This. My husband froze a bunch of ours whole as an experiment last year, and it was fine. He just pulls them out and eats them as is.

Emory told us directly that you can't use AP scores in place of subject tests....though my son only had 2 and decided to give it a shot anyway; he was waitlisted and then offered a spot off the waitlist (at the Oxford campus).

So do you think the only humane way to get chicks is to either raise them yourself or pick them up from a farm or hatchery within a few hours drive? We've done that before but were limited to sex linked breeds since we can't have roosters. And they turned out to be not very nice chickens--fine for a bigger farm with a bunch of chickens (eventually we gave them to someone who had just that) but not for someone who wants pets who lay eggs like we do. I'd be happy to drive to pick up chicks if I could find a hatchery nearby that could sex chicks for us, but I don't think there is one (I've looked). Aside from that, the option is feed stores, and I'd be very surprised if the chicks they sell there are transported under better conditions than my hatchery chicks (and they're certainly not treated with more care once they arrive at their destination).

Yeah, I wouldn't order chicks right now with everything that's going on with the post office. And I probably wouldn't feel comfortable with it if we lived in a more rural area, either, where things were likely to take longer even in normal times.

It's overnight mail, so it's not like mailing a letter or something. Our chicks spent less than 24 hours in a heavily padded box with 5 other chicks and were healthy, happy, and downright perky when we opened them up. I don't see how their experience would have been any different if they'd been transported any other way. Sitting in the dark huddled with other chicks is kind of what baby chick life is supposed to be like. I'm sure I'd feel differently if we hadn't always had good experiences, but I have extremely spoiled chickens, and all evidence is that they were perfectly healthy both emotionally and physically when they got to us.

We've gotten mail order chicks a few times (including this past spring), and we've never had any not make it to us alive. I've read that the numbers that die going through the mail is about the same as if they never left the hatchery. And I imagine if you buy them at a feed store they get to the feed store under pretty much the same kinds of conditions (I doubt there's a friendly local farmer driving them over in a pickup truck in most cases). Ordering them means we can pick from a big variety of different breeds. We've always done just a few at a time; they come overnight mail in a little box with straw and holes in it, and the post office calls you as soon as they get there to go pick them up. It's all very exciting, really.

We watched a couple of episodes and liked it but then somehow haven't gotten back to it--we need to do that now that we're out of Kim's Convenience!

I'm really enjoying low stakes Canadian sitcoms as a contrast to real life. Aside from Schitt's Creek, Kim's Convenience is great, and we've started watching Workin' Moms, too. Also in the smart but not dark category, I love Mozart in the Jungle.

The latest estimate I could find puts Sweden at only about 15% having had it. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200813/swedens-no-lockdown-policy-didnt-achieve-herd-immunity

How does that square with this graph from the CDC that shows excess deaths in 2020? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

My point of view on this has shifted the longer things drag on. I still won't be first in line, but I'm very anxious for a vaccine. And my husband likely WILL be first in line (whenever he can be, anyway) if he's back teaching in a classroom with students by then. (if the vaccine magically appears before November 3, however, I will be considerably more skeptical).

I think making sure parents have enough paid sick leave to stay home with sick kids would go farther than anything else toward keeping sick kids home where they belong (which would, ironically, reduce absenteeism overall since the kids wouldn't pass things along to their classmates as readily).

certainly. It will be a miracle if we don't hit 200 pediatric deaths with covid if we open all the schools up while it's still spreading widely. But I definitely think (and I've said before) that if this causes us to start taking potentially dangerous viruses more seriously overall, it will be a great thing. Increase access to sick leave, better health care, stop acting like it's somehow brave and noble to go to work/school sick. ETA: My husband is a high school teacher, and I remember his department head scolding him after he took a sick day because he had strep throat and was still actively contagious--she proudly boasted that she hadn't taken a sick day in 30 years and listed off all the contagious illnesses she'd just worked right through!

online APs worked out fine for DS last year, too (he took Euro history and Art History), so I'm not worried about that. I was planning on having him take the chemistry subject test, and I'm scrapping that (he didn't really NEED it; for some subjects they're pretty essential to meet our state flagship's admission requirements for homeschoolers, but they only require "proof" of having taken a physical science and biology). He's very happy about that 🙂 He's just 11th grade this year, and I've read that people with seniors would like it if juniors hold off on the SAT to save room for those who really have to have it this fall, so we'll be waiting until spring for that (he actually took the SAT once last year because he needed it for dual enrollment, so we have a good baseline to work with already).

It would also be true that most kids with a mild case of the flu are never tested, too, though, wouldn't it? It does seem to be using an estimated total number of flu cases and confirmed cases of covid (I don't know how they're estimating the flu cases). At any rate, I do think we should be careful about saying "flu is more dangerous" when there doesn't seem to be any actual data to back that up. Like I said, I found it interesting because I've taken it on faith that flu was more dangerous to kids; I won't do that anymore. And just looking at raw numbers....86 pediatric deaths when kids haven't been in school doesn't tell us a lot about what things would look like if we hadn't protected kids (and we're starting an experiment in not protecting them in a lot of places right now).

re: flu v covid in kids....there's a new report from the AAP that says the mortality rate for kids who get covid is 7.5 times higher than flu....it's just that not as many kids have had covid (yet). Amber Schmidtke is a great source for looking at data in Georgia specifically, but here she summarizes these nationwide findings: Here's a link to the whole report, with references: https://amberschmidtkephd.substack.com/p/the-daily-digest-10aug2020 I thought this was interesting/scary because I hear so many people say the flu is more deadly for kids, and I always just sort of assumed this was true and that the real things to worry about were long term effects that we don't yet know about and, especially, kids passing covid on to household members and other higher risk people. Obviously, the overall risk to kids is still small, but it appears that it's considerably more dangerous to them than flu is.

DS's college (Macalester) just e-mailed yesterday to say their fall plan is changing. He was supposed to be flying back 8/30, but now only first years, transfer students, and international students will be living on campus. They had already divided the semester into two "modules" of two classes each, so the hope is that other people will be able to come back for the second module that starts in October. They had already planned to put everyone in single rooms, only do to go food, and let all professors choose between hybrid, online, or fully in person (most of his classes had been supposed to be hybrid). So now of course he'll be all online for the first module. They also just announced a plan for testing everyone and quarantining (before they hadn't been planning on testing asymptomatic people, which sounded like a recipe for failure to me)....so I'm hoping things will go well enough with all the precautions they have in place (and with being in Minnesota, where things so far haven't been terrible) thatl he'll be able to go back in October. He's certainly tired of being stuck here!

My 17 and 14 year olds would normally be doing youth orchestra (and the 17 year old just auditioned for a wind symphony, too), but both are on indefinite hold right now. They're both still doing lessons (their wind instruments and piano) online. They'd also be volunteering at the library and doing a couple of different D&D groups, but none of that is happening, either (there's been some talk of restarting D&D outside in a small group, but it hasn't happened yet, and I'm not sure if we'll be comfortable with it if it does). My 14 year old also has a drawing club he used to go to that's not happening. I might sign him up for an online theater class. My 7 year old would normally be playing baseball; it's happening locally, and I thought about it for half a second until I remembered that he's managed to get lice TWICE from baseball over the past couple of years and decided we'd just wait and see what spring looks like after all. We had also been planning on starting him in piano this year, but I don't want him doing virtual lessons when he's just starting, so we'll hold off on that.

It's 4 schools with cases now: https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/cherokee-reports-covid-19-cases-in-three-more-schools/V6K7XGLZXVHRTFI7E6BSXZIQAU/ Yeah, it's a mess. My husband is a math teacher one county over; right now I'm just hoping that they'll see Cherokee as the cautionary tale that it is and not go back to in person until numbers look way better. My 17 year old is starting dual enrollment this year, and we decided he'll only do online classes for now (which means he's only doing one class this semester, since the other one he was planning on was full online). My 19 year old is supposed to go back to college in Minnesota in a few weeks...Minnesota looks a lot better than Georgia right now, but...we'll see.

We mostly enjoyed our short, close to home RV trips, but they made me glad we didn't try to do a long one. It's one thing to go on yet another hike every day...it's another to go on yet another hike and not even be able to follow it up with a leisurely restaurant meal. And a rainy day is just a day you're stuck in the trailer instead of a day you find a museum to go to. The change of scenery for a few days was still nice, though. It was also killing me not to use the trailer this summer AGAIN after our big trip last summer was to Ireland/England. I hate making payments while it sits in the driveway!

We have a travel trailer and have done 2 short trips with it this summer that felt mostly okay. We only did take-out, avoided public bathrooms as much as possible, stuck with outside stuff (SO MUCH HIKING), etc. so that it didn't seem much different than what we'd do at home. I would also consider something like renting a beach house less than a day's drive away. I personally wouldn't fly right now (although I am putting my kid on a plane in a few weeks to go back to college, assuming his college actually has in person classes--it was that or 4 days of driving round trip and multiple hotel stays). We were supposed to do a 6 week Michigan trip, and we canceled it (after shedding a few tears). Hoping for next summer!

ahh--good point.

I don't know, but I did just buy one for my husband's classroom (he's teaching online to start the year, but has to go into his empty classroom to teach). Still thinking about whether to get one for my son's dorm room...but he'll have his own room, and there's no AC in the building, so it seems like it might not be necessary.

I like things on the cold side: my preferred summer temp is 74 or so during the day/72 at night. We do 63 at night and around 67-68 during the day in winter....although as I get older I'm more likely to want it a little warmer.

DS19 had excellent academics (1550 SAT/4.0 unweighted GPA/lots of dual enrollment and APs) and fine but unremarkable extracurriculars (standard stuff like theater, piano, some volunteer work but not a ton), and we found that he did very well with schools that were selective but not tippy top schools, but top 20s were a total crapshoot. He got into Vassar and Hamilton, offered a spot off the waitlist at Emory's Oxford campus, but also got waitlisted a ton of places. If I had it to do over again (and I do--3 times!) I'd have encouraged him to focus more on need-blind schools for reaches. He needed a lot of need based aid, and it seemed to make a difference which schools were need aware and which were need blind (both Vassar and Hamilton are need blind). We also might have focused more on schools that have a reputation for being LESS holistic in his case, since his numbers were the strongest part of his application (he's a super introverted kid and selling himself is not his strong suit)....but then I'm not sure most of those schools would have been a good fit for him even if he'd gotten in (I'm thinking of maybe somewhere like Vanderbilt or Washington University, but it's not something we focused on, so really not sure).