My preferred method of preserving fresh food is freezing. I have done CSAs on and off for about 15 years, and always got a glut of tomatoes for several weeks in the summer. I would roast the excess in the oven and then put them into quart-size freezer bags. I also do some big batch cooking on a fairly regular basis, with things like turkey chili or beef stew where I can incorporate a bunch of veggies that need to be used up asap, then divide into small batches that are easy to freeze and later reheat. I got into the habit of doing that because my ex gets major migraines from onions and garlic so almost everything needed to be made from scratch. I once read some advice about food storage and I try to stick by it: Store what you eat, and eat what you store. It may sound silly, but it makes sense to me. Don't waste precious storage space on food you would only eat if you had no other options, and keep it in rotation so it gets eaten before it goes bad. Obviously if we lose power for an extended period, my freezer stash is not going to last as long as canned or dried stuff, but I have those things on hand too. I just don't spend any time or energy on canning or drying.

So glad to hear they cleared him to go home. Sending healing thoughts.

Boston metro, instacart pickup at Wegmans. I booked the slot 5 days ago by logging on in the middle of the night. I did the ordering, and edited every 2 days as stock changed or we thought of more stuff to add on, and today I followed along on the updates while the shopper selected the items. For a 9-10 am pickup, she started at 7 am when the store opened. I had requested 75 line items (with multiples of some items, like apples). The shopper was working quickly, but about 1/4 of the items needed to be substituted or cancelled. Ok, I just counted on the receipt: 12 substitutions, 8 cancellations. Substitutions mainly included switching brands or sizes for tp, tissues, flour, pancake mix (bought mainly since flour is scarce), some canned goods and some produce. Cancelled items that she could not find included vanilla ice cream, buttermilk, chocolate syrup, disposable gloves, plus they only let her get 1 instead of 2 on flour and kitty litter. I was glad to get the one bag of flour. the shopper sent a pic of the aisle, only one option available. i am sure it sold out again this morning. No problem getting our preferred milk, OJ, bread, butter, and peanut butter, 2 of each. Got one 18 pack of eggs, the limit. They had pasta, limit 4, and i got more couscous, which has been my pasta stand-in. I splurged on a Wegmans quiche so I do not have to use up my stock of scarce items to make my own. She finished picking items around 845. It took another 55 min before we got the text that the order was ready to pick up. Ex was picking up, but said he was happy to wait in the car because it was super crowded around the pick up area, the majority of customers had masks, but lots of instacart shoppers did not. they had ropes to separate the waiting areas but everyone huddled together for some reason. I told him to take all the stuff back to his place. Our kid will go to his place this weekend, they will have food the kid will eat, and they can sort it and bring half of it to me when he brings the kid back a couple days later. I will definitely plan to use this service again if that is an option for next time. The main change i would make is that I would do 2 separate orders, one for me and one for my ex, so we can each get our own flour / tp / eggs if available.

Boston metro area. I haven't been out in the last 2 weeks, but my ex has been doing occasional errands for me. My child and I have asthma, and other medical issues, so he has agreed to help us strictly shelter in place. From yesterday: He said other than limiting the number of people in the store, he saw no changes at Whole Foods and it made him uncomfortable to be in there. He went in to get an Amazon locker pickup but did not grocery shop there due to lack of social distancing etc. He went to Wegmans instead. They are letting staff wear masks and gloves and seem more focused on safe shopping and have 1-per shopper limits on the popular items. He did not share details of the trip, but got 90% of the items I requested, including TP, eggs, butter, sandwich bread, a bag of apples, some very green bananas, milk, yogurt, and OJ. Plus a 6 lb pack of ground beef, oh my. No flour or goldfish crackers though. I had been trying to get a grocery pick up slot at Wegmans for more than a week without success, so I am lucky I have a shopper I could send!

Regarding disability payments, SSDI is distributed on different Wednesdays throughout the month. Mine is the second Wednesday. That meant last month I had to wait until March 11 until I could really do a big shop. I got mixed up and went shopping on the 10th by accident and my debit card got declined. Fortunately I have a still have an Amex business card from my ex, and I used that to pay for the food. Gotta feed our kid, ya know?

I think that there will be some modified back to school in the fall here. Probably something with more staggered part time schedules, to reduce crowding, allowing for some social distancing. My child's former high school could probably manage something like M/W for grades 9 and 11, and T/T for grades 10 and 12. They already do block scheduling with the teachers split teaching those grade combos. They also normally do 1/2 days on Fridays for professional development, and it would make sense to carry on with those regular teacher meetings, virtual or otherwise. It would be harder to manage it this way for younger elementary students, but I still expect to see some sort of hybrid of b&m and at home this fall for K-12. I have a harder time believing we are prepared to have more than 100,000 college students return to our city from all over the country and beyond until we are more solidly over the spread of this.

I have started sewing masks. I will definitely wear one next time I go shopping, or if I need to interact with anyone other than the kid I live with. We are both high risk. When I go out to common areas in my apartment building I am using a paper towel sprayed with cleaner to open doors and lift lids, etc, and wipe down the card we use for the laundry machine. I have not decided about gloves, etc, if I can find some I might use them. I came up with the idea of throwing my phone and car keys into a ziploc before leaving my car when I go shopping. I can still swipe the screen and push buttons on the key fob when they are in the bag. They would stay in the bag until I get back in the car and sanitize my hands. Just need some hand sanitizer now.

It will probably be needed for regular bills. If we are lucky, and my ex is able to keep some self-employment income going, it might help me replace my 2003 van this summer.

10 days ago I decided to go as close to full quarantine as I could due to asthma and other health issues. Since then I have only left my apartment to go to the building's trash room and laundry room, and once to get some stuff that was in the car. Over the weekend my ex dropped off a bag of groceries (mainly bananas and apples) and he delivered some stuff I ordered from Amazon. In the week before my "quarantine" I did what I called extreme social distancing, and I did a pickup order from Target and 2 trips to the grocery store, and my 15 yo spent the weekend with their dad. I asked them to skip that this past weekend, but I think the visits will be back on at the end of this week if everyone takes precautions. Maybe sticking to visits every 2 weeks rather than weekly seems better in this new normal. I have started making masks and thinking through how to handle "essential" trips.

extra groceries, toiletries, and medical stuff for 2 households, since my 15 yo and I both have asthma, and my ex is staying in a new place and did not have even a thermometer. I asked him to check his temp regularly if he wants to keep sharing custody during this extended stay at home time frame a fresh bottle of insulin and extra testing supplies for our diabetic kitty several spools of thread for some quarantine sewing projects peri bottles I got the car oil changed the day before our city announced the shelter in place guidelines. it needed it anyway, but I made sure to get it done asap in case i couldn't later

My only certain income is from SSDI, so the budget is as tenuous as it normally is. I am saving on gas, but the difference is spent on groceries.

I live in a condo so there are limits to what I can do. I went with locking bars on the inside of all the windows, similar to the ones on the link. Someone with the right tools could break in, but it would be really noisy because they would have to break the window first. We also had the unit doors replaced with more secure ones when we bought the place, and installed deadbolts. I locked myself out recently when the deadbolt was not locked, just the doorknob lock was on, and I was able to slide that lock open in under a minute with my driver's license. That really made me appreciate the deadbolts! https://www.homedepot.com/p/Grisham-Pp-Spag-3-Bar-Window-Guard-in-Black-93013/202016111?mtc=Shopping-B-F_D30-G-D30-30_22_WINDOWS-Generic-NA-Feed-LIA-NA-NA-MiscWindows&cm_mmc=Shopping-B-F_D30-G-D30-30_22_WINDOWS-Generic-NA-Feed-LIA-NA-NA-MiscWindows-71700000054255916-58700005156111400-92700045371281471&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmdzzBRC7ARIsANdqRRkKQCxmECIg7f3-uG7Vk3rDDeLPu1gNH80uzLAX_QM0ExirpeizKTcaAvBjEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

The IRS monthly max allowance for food is $386 per month for a single person, which works out to $89 per week. So, $75 per week, especially for someone who works at a restaurant, seems reasonable.

A few have, others are just adjusting. Thankfully my 15yo got braces off a few weeks ago. We have a temporary retainer (clear), and were supposed to go in to pick up the regular retainer (palate) this week, but we go to a dental school, and it has closed. The physical therapy office says they plan to stay open, but we are near the end of that treatment (started this round in December) so I may cancel appts for this week and next. Our vet is open, but only for animals. You have to leave your pet at the door, the vet will put you on speaker phone during the exam while you wait in the car, and you can pay online.

There were lots of virtual St Patrick's Day shows posted online today. At least one kid from our school danced in the driveway of a nursing home, for the benefit of a grandparent inside. Our Irish dance school urged us not to get the kids together outside of dance class. Instead, they are putting together an online video library of the school's senior dancers performing various steps for everyone to use at home. Earlier this year they developed a pretty comprehensive fitness routine for the kids to do in and out of class (jump-roping, etc), and they provided handouts that they can use. Also, the teacher is requesting that we send her 2-3 short videos from at-home practice and she will provide feedback. We don't have a proper dance area really, but my 15yo is dancing wherever. Like today, outside the laundry room in our condo complex. We also retrieved a piece of shower pan liner from storage. It is not quite as good as marley, but is not bad as a top layer to roll out on top of a wood floor and cost about $30 for a 5-8 piece.

We got an email reminder that dance class was still happening this weekend, despite all the St Patrick's Day show cancellations, and then a couple hours later we got another email telling us that we would not have class after all, this week or next, and stay tuned for updates. The school has class in about a dozen locations throughout the week, but none are owned by the school, and most of the locations are being closed down (church halls, school gyms, etc).

The organizers for the CLRG Irish worlds event have posted an update that basically says they are waiting on an official govt action that requires them to cancel, in order to ensure people have a better case for refunds on flights and hotels, etc, and so the organization can avoid having to voluntarily renege on its contracts. The emails about local St Patrick's Day cancellations keep coming in. The latest is a church event. After all the nursing homes cancelled, next came parades, union halls, a senior social center, and libraries. I think the only ones left on the schedule are bars and the Ancient Order of Hibernians dinner. Last year my kid ended up with an ankle fracture during the first regular dance class right after all the St Patrick's Day events, so maybe not doing 15+ performances on random crappy floors over the course of 2 weeks is a good thing.

I just looked up my state: 95 cases as of yesterday My sense is I can count on one more quick trip for groceries today, and then need to be ready to stay put. I just got my monthly ssdi deposit yesterday, but was down to $100 in the bank before that, so I have had to be pretty cautious about what to get. Yesterday after taking the cat for a vet appt, I refilled some prescriptions, got 30 days worth of cat food and litter, and filled up the tank with gas. My car badly needs an oil change. Seems weird to go out for that today, but even worse not to. Two times in the last 10 days I bought emergency chocolate, and then stress-ate my way through it all. I need to restock but then hand it over to my kid to secure it. 😕

We have had about a dozen Irish dance performances cancelled. Not too surprising under the circumstances. The nursing homes were the first to cancel. My dancer (15) is really hoping that classes continue despite this round of performances not happening, but we haven't heard anything from the school about. There is a class scheduled for tonight. We will see. The kid and I both have asthma, which makes it more worrisome. I have been brainstorming about how to make/find an acceptable training area if classes are cancelled. As I write this, I think I want the school to announce a break so I don't have to be the bad guy, being the one to keep my kid home. The world championship competition is scheduled for early next month, in Dublin, but is very likely to be cancelled or postponed. So far they just announced that they will make an announcement by this weekend. We would not be going, my dancer is not at that level, but more than a dozen kids at the school had been planning to go.

My 15yo is an Irish dancer with a long history of foot and ankle injuries of various severity, so we have had to make a bunch of decisions like this. The most recent one involved a major competition, and we made a split decision, which was to withdraw from the solo competition (choreography included dancing en pointe) but continue with the team events (which are more about synchronization). The sports medicine doctor said she was less concerned about the risk involved with a 3 minute dance than with the many hours of practice that precede it, and that factored into our decision as well. By cutting back on the number of dances, we were able to reduce practice time. Also, since the dances we committed to were already fully memorized, practices were not as intense.

My kid enjoyed the Zaccaro Challenge Math books at that stage. eta: There is a good bit of white space on each page for working out problems, but I also did much of the writing on a small white board as needed.

We thought we had a solid plan figured out for high school, with my kid getting accepted to a public performing arts high school that promised flexibility in academic placements (with admission based only on auditions and portfolios, the school has a wide range of academic abilities among admitted students). Ninth grade went pretty well, after a LOT of back and forth about math placement, when they let my kid take math with the 11 graders, and honors placements in all of the core courses (this involved placement test in multiple subjects the spring before, plus extra testing in math, taking a final exam during the first week of school). Tenth grade blew up the following September though, when the agreed-upon math class (calculus, approved at the end of grade 9 by their math teacher, the calculus teacher, and the guidance counselor) interfered with a required class scheduled at the same time. The school was unwilling to allow independent study for a tenth grader, and put my kid in the only available math class they hadn't taken yet, which was basically a practical math skills class for seniors uncomfortable with math. It was too late for fall dual enrollment at that point too. Plus the high school had temporarily relocated while the building was being remodeled, and was no longer close to the colleges that the students usually used for advanced classes. They wouldn't be back in their normal location until senior year. The last straw in math I think was the syllabus in that class said some crap about getting your overall grade dropped for each instance of "excessive bathroom use," which was defined as more than once per week. Anyway, the decision to go back to homeschooling was more complicated than that, but 2 weeks into the school year I agreed to file the homeschool paperwork. My big lesson is that with a highly advance learner, it is good to plan, but plan for things to fall through, and plan to be flexible.

My 15yo has been studying MSA, first at the public school they attended last year (where the class conversed in MSA), and is now self-sudying at home, but looking for additional reinforcement in the form of a tutor and/or CC classes. The CC classes are also MSA. The Arabic speaker we have in mind for possible tutoring is from Morocco, and could do either MSA or Moroccan dialect. They have described MSA as being like the news broadcast language, so not "dead" like Latin, but not casually spoken. For now, my kid wants to stick with the MSA, and get proficient in that before branching out. The public school teacher from last year also teaches in a local 3 week summer program for arabic language study, a bit more immersion style. The program teachers come from a bunch of different countries but they still teach basic MSA to the group. We are planning on that this summer, but maybe the following study abroad program the year after that. The ps teacher suggested it, and it has placements in Morocco and Jordan: https://exchanges.state.gov/us/program/nsliy/details I checked my local library to see what they had for movies, and of course there was only a single one of each dialect, but it looks like we can find a lot of Egyptian tv and movies online. That could be reason enough to go with that dialect, I suppose.

Every school my child has attended offered extra credit options in just about every class, so it was not unusual to have a grade of 105 out of 100. My kid even got a 120% for one assignment. Even at the charter school that did not use a standard grading scale (they used "beginning", "approaching" or "meeting" learning goals ) they had lots of optional opportunities for kids to show how they were meeting the goals. I think it would be unethical if the grading opportunities were unequally available, or favored those who could buy their way to a better grade because their parents could afford better supplies etc.

Can I join the group? Thank you!