The 21st Century Matriarch

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Catching up on the Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safaris:

Savoring a dark chocolate reward for a weight loss goal achievement! I’m still slightly ‘overweight’ for my height so I’ll be celebrating each ‘new low’ from now on until I get into the ‘normal’ range. I have a supply of dark chocolate to reward myself to make 9 more step reductions since I only eat 2 squares (the serving size on the packaging is 3…but that makes the servings come out uneven). It should be easier to watch portion size and stick to nutritious and lower calories food now that I am eating at home. My downfall is usually eating in restaurants (particularly when I am traveling) and events where food is provided (it always looks and tastes so good).

Replacing cabinet/drawer bumpers all over our house. My husband had ordered them from Amazon when he noticed that a lot of the ones on the cabinets were gone or degraded after 25 years. They came in the mail early this week. After letting the package sit for a few days (to let any coronavirus die), he went around the house to apply them yesterday….a little home maintenance while we have time for it!

Completing proxy voting prior to stockholder meetings. Most companies with near term stockholder meetings will probably shift to virtual meetings…or some other way to insure social distancing. I never go to the meetings…but I do vote!

Using up the last of the garlic from the 2019 Community Supported Agriculture share. I used the last cloves of garlic…and that’s all I had left from the CSA…everything in the freezer or dried has been used. I hope the weather cooperates and the pandemic is stabilized enough that the CSA starts at its normal time in June.

Hearing children at play. I had my office window open in the afternoon when the temperature was in the 60s…lots of birdsong…then I heard the voices of young children playing. Their dad was running with them through the long ‘playground’ of unfenced back yards. What a joyous way to send off the day!

Previous “filling a day of social distance” posts: 3/15, 3/16, 3/17, 3/18, 3/19, 3/20, 3/21, 3/22, 3/23, 3/24, 3/25, 3/26, 3/27, 3/28

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Trying macro photographs of spicebush and red maple. My original plan was to tromp through the backyard and into the woods…do the photography outdoors. But – it was colder and breezier than I anticipated so I cut a small spicebush branch and picked up a twig of red maple samaras that had blown off. The photography part of the project would be done inside.

I worked with the red maple samaras first. I used a jeweler’s loupe and my cell phone with the samara on my kitchen countertop…a small flash light supplementing the natural light coming from one side. I like the graceful ridges in the ‘wings.’

2020 03 s IMG_8548 (2) clip.jpg — Then I ‘got close’ with my Canon point-and-shoot camera….let its macro setting do it’s best. These are small immature samaras…about 1/4 inch.

2020 03 s IMG_8548 (1).jpg — The spice bush flowers are small too. I put the branch in a vase (with the sycamore branch). I might get to see its leaves unfurl too…after the flowers are done. I noticed an ant on the branch as I put it in the water. Can ants be pollinators?

I tried several approaches to photographing the small flowers. The ones below were done with the clip-on macro lens on my phone. The challenge is the shallow depth of field. These flowers are small but not flat!

Then I tried putting my Canon bridge camera on a tripod across the kitchen and using the zoom. It blurs the background and provides more depth…but the color is gone. Maybe I’ll put more light on the flowers and try again. The sycamore buds might benefit from the same photographic strategy. My husband gets into the action too – helping me with the more complicated set ups.

Catching up on the Cincinnati Zoo Home Safari videos:

Moe the two-toed sloth
Lions Imani and John
Penguins (in a very noisy habitat…I didn’t watch the whole thing)
Seyial the black rhino

Completing the Jackson Pollock segment of the In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting Coursera course. I’ve been doing one ‘week’ of the course every day and enjoying all of them – particularly the part about learning how they were made.

Re-assessing our investment strategy…making some changes. At first, we thought that maybe the social distancing strategy would work, and the economy would blip but recover soon. Not enough people are following the guidance – it says something very sad about us as a nation – and means that the pandemic with be more overwhelming. From an economic standpoint, it is more than a blip and deteriorating further. So we made some investment changes to stabilize rather than free fall…..continuing our social distancing…and hoping that the tests of potential therapeutic drugs work well enough to save lives and shorten the time people are in the hospital to recover. Both my husband and I fell of the wagon of limiting time spent following the coronavirus stories and statistics yesterday…back to limiting that activity today – no one needs a constant pounding of repeating bad news.

Previous “filling a day of social distance” posts: 3/15, 3/16, 3/17, 3/18, 3/19, 3/20