by Judy Handley | Apr 26, 2020 | 2020 Life Logs |
2020 Life Logs, Day 117: Definitely a Day of Rest
Date: Sunday, April 26, 2020
Weather: Rainy Day with Thunderstorms; High 49 degrees, Low 41 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I took the ‘day of rest’ thing seriously today and did absolutely nothing of consequence other than survive. Yet somehow I have been busy all day. The unfortunate thing is that my back is no better at the end of do-nothing day. The good thing is that it is no worse. I’ve started doing a few exercises for sciatica and they help for a bit, but then the pain returns. Walking helps the most, so even in the miserable rain, Shadow and I did our walking today.
I did hear from Sam aboard Windbird this morning. Windbird is rounding Cape Hatteras tonight as he and Dawn are headed to Norfolk on their way north. I also talked to Kevin and Claire in Philadelphia this evening. They have hardly been off Merganser in weeks. They are treating it like a long passage and are enjoying it. But the weather was beautiful there yesterday and they took a ride out in the country in their motor home. It was fun, but they feel safer back home on the boat. I didn’t talk to Justin and Jo in Puerto Rico today, but I got an email from Jo. She is working hard at growing as much food as she can but needs seeds that she can’t get locally. I have some of the seeds she needs, so I’ll get those in the mail tomorrow. And my other activity was to listen to the interviews on The Food Revolution. Today’s topic was brain health and the take-away from the three interviews was that the health of your brain is dependent on the food you eat. And the best food for your brain is fresh vegetables, and lots of them! Both Heather and I have been able to procure lots of greens during these coronavirus times. For brain health, greens at every meal is the recommendation. I get that with my green smoothie for breakfast, a big salad for lunch, and a dinner that includes at least three different veggies, one of which is a green. My assessment of what I heard today to maintain brain health is to “Go Green.”
by Judy Handley | Apr 25, 2020 | 2020 Life Logs |
2020 Life Logs, Day 116: Never Ending Move . . . Almost Done
Date: Saturday, April 25, 2020
Weather: Beautiful Sunny Day; High 57 degrees, Low 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Hurray, hurray! What has come to feel like the never ending move is almost done. I have not been able lift and carry boxes since throwing my back out on the first day of the move, but I have been able to find other ways to support. It was a huge decision for Heather and Jed to do this move without any professional help. But, understandably, they really didn’t want to introduce outsiders into the family unit during these days of the coronavirus. I left them around 6:30 this evening as they were unloading the ‘almost last’ van load. They were going to have take-out pizza for dinner and make one last trip before bedtime. That should be the last load. Then, hopefully, they can start fully focusing on the unpacking and the renovations in the new house. While Heather and Jed are working full time at home and home schooling the three boys, it is going to be a slow process. But I know it will be a huge relief for them to know that they no longer have to shuffle things from one house to the other. Closing on 60 Vidal happens on Thursday, so it will be done by then for sure. Today was a beautiful day and as we worked on packing up the last things, the boys played in the backyard with Molly and Joey from next door. They have grown up as brothers and sisters and the farewell this evening was definitely bittersweet. 
The Keefe’s were going somewhere, so the kids said one more farewell as their next door neighbors drove away. They will, of course, remain friends, but that is different from being next door. The Goldpebbles seem to be taking this in stride. They love exploring the conservation area behind their new house and they are excited about the renovations planned for their new bedrooms. And they are constantly planning a ‘man cave’ music room in the basement.
This evening I am listening to interviews from the first day of the 9th Annual Food Revolution Summit. This is hosted by Ocean Robbins, son of John Robbins, who was a major food revolution leader beginning in the 1970’s. I found the first interview of the series to be absolutely fascinating. It was with Dr. Matt McCarthy who is an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and an assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He has been on the frontline during the coronavirus pandemic and shared his experiences of the past few weeks. He wrote a book that came out last summer called, SUPERBUGS: The Race to Stop an Epidemic. Matt went to Yale College and played baseball for his four years there. When he graduated with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, he spent a year in Minor League Baseball. After one year, he left baseball and wrote about that experience in a book entitled Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit. From Minor League Baseball, he went to Harvard Medical School. Once he became a physician, he wrote another book, The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician’s First Year. He has the special talent of being about to write about his experiences. In Superbugs he wrote about his research in West Africa with pathogens transferred to humans from animals, specifically from bats. He saw clearly that a world pandemic was coming. He just didn’t know exactly when. He is now living through that pandemic, treating Covid-19 patients. The things I loved most about the interview was that he shared what he and his family are doing at home to protect themselves from Covid. It was interesting to hear how they deal with the food coming into their home. They unpack outside and leave paper bags and boxes outside to be recycled or thrown in the trash. They wash vegetables in water with nothing added. But as he pointed out, there is no research that tells us exactly the best way to do this. His family is just like mine or yours. We are all just doing the best that we can with the information we have.
by Judy Handley | Apr 24, 2020 | 2020 Life Logs |
2020 Life Logs, Day 115: Harry Potter Times Three
Date: Friday, April 24, 2020
Weather: Overcast and Rainy; High 47 degrees, Low 36 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
As forecast, it was indeed a rainy day which made for a great movie binge day with Sam, Jonah, and Ollie. We were up early, had breakfast, and then watched Harry Potter 1. We took a break after the first movie to try and watch a science webinar about the current herring run. We connected my computer to the television and we could watch it just fine. But none of us could get the sound going. After twenty minutes of trying, we realized that my computer was on mute. Duh! Sam was shocked that none of us had thought to check that, but we hadn’t. Since we can watch that program later, we abandoned watching it and started watching Harry Potter 2. We paused for lunch, finished watching the second HP, and ended the afternoon with Harry Potter 3. At the end of the afternoon, the boys couldn’t believe they were still in their PJ’s and had not been outside all day. I had taken Shadow for a couple of walks, but it was miserable out. It was a great day to spend inside.
by Judy Handley | Apr 23, 2020 | 2020 Life Logs |
2020 Life Logs, Day 114: Boundless Energy
Date: Thursday, April 23, 2020
Weather: Sun Early, Then Mostly Cloudy and Windy; High 47 degrees, Low 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
No, I don’t have boundless energy. But the Goldpebbles do and tonight I am worn out from just watching them put that energy into another spring vacation work and play day.
I had a follow-up chiropractor visit this morning at 10 am and there was definite improvement after my visit yesterday. So, I will return a couple of times next week and probably the week after that. I am just thankful that my chiropractor is nearby and is doing everything possible to make visits to his office as safe as possible. I was in and out fairly quickly and was at the Goldstones by 10:30. I was met by a bag of groceries sitting by the door for me and three boys ready to spend the rest of the day, tonight, and tomorrow at my house. Heather made a trip to the grocery store for both of us this morning. Thank you, Heather. Unfortunately, many things on our lists were not in stock. I had hoped to get grassfed ground beef so I could have hamburgers for dinner for the boys tonight, but that was a no go at Stop and Shop. Later in the day, however, I ordered from the tiny organic market in Mashpee Commons and within an hour, the bag with the grassfed ground beef and other goodies was on my doorstep. They didn’t have buns of any sort, so I made hamburger buns. They were not only a great hit, they were extremely fast and easy to make.
Even though the boys were packed and mostly ready to go. We made a stop at 60 Vidal to dig up a few raspberry plants that we want to move to my yard. We only dug up a few to use as guinea pigs to see if our plan was going to work. By the time we got to my house, it was time to fix lunch. While Ollie and Sam dug the trench for transplanting raspberries, Jonah and I made flakey biscuits to go with a mac and cheese lunch. Not sure what happened, but the biscuits were definitely not flakey. I’ve made those biscuits for years, but maybe using almond milk instead of regular milk doesn’t work with this recipe. The boys ate them anyway and then we returned to the raspberry project. We planted the ones we had brought with us and determined that our plan was going to work. But before going back to get more plants, it was time for the next item on our agenda which was kayaking. 
Once again, Shadow and I sat by the dock in what felt like freezing wind and watched the Goldpebbles enjoying another kayak explore. Then we went back to 60 Vidal for more raspberries. 
I’ll not go into detail on what is like trying to oversee three fully energized boys doing this project. I’ll just say they work like bulls in a China shop. But bottom line. They got the job done! There are still more raspberries at 60 Vidal, but if we are going to transplant those, that project will have to wait until the weekend.
When we got back in the house after transplanting the raspberries, it was time for quiet indoor play while I got dinner together. I made those 40-minute hamburger buns, but then realized that I had no ketchup. The Goldpebbles consider ketchup to be its own food group and believe you can’t have a meal without it, especially not a hamburger. So as soon as the buns came out of the oven, we drove to 43 Grasmere to borrow some ketchup. When we got back home, Sam grilled the burgers and everyone agreed that the burgers were perfectly grilled and that the buns were perfect. Success.
The boys are fast asleep now and I am tired. But I am not nearly as tired as the parents in this country and around the world trying to work full-time while basically homeschooling their children. It is hard enough to home school kids, but to do it while you are working full-time from home is almost impossible. Then there are the parents who are still out there going to work everyday with kids at home with no one to be with them. It’s not like summer when you can send them to camp and enroll them in other activities. There are no camps and no other activities. And then there are the parents who have lost their jobs and are at home and have the time to educate their kids, but are so stressed out about how they are going to pay the next rent check or feed their family with no money coming in that they can’t think straight. We, all of us, have a lot of figuring out to do right now. As I am sure you know, it is totally overwhelming. We’ll get there, but this is tough stuff.
The Goldpebbles and I are going to totally ignore the world’s problems tomorrow. It is supposed to rain all day and we have planned a movie binge day to celebrate the last day of spring school vacation. We are going to start by watching Harry Potter 1 and 2 for the second or third time, maybe watch Harry Potter 3, and in between we might fit in a few science videos. Stay tuned on how that goes.
by Judy Handley | Apr 22, 2020 | 2020 Life Logs |
2020 Life Logs, Day 113: Remembering Rachel Carson on Earth Day 50
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Very Windy and Cold; High 46 degrees, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Rachel Carson has always been one of my heroes. She was a writer, a marine biologist, and a conservationist. Anyone who loves the world’s oceans has probably read her book, THE SEA AROUND US. But it was her book published in 1962 that had such an impact on those fighting to keep our environment healthy. SILENT SPRING sounded the environmental alarm about the use of pesticides. She died of cancer only two years after the publication of that book, but her words of wisdom have stayed with us. During her college years, she took a summer course at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole. She is honored there in Marina Park with a bronze sculpture depicting her in deep concentration as she looks out over the water. I told the Goldpebbles yesterday that I was going to take them to Woods Hole today to see Rachel. We planned to take face masks in case there were other people in the park. And we all agreed to stay in the car until there were no other people near the Rachel Carson sculpture before getting out of the car. The boys have grown up with Woods Hole as their ‘backyard’, but we all felt that today’s experience was so very different. There were absolutely no other people on the street, no other cars, and no one in the park. Definitely a first and it felt very strange. It felt like a ghost town. 
But we enjoyed having Rachel all to ourselves and I took photos of the boys with her with and without their masks on. Sam remarked that the photo with the masks will always remind us of celebrating Earth Day in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. It was also Sam that kept seeing things in Woods Hole that he had never noticed before. Like he said, “For the last month we have only been out of one house to drive to the other house.” The Cottage to Vidal Avenue to Grasmere Drive and back to Vidal. I promised him that things haven’t really changed during that time. It is just that our isolation has opened our eyes to a new way of looking at the same old things. But, like him, I kept seeing things I have never noticed before as well.
On our way to Woods Hole, we also visited some of our favorite places in Falmouth. We stopped by Falmouth Heights Beach, drove along Surf Drive to check out the various osprey nests, drove past Nobska Lighthouse and saw that it is being renovated, drove by Stony Beach in Woods Hole and were saddened to see all of the police tape keeping people from entering the parking area, and on the way home we stopped to see the baby lambs at Peterson Farm. There were other stops we wanted to make, but we ran out of time as we wanted to get back to my house by noon to watch the Woods Hole Research Center webinar hosted by Heather. I connected my computer to the television so they could see Heather on the bigger screen. It was interesting to see their eyes open wide when Heather started the webinar on the big screen. Jonah was quite impressed that one of the people Heather was interviewing was a young man named Jonah from the National Children’s Campaign. Sam was convinced that he would learn nothing new, but he was surprised to learn that he did not know about a website that Jonah (not our Jonah) mentioned as a resource for students in schools wanting to organize around environmental issues. Sam and a friend started an environmental club at their school this year and will now be able to use this resource going forward. https://schoolsforclimateaction.weebly.com/
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After watching the webinar, the boys were out the door and down on the dock launching all three kayaks. Exploring by kayak was their chosen activity to end our celebration of Earth Day 50. I sat down by the dock with Shadow and watched as they paddled and explored. The wind made it a chilly experience, but it gives me great joy to watch them explore. We had to end our day together early as I had a 3 pm appointment with my chiropractor. When I woke up this morning and my back problem was no better, I called and made the appointment. The office is scheduling appointments so that only one person is in at a time and they are taking every precaution to make it safe. Unfortunately, my chiropractor agrees with me. Whatever I did this time, is not going to be an easy fix. I’ll see him again tomorrow morning and then a couple of times next week. Then we’ll see how I’m doing. I can still function, but there are times when there is excruciating pain. If a just keep moving, which is not always easy, it goes away. So hopefully continued, careful movement interspersed with visits to Dr. Mike will get my back in working order soon.
