A Lot Of Birds In The Bush

 I'll start with the happy news/milestones portion of this post first.  In late July, I received my certificate of clinical competence (CCC) in speech-language pathology from the American Speech and Hearing Association!  This certificate is a culmination of completing my master's degree, passing a national Praxis exam, and completing a clinical fellowship year.  It is also a requirement for many jobs in the field. It was a long process, fraught with uncertainty, and I was relieved to be done.

I have been on the job market since the school year ended in June. I decided not to renew my contract with the local school district for a number of reasons.  In a nutshell, I felt like I was getting all the stress of working in the schools (high caseloads, etc.) without certain benefits like timely contract renewals, paid time off, and a solid retirement plan.  Also, I had decided in grad school that I really wanted to work with adults.  Graduating into the pandemic as I did, I wasn't able to be too choosy about my first jobs. And it turned out that I did enjoy working with children. But I wanted to see if I could work with adults, and I definitely didn't want to decide my first year out of grad school that a contract position with poor benefits was the best I could do.

I didn't get much interest from employers until I received my CCC, but once I did, I've received more attention from employers than I ever have in my life.  This includes jobs in which I would be working primarily or exclusively with adults. But, moving this interest from a bird in the bush to a bird in the hand has proven challenging. To be fair, I received one offer which I turned down due to a combination of a long commute and their HR rep being shady. But other than that, I have lots of potential opportunities in various stages, from trying to schedule initial phone calls to waiting to hear back from interviews. There are a couple of instances in which in theory I might still hear back, but really I think I'm being ghosted. 

It all makes for an emotional roller coaster, as well as a lot of time spent on things that likely won't pan out.  Interviews take time and energy even when they don't result in an offer.  It has led to a lot of introspection about what I really want.  At first, I was applying exclusively to jobs in which I would work with adults, but I've been wondering lately how much I really want to deal with (low pay, bad commute, odd schedule, etc.) to achieve that.  And if I put in my time at less-than-choice positions, would it even eventually translate to a better job working with adults?  Would a comfortable, stable pediatric position better?  There is part of me that wants to work toward goals I set for myself, but another part of me that just wants to settle on a job and get into a routine that involves earning income again.  An interesting additional twist to all this is that I am in the middle of a multi-step interview process for a job unrelated to speech-language pathology.  No guarantees of course, but it raises the potential question of whether I would be willing to abandon a field I put so much work into if the opportunity arose.

I keep telling myself that there are at least opportunities for speech-language pathologist, and my current level of engagement with potential employers is in stark contrast to what happened when I was looking for work after a layoff several years ago.  So, I feel like I'll be working again eventually one way or another.  I hope to write about my bird in the hand soon.

Balcony Garden 2021

 

Behold, this summer's balcony garden!  Our balcony gardening was fairly limited last year.  We were pretty late in acquiring any plants at all because we were dutifully staying at home except for essential outings.  Then, by the time we did decide to buy plants, moving was looking like a distinct possibility, so I didn't want to go too overboard.  I bought a few herb plants and moved them with us last summer.

I definitely wanted to do some balcony gardening this year. We currently have basil, cherry tomatoes, parsley, and my faithful mint plant.  One wrinkle of balcony gardening in our new home is that our plants get less sunlight than they did in our old place, mainly because we have a solid brick wall on our balcony here, as opposed to rails that let the light through.  I basically learn all of my gardening lessons the hard way, but may do some things differently next summer in light (haha) of our gardening circumstances.

Basil:  I'll grow this again next year.  Summer is basically incomplete for me without copious quantities of pesto.  It took some experimenting to help the basil plants get sunlight, but one of them has done extremely well with the planter raised off the ground, closer to the light.

Cherry tomatoes:  I really love the idea of cherry tomatoes and plan to keep trying.  This year has actually been reasonably successful.  The plants have a lot of brown leaves, but they are producing tomatoes.  Pollinators seem to be able to find our balcony, so I've stopped resorting to toothbrush pollination.  Unfortunately, other critters have been able to find the balcony, too, and sometimes take bites out of the tomatoes while they are still on the plant.  It seems to matter little whether the tomatoes are actually ripe or not.  I'm guessing squirrels are the perpetrators, although I did once see a chipmunk scuttling across the brick wall.

However...I think the cherry tomatoes would benefit from much more light than our balcony offers.  Our plants grew very tall very quickly, which I suppose could be a characteristic of their variety, but I suspect may have to do with them trying to reach more sunlight. The result of this is unwieldy tomato plants that spill over the balcony wall and sometimes appear to be fighting with the shrubbery behind the balcony.  I will try growing cherry tomatoes next year, but may try to find a variety that is more shade-tolerant.

Parsley:  This was a disappointingly underperforming plant this year, no doubt in part because it was visited by a parsley-eating caterpillar.  I'll probably try planting another herb in its place next year.

Mint:  How can I complain, when it keeps coming back year after year?  As long as this mint wants to survive, it has a planter with me.

I'm thinking of adding some shade-tolerant plants next year. I've read that leafy greens are generally okay in the shade, so I'm thinking of trying kale, particularly since I eat a lot of it anyway.  Short of a true crisis, it's hard to imagine what would make me want to move at this point, so I think I'll have plenty of time to figure out gardening on this particular balcony.

Vegan Meringues: A Sticky Partial Fail

 Although I'm not vegan (or even vegetarian), I've been somewhat interested in vegan cooking and baking for several years.  I had read before about using the water from canned chickpeas ("aquafaba," if we're being fancy), but had been extremely skeptical until I saw it being used on The Great British Baking Show. After watching contestants construct vegan pavlovas, I decided I would try scaling down a bit to make some vegan meringues. I consulted the internet for recipe ideas and learned that in addition to using the water in canned chickpeas, I could potentially use cooking water left over from cooking dried chickpeas (or even other dried beans).  This worked for me.  I do occasionally used canned chickpeas, but more often than not, I'll just cook a batch of dried chickpeas and keep them in the freezer for when I want to use them.

It came time today to cook some more dried chickpeas, so I carefully drained them over a large bowl and let the cooking liquid cool to room temperature.  I beat the liquid in the bowl of my mixer with a little bit of cream of tartar.  It was fun to watch because they really did look like egg whites becoming fluffy.

I put them in the oven, and they became dry and even a little crispy in less time than the recipe suggested.  I tasted one, and it was a little sweet for my taste, even though I had added less sugar than the recipe called for.  Still, it was tasty and had a cool texture.

However, a few hours after taking them out of the oven, they are becoming sticky and messy.  I warned Scott that if he wanted to stress eat meringues, he would have to do so soon.  I'm thinking it's possible that the humidity is a contributing factor to the sticky mess, but I don't know.  It was an interesting experiment, but I think I have to count this as at least a partial fail and think hard about whether I want to spend precious recreational cooking time trying again.

The Downside To The Cicada Merriment

 Earlier this summer, I wrote here about the emergence of cicadas in the DC area. They were a fairly polarizing insect in this area, I believe with many more people hating them than loving them.  I actually like them, but am now experiencing an unforeseen (at least to me) downside to their emergence:  oak mites.

I had never even heard of oak mites before this summer.  Evidently, they are very small insects that eat cicada eggs (hence their large population this summer in the DC area).  They can be carried by the wind, land on people, and bite.  Though I have no way of definitively proving it, I believe both Scott and I have been bitten.

Scott was bitten first. He had a bite from something on his back. It didn't quite look like a mosquito bite, and he said it was much itchier. Then I saw a post on our community's nextdoor.com that described similar bites and advanced the theory that it was oak mites. I subsequently saw news coverage of oak mite bites and how people were flocking to urgent care clinics and dermatologists for relief.

More recently, I had two bites on my back which were much itchier than mosquito bites. I tried using hydrocortisone cream, but I didn't get much relief.  I was having a fairly uncomfortable night of sleep, punctuated by the cat stretching next to me and clawing my itchy bites. Fortunately, I remembered that someone had who had posted on nextdoor.com mentioned getting relief from putting gel hand sanitizer on the bites. I have no idea why that would work, but I tried it, and fortunately, it helped. So, consider this a public service announcement to anyone else who is similarly afflicted.

Not that I get any say in this at all, but I did enjoy the cicada emergence enough to think it was worth the oak mites now. That being said, seventeen years from now when this brood emerges again, I might consider enjoying the cicadas but then taking a long vacation somewhere else until the oak mites have had a chance to come and go.

Trying To Be Green

 Before the pandemic spread around the world and became the focus of everyone's attention, I wrote here about my fears and pessimism surrounding climate change and a small effort I was making to help Australia's wildlife.  I'm sorry to say that if anything, my fears and pessimism have increased since then.  This summer has been very frightening, with too many extreme weather events to keep track of.  Some that immediately come to mind are the apocalyptic heat waves and fires out west, fires in Siberia, and flooding in Germany and China.  Of those, the one that hit closest to home for me has been the heatwaves in the Pacific northwest.  I have several relatives there and have gone out there many time.  It's sad for me to think that such a wonderful area of the country may be changing forever.

I think we need much more than individual efforts to combat this existential threat that impacts us all; however, I'm not optimistic that sufficient government action is forthcoming, particularly in the US, where any and every issue is routinely politicized.  As a result, I am looking for ways to be "greener."  One of those ways is trying to divert some of my food waste from the landfill.

We're not living in an ideal environment to compost. We live in an apartment-style condo. In theory, I might be able to keep a small composting bin on the balcony (as long as it doesn't stink, attract pests, or do other things that would dismay my neighbors), but even if I could pull all of that off, there is the problem of where I would ultimately put the end product when I don't have a yard.  However, our local farmers market has a community composting program where you can drop off plant-based scraps.  I decided to join.

With limited space (and not a very firm grasp on how much plant-based waste we were actually producing), I bought a small counter top bin.  It turns out I pretty consistently fill it within the first 48 hours of emptying it.  This may be particularly true in the summer, when seasonal treats like melons and fresh corn create a large amount of waste in one go. I bought some biodegradable bags so I could store our compostables in the fridge after collecting them, not wanting a full bin on the counter to attract bugs. For a while, I tried filling the bin multiple times during the week, but it turns out our fridge is really too small to hold both massive quantities of scraps for compost AND all the food we plan to eat.

There are times when I wonder if it's worth the effort to divert maybe two days of waste from the landfill out of every week. But then I see the collection bins at the farmers market and how fast they fill up with so many people contributing. This community composting program certainly won't save the planet on its own, but it has been inspiring to see the power of collective action.

Happy 272nd Birthday, Alexandria!

 I've always enjoyed seeing fireworks displays, but in recent years, have only rarely gone to see them.  What usually holds me back is the idea of heading into large crowds with parking and/or mass transit scrums.  I made a happy discovery about our new home this year, though.  While I was researching if there was a way I could view DC's July 4th fireworks without actually going into DC and getting involved in the aforementioned scrums and crowds, I discovered that Alexandria celebrates the anniversary of its founding with fireworks!  Best of all, the park where celebrations were held is an easy walk from our home.  There are things I still miss about Silver Spring, MD, where we lived before moving here last summer.  However, the promise of annual fireworks that I can walk to is definitely a point in Alexandria's favor.

The Potomac River at night

My one fireworks photo that is recognizable as a firework

Pandemic Daze: Traveling Right Now

 I'm not sure what to call this particular period of time.  I think we'd all like to think of this as the post-pandemic period, but I don't want to jinx us all by doing that.  After all, much of the world has little to no access to COVID vaccines.  Then there is the vaccine hesitancy in parts of the US to contend with.  So it may not be a post-pandemic period, but as someone who is fully vaccinated, I feel more freedom to do as I please, including traveling.  I just got back from a trip to North Carolina to see my parents and make a trip into the mountains so we could all escape the heat.  

From my experiences preparing to travel and traveling, it appears that the entire US is currently traveling.  However, if you're not currently traveling and want to travel, I can offer the following tips:

1.  Book pet care/housesitting early.  Granted, we were at somewhat of a disadvantage here because (a) this was our first overnight trip since moving last summer and we weren't established with a local company, and (b) we planned our trip on fairly short notice.  That being said, we were told by multiple local pet sitting companies that they were booked solid, and the sitter we ultimately hired through Rover told me she'd had to turn down multiple requests.

2.  Expect odd crowd patterns.  On the way to NC, we had to sit in a line of cars to get a parking spot at a rest area.  On the way back, we got off on an exit with the plan of going to McDonald's for coffee and a restroom break.  It turned out they were open for drive-thru service only, so we went to a combination convenience store and Dunkin' Donuts.  This was fine except that everyone else seemed to have the same idea, and I must have waited in line for a good 15 minutes to use the restroom.  

On an unrelated side note, it turned out that Dunkin' Donuts had iced decaf!  I was so excited to learn this, since even getting hot decaf is a struggle sometimes, and you nearly always have to get iced decaf as a more expensive specialty drink.  Dunkin' Donuts will be getting a larger share of my road trip coffee funds from here on out.

3.  Bring a mask.  In the interest of full disclosure, I wore my mask less on this trip than I had at any point since last spring.  But, I was happy to have it sometimes in crowded indoor environments.  Also, very occasionally, a business still wanted everyone wearing a mask (like a bookstore we stopped in before returning home).

Here are a few photos from the trip:

Linville Falls

Moth at Daniel Boone Garden

More bug-spotting at Daniel Boone Garden

Mountain view

Rhododendron at Linville Falls trail