virtual house tour. This was not an option 25 years ago and both my husband and I were skeptical that such a tour would be ‘good enough’ to enable us to be comfortable bidding on a house. The first one convinced us that such tours were adequate to eliminate houses from consideration! Our realtor was very patient and good about highlighting aspects of houses as she walked through…and later in the month – after several experiences with virtual tours – we did indeed bid on a house before we saw in in-person.

Finding no houses available in Springfield that we liked. What a depressing day. Both my husband and I were primed to buy a house but there was a day that we had eliminated all the houses on the market.

Bid on house. And then a house came on the market. It wasn’t perfect but we had honed our idea of what we wanted enough to know that it was as close as we were going to get, and we could live with its imperfections. We scheduled a virtual tour and bid on the house the same day.

Contract signed. After one round of negotiations the contract was signed….and we were on the path to buying a house!

Seeing our house. Within 4 days we were in Springfield and walking through our house for the first time. It had a surreal quality after seeing it so thoroughly in the virtual tour.

Accepting a mover’s bid. Long distance moves are expensive and the last one we had done was paid for by our employers. The process has changed somewhat…the biggest one being the virtual way of creating the inventory of what is being moved!

There were some other unique experiences/sights in April:

1st long road trip with my husband post-pandemic.

74 black crowned night herons roosting.

A policeman – lights flashing - removing a deer carcass from a narrow roadway. I was thankful that he was taking care of it before the morning rush hour.

Several bald eagle and great blue heron nests…close together.

Zooming - April 2022

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I am featuring 12 pictures this month using the zoom feature of 3 different cameras (my phone which is digital zoom, my point and shot with optical zoom, and my bridge camera with even more optical zoom).

The point and shoot provided more than half the images: Sidling Hill, the Japanese garden and some of the spring flowers. The bridge camera was used for the spring looks at redbud and tulip poplar. The phone was used for the peacock horse sculpture (at a Kentucky rest stop) and the morning light picture. Using all three of my cameras in ‘zoom’ mode was a first!

Enjoy the slide show!

Ten Little Celebrations – April 2022

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April was a whirlwind month---with more than the usual amount of drama because of our plan to move to Springfield, Missouri. More than half the little celebrations I selected for the month have to do with the move:

Finding a house we liked and getting it under contract. It was new (and high anxiety) to do the contract with only seeing it virtually…thrilling to do the walkthrough to confirm that it was THE HOUSE for us.

A good driving day is always welcome, but we particularly celebrated one of the days heading home; perhaps a sunny, spring day is balm to the stress of the drive and the anticipated events of the next few months.

Home again is always something I celebrate. This time I savored the house that has been home since October 1994…realizing that soon I would be transferring the joy of homecoming to a new place.

Initiating contact then selecting movers. This was not a single day event, but I was pleasantly surprised at virtual inventories and other options. There are some things that have changed for the better since my last long distance move in 1983.

22 boxes packed in one day. I set a goal for myself to pack 20 boxes a day for a week and I achieved that goal! I celebrated the most on the highest day (22 boxes).

There were other things to celebrate in April…

Early morning at the grocery store. I love the quiet at the store before 7 AM with spring far enough along that it is light at that time…but still full of morning color.

A medical test that found nothing. Sometimes finding nothing is worth celebrating…particularly as we get older.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

No traffic on the Bay Bridge. We made a 2-day trip to the Eastern Shore (birding field trips) and celebrated that we didn’t have traffic on the bridge – coming or going.

A wealth of birds. There were 4 field trips over 2 days…and we celebrated that we saw so many birds – some species in larger numbers than we had ever seen before. Stay tuned for blog posts coming next week.

Japanese Garden. I enjoyed our visit the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Springfield MO although the celebration came afterward as I looked at my pictures (too noisy from the mowers while I was in the garden).

Missouri to Maryland

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We made the road trip back from Missouri – having walked through the house we are buying and brief by the house inspector (the final results were still pending, but we did get to talk with the inspector about the house while he was in the house). The route was a reverse of the one we had taken from Maryland (see my post here). The weather was dry both days….much appreciated. The temperatures stayed cool even though the sun was shining most of the time. On the first day, our route started in Springfield, Missouri, crossed southern Illinois and Indiana, and ended in Lexington, Kentucky.

The part in Missouri parallels old Route 66…one of the rest stops highlights that history. Evidence of spring is easy to find at every stop.

I wondered how long the leaning tree near one of the picnic areas - caught by neighboring trees before it could reach the ground - would stay in that precarious position.

I zoomed in on the back of one of the horse sculptures at the Kentucky welcome center: Peacock feathers!

The next morning we left before sunrise and I took a picture the sunrise blush silhouetting trees on a ridge. The route the second day was from Lexington, Kentucky, through West Virginia, and ended at home in central Maryland.

More spring: dandelions already going to seed before the other plants in the bed even have buds, red buds planted along the roadway and rest stop parking lots, azaleas just beginning their bloom, daffodils still blooming in the mountains (done for the season at lower elevations). There was enough breeze to extend the flags in West Virginia…but not at the same time!

And then we reached Maryland. The scenic overlook/welcome center had good views of the lake and daffodils were still blooming there. The Sidling Hill stop had yellow tulips. And then we didn’t need to the stop at South Mountain. We were keen to be home!

Even though the weather was good for driving, my husband and I realized during our first day driving that our two days in Springfield had not been long enough to recover from the trek to Missouri. He was having lots of neck and shoulder aches and I was feeling exhausted. We agreed that short turn around trips with that much driving should be avoided from now on!

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Virologists Identify More Than 5,000 New Viruses in the Ocean – Another indication that we still have a lot to learn about life on our planet.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Habitats! – Beautiful birds! I always enjoy seeing photographs…seeing birds I know and some I don’t!

The Jumping Slugs of the Pacific Northwest – A little different than the slugs I’ve seen. These have a vestigial shell on the top of their ‘hump.’ There was a new-to-me skeletal name in the article: slugs have a hydrostatic skeleton!

Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live – Really? The value of the various aging clocks is still TBD.

Wildflower Fungi – This post was from the Master Naturalist group in Springfield MO. I am paying more attention now that I am moving to the area.

Deforestation drives climate change that harms remaining forest – Deforestation causes changes in a regions air temperature and precipitation…instigating changes in the whole region rather than just the part where the forest was removed.

Scientists Identify 50,000th Spider Species on Earth—but Thousands More Are Waiting to Be Discovered – It’s humbling to realize that there is so much about our world that we don’t know….have not discovered.

Amid Hopes and Fears, a plastic boom in Appalachia is on hold – Another sad trend in Appalachia…still hitching their future to fossil fuels. The jobs look good but the long-term jobs are few and the market for their products is not a positive one. Everyone wants to reduce single use plastics as much as possible.

Study suggests tree-filled spaces are more favorable to child development than paved or grassy surfaces – Playgrounds need more trees!

Germany’s Nature Society Crowns the 2022 Nature Photographer of the Year – The first picture is of a male kestrel. That caught my attention…and then I browsed the rest of the photos.

Springfield Botanical Garden – April 2022

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The tulips were beginning their big bloom at the Springfield Botanical Garden when I visited in mid-April. The sunny day made their colors pop. Much of the rest of the garden may be just waking up but the tulips are in their glory.

The Master Gardeners were out working to get the demonstrations gardens prepped for the season….it was a dry day between two days of rain.

We walked over to the garden’s Botanical Center….more tulips in the planters and a surprise: columbines! It was windy but I managed to get a passable photo.

Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden

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I’d been to the Springfield (Missouri) Botanical Garden before…but not the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden part of it. It was a treat to see it during a free afternoon on our quick trip to Springfield to see our new house.

It was a cool, sunny spring day…not as Zen as the garden probably is on most days because the mowers were at work. The noise does not ‘show’ in the images, so I find myself enjoying the gardens even more via the photos! I was on a mission to photograph the lanterns/sculptures of the garden.

Next time I go – I will stroll. I’m planning to become a member of the place after we move and visit frequently.

Maryland to Missouri – a road trip as passenger

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I’ve been making road trips between my home in Maryland to Missouri on my own until recently when my husband went with me to see the house we are buying. It was so different to be a passenger rather than driving myself!

The route was familiar and there were no cold weather hazards this time. More daylight made it possible for us to start the drive before 7 in daylight – leaving behind the fading blooms on the cherry and plum tree in the front of our Maryland home.

The first day of the trek was the easiest; it was cloudy with mists and sprinkles…occasional sunshine.

The daffodils were still in full bloom at the South Mountain rest stop; the elevation makes a difference; the flowers have already faded at hour home closer to Washington DC/Baltimore.

I took a few extra minutes at Sidling Hill to photograph the road cut. It is awesome.

There were plenty of rest stops along the way – a quick walk to the facilities through the damp.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

And the bridges at Louisville KY.

We stopped for the night at a hotel in Corydon, IN that has a historical marker in its parking lot!

The next day was harder after we were about halfway through the drive – very heavy rain. The early rest stops still held some beauty – trees on ridges, violets and spring beauties and dandelions.

It was safe to take pictures of the arch at St. Louis because I wasn’t driving!

The pictures taken at the rest stops in Missouri were through the window because of the rain. For some reason the fire hydrant near a picnic table tickled me.

And then we were at our hotel…glad that the heavy rain did not include lots of thunder/lightning and high winds that had been part of the forecast.

Bidding on a House from Afar

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We bid on a house in Springfield MO from afar (at home in Maryland). It has been accepted and we are starting a road trip to see the house in person – remove the ‘sight unseen’ rider in the bid and get the earnest money to the title company. I am writing the post about how we got to this point. There is a lot that has changed since we bought our current house more than 25 years ago.

I have been looking at houses that came on the market in Springfield MO via realtor.com for more than a year – familiarizing myself with the neighborhoods and the types of housing that were available. When my daughter was looking for houses last spring, I honed my search with her criteria, and she found the house she wanted quickly.

I thought I had my own criteria well defined…but it is only in the past few weeks that I realized that I was getting enthusiastic about houses that really would not work well for us. It was too easy to overlook the number of steps going into the front of house (and from the garage); I knew I wanted as few steps as possible; with this move, my husband and I wanted a house where we could ‘age in place.’ My husband wanted to do astronomy from our back yard. That requirement often seemed to be in direct conflict with an easy-care yard and connection to city water/sewer. I found myself toying with the idea of a larger property with well/septic and hiring someone to keep the yard/field cut. There was about a month when I thought we wanted a house that was all on one floor; I quickly discovered there were not many that had enough square footage and my husband pushed the idea that we needed a basement as a storm shelter since Missouri is back into the part of the country that has violent storms.

I made a trip to Springfield and looked at some houses; a learning experience – nothing to bid on and we needed to get our ‘proof of funds’ letter from the bank organized anyway. Over the past couple of weeks, we kept thinking that more houses would come on the market; there were quite a few but they weren’t perfect matches and many sold very quickly. We did 3 virtual tours – discovering more problems with them than we expected: no good view of the sky, too many steps and sometimes they made the third garage unusable for a vehicle, sloping lots, small closets, etc.

Then one came on the market that looked near perfect. The problem was the only picture of a laundry room showed it in the basement…which meant stairs to do our laundry. We asked if there was a laundry on the main floor and there wasn’t. We rejected the house for about 24 hours. After going to sleep frustrated with the houses available, I woke up realizing that if everything else was right with that house, we’d put in a way to get the laundry between floors. We asked for a virtual tour. Everything else was right….AND there was a laundry chute already in the house which would make it relatively easy to put in a dumbwaiter type device for the laundry!

We worked with our realtor on an offer. They had a system where it could all be done electronically. Our agent sent our offer to the seller’s agent via email. And less that 24 hours later, the offer was accepted. Our focus now is on traveling to see the house, being there when the inspection is done…preparing to move.

The house hunting phase of the process is complete.

Food for the Road

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I’ve honed the food I take with me on road trips during the pandemic…until recently wanting to have everything I would need to eat in the car. Now I am more likely to be comfortable getting takeout for a meal. The motivation is shifting to 1) the types of foods that are often hard to find on the road (fruits and vegetables) and 2) minimizing the time stopped for food during the driving day.

My favorite veggies and fruits for the road are ones I can prep to eat while I am driving: celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, grapes, carrot chips or sticks, turnip wedges, bell pepper strips, small cucumbers with the ends cut off. Apples are OK but they need be cleaned, labels removed…and there is a core afterward.

I’ve tried freezing grapes – using them as part of the ‘ice’ when I first start the trip; they aren’t as easy to eat going down the road after they thaw (too squishy and sticky). I

t takes some prep to get the veggies into shape for going down the road. Sometimes I pack them in jars/bins…but they are easier to eat going down the road in Ziplocs; I am accumulating a collection of reusable, resealable bags! Otherwise, the ice chest has water (frozen in the bottom of the bottles). Soft drinks are very easy to buy from vending machines or places I stop to buy gas….no need to take ice chest space for those.

Outside the ice chest – I always have dark chocolate, protein bars and mixed nuts for the road…bags of microwave popcorn for the hotel rooms (the rooms I book always have a small refrigerator and microwave).

My favorite quick meal along the way is a McDonalds Breakfast Burrito. I can eat it while driving and one is a perfect size for my 2nd breakfast!

Sometimes I have a protein in the ice chest – some chicken salad or microwavable frozen chicken/veggie nuggets. If it’s just me, I often decided that I really don’t want to leave the hotel once I am there….it feels good to not be out and about after driving all day!

A road trip with my husband will require more takeout meals but hopefully after we get to our destination for the night. The food he likes to eat going down the road is more limited than mine…skewed toward fruit rather than veggies. I’ll take a larger ice chest to make sure we both have foods that we like to eat while we are going down the road!

25 months in COVID-19 Pandemic

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The positivity rates and hospitalizations continued downward but in Maryland they are not down to the lows we go in the summer of 2021 before the Delta variant came along…and then the Omicron spike. Still – most of the mask mandates have been allowed to expire. My daughter reported that at her university there seemed to be a lot of strep and flu infections after the mask mandate was lifted; masks were protective for more than COVID-19! I have continued to wear my mask when I am indoors (at the grocery store and when I waited to get my car serviced, for example). All the doctor’s offices where we’ve had appointments are still requiring masks.

When I made my road trip from Maryland to Texas (via Missouri), I put on my mask at rest stops and when I registered at the hotel…when I went grocery shopping while I was in Texas. I took my air purifier with me too. I was traveling through areas that had higher positivity/hospitalization rates than Maryland and noticed that there were very few people wearing masks. There are some analyses of sewage around the country that have indicated the presence of the omicron sub-variant that is problematic in Europe in the US but, so far, there does not appear to be an uptick in COIVD-19 cases here.

I am masking when I look at houses – both to protect myself and to be considerate of owners of the houses I am viewing. I do as much as I can online before I see the house in person.

The one place I did not wear I mask indoors this past month was at a baby shower while I was in Texas; I’m far enough past the event to know that no one there was infectious!

I still feel vulnerable because of my surgery earlier this year and my recent illness while I was traveling; I am not as confident that my immune system is as robust as it was a year ago; I am continuing my strategy of masking. My husband and I got our second COVID-19 booster soon after the recommendation came out. As we both continue our search for a new house, the vaccine and indoor masking are our risk reduction strategy…at least for now.

Another observation - my husband had an outpatient procedure this past month, and the COVID-19 process was still in effect: they required that I wait in the car for 1.5 hours rather than a waiting room. I was fortunate that I could park in a sunny place since the temperature was in the 30s!

Overall – the pandemic appears to be waning. People are making individual decisions about masking and the amount of masking varies a lot from place to place. This is the new normal?

30 years ago – April 1992

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April 1992 was probably the most traumatic month of my career…I ended my work on what I had come to think of as ‘the project from hell’ but hadn’t settled into my new assignment. My husband had helped my situation when he bought our first laser printer in response to the long hours I spent working at home after a full day at the office. It also helped to be away at a company sponsored event in LA for a week…respite from the toxic work environment; one of the phrases I picked up from the speakers was from Herb Cohen – “Care…but not too much” – a message I needed to apply!

My daughter was a full of energy and enjoying her new bedroom arrangement – no more crib; she was enjoying a twin bed. Her Easter morning was probably one of her best ever – she enjoyed finding the plastic eggs ‘hidden’ all over our den and the Winnie-the-Pooh characters I had purchased at the Disney store when I was in LA. The day was too damp to do any egg hunting outside.  Toward the end of the month, it was warm enough for a trek to Wheaton Park where she picked a zebra to ride on the Merry-go-round.

Overall – a memorable month. I am so fortunate that my family kept me emotionally grounded enough to weather the upheaval at work.

Coming Home from Texas

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The morning I left Texas, I was up early to treat my bug bites and the sensitive skin left from my round of hives. The bites were my main concern…lots of calamine lotion on them to stave off itching. I did the last bit of loading into the car; my parents woke up a little early to see me off. It was dark when I set out. There was about an hour when the sun was in my eyes after the sun came up, but the weather was crisp and clear - great for driving.

I stopped at a Pilot for a rest stop in Texas (and to get my morning caffeine). The upper part of the wall was decorated with ‘Texas tourist art’.

The part of my route in Arkansas was easy…just a little construction around the cities but didn’t slow me down.

The last rest stop in Arkansas had a tree with a fresh wound…a big branch must have come off recently. .

I crossed the Mississippi into Tennessee at Memphis heading toward Nashville. The drive was easy enough that I talked with my daughter on the phone (through my car) - noticing areas of recently downed trees along the highway and a kettle of birds (I think they were pelicans…certainly were not vultures…at 70 mph I didn’t take my eyes off the road for better identification).

I turned north at Nashville toward Bowling Green, KY which would be my stop for the first night. Overall – I made it to Bowling Green 20 minutes earlier than my car’s projected ETA first thing in the morning! It was a long day of trouble-free driving.

The next morning, I got up even earlier since I was trying to get myself back to east coast time. It was dark when I set out again even though I was on the eastern side of the central time zone. The driving was easy at first. It was a weekday but I managed to miss rush hours in the few cities along the way.

By late morning I was in West Virginia and enjoying the scenery….shortly after a long highway construction/special closure caused a 30 minute delay but the weather was good and the rest stops along the highway were frequent.

After a rest stop that included buying gas as I got close western Maryland – I got a rude surprise: snow and wind. I didn’t stop at the first rest stop in Maryland. It was white knuckle driving by then and continued for about an hour through Garrett and most of Allegany Counties. I was lucky that I68 did not have much traffic and few trucks. Everyone slowed. And we all made it through to Sidling Hill where it was cold but not snowing at all! My car was covered with salt, grit…and melting ice.

The sensor in my windshield gave an error that cleared after I use the wiper fluid/wipers so the adaptive cruise control functioned through it all. By the time I got home I had calmed down a little from the stress from that hour of hard driving. The exhaustion from the two days of driving (or maybe more the last afternoon) set in the next day. I took a long nap!

Being Sick While Traveling

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There was one time I had a terrible cold while traveling during my career – but I was never sick enough to seek medical attention until my time in Texas last month. It was quite an experience.

I was tweaking the dose of a medication per my doctor’s instruction and, at first, I thought my high heart rate and feeling hot was caused by that change…but it continued to get worse over the next 24 hours. I finally noticed a pink area of skin on my abdomen and went to an Urgent Care…where I was diagnosed with cellulitis by the doctor (after the first place I called would not accept Medicare…aargh!). At first the antibiotic seemed to work very well. My heart rate declined back to normal with a few hours of the first dose. The pink area was reduced in size and fading after the second.

Trouble started about the time I took the 4th dose. I haven’t taken much medication so didn’t know any antibiotic I was allergic too…it happened that the one prescribed caused me to itch…I scratched…welts formed ---- HIVES! It was scary since it was described as an indication of an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. I managed to take some Benadryl and reach a doctor to switch me to another antibiotic.

I thought everything was going well – finally. Then I somehow attached something that bit me multiple times (maybe it was multiples of the same insect?)…so I had the remnants of hives (that were no longer itching as much) and bug bites that were new and itching. I covered all of it with calamine lotion to keep from scratching.

Fortunately - I was recovering by the time I started the two-day drive between Texas and Maryland. That trek is the topic of tomorrow’s post.