Temu air quality tracker

One of my open questions from Holman's book was, how much ventilation do we need?  Is there any data to support this 10+ minutes twice daily prescription?  Doing so adds a bit of extra complexity to life, what with climbing on the counters and getting out the mop handle to wedge the old timey upper window panes closed again.  It seems like only a matter of time before I crack an antique window pane with this protocol.  It would be nice to have data to justify it.  

Luckily DH had two cheap air quality meters from Temu.  He wanted them for safety when using the compressor in the garage to fill his own scuba cylinders and in his pre-sober days when he was distilling moonshine in the same lair.  To that end, he did a side by side reading with a higher end one at the professional scuba air fill shop and thinks they are bang on accurate enough to take seriously despite the bargain price point.  

When we initially set up his spare in the kitchen, it was throwing a lot of alarms, so let's get familiar with the acronyms and the general guidance on them... 

HCHO:  formaldehyde (good = less 0.125)

TVOC: Total Volatile Organic Compounds (good = less than 0.3-0.5)

PM2.5:  particulate matter 2.5 microns or less (good = less than 5-12)

PM10: " " 10 microns or less  (good = less 150)

CO: carbon monoxide (good = less than 9)

CO2: carbon dioxide (good = less than 1000)

I'm not sure what had been going down in the kitchen, but ours was very upset about formaldehyde, volatile compounds, and carbon dioxide and it was also giving our carbon monoxide and PM2.5 scores the side eye.  

I ran our HVAC fan for 15 minutes and knocked CO2 down to the 800's and then opened the windows for another 15 knocked it down to the low 400's which seems to be where it has stayed.  So yes, these air quality monitors are great to have on hand and if it throws some alarms, by all means ventilate and see if you can move those numbers in the right direction....  

But I had a theory that our status quo life would ramp the numbers back up to the danger zone again and that I could use that rate to calculate how often we need to ventilate.  It turns out that with general household activities and no ventilation, these numbers have stayed pretty stable ever since the 30 minutes after first plug in.    

I have spiked CO2 somewhat consistently when spraying down counters with undiluted vinegar... That seems to make sense because I can see a CO2 in its chemical formula (CH3COOH) which is about as sophisticated as my high school chemistry will support.  Maybe if I tried diluting my vinegar to 1:1 as some resources suggest would mean it doesn't spike quite so high?  Either way, I find the spike dissipates about as fast as it takes for the smell to dissipate, so I don't think it is a pervasive problem.    

Some other tests in the hopper-- impact of cooking pizza, candle burning, and renovations.   

Of the metrics that seem to have stable baselines, it looks like only the super fine particulate matter PM2.5 is a bit higher than guidance...  Checking how to reduce that, the internet suggests: 

• ventilate (but PM2.5 did not seem to move with 30 mins of ventilation and outdoor PM10 figures are currently higher than our indoor PM10 reading)
• reduce outdoor particle entry with doormats (done) and shoes off at door policy (half-observed)
• clean home regularly (... work in progress for us all-- we currently have a robo vac doing a once over  of the main living space daily, but we also have 2 double coated dogs)
• control humidity to suppress mold (currently 24% which is under the safe 30-60% EPA guidance and we live in an arid climate)
• use low-emission cleaning products and air fresheners (vinegar and baking soda are our defaults...  I haven't lit a candle in over a week and do not habitually do so) 
• maintain your hvac system (just serviced 5 days ago and uses a MERV 13 filter changed monthly)

... so I'm not seeing any smoking guns on ways we can further reduce PM2.5... I can try running our portable HEPA filter right in front of it to see if that has an effect?  15 minutes of high powered filtration in, that score has not budged though.  

edit:  

*  Running the pizza oven definitely requires ventilation!

*  Weekly habit of lysol spraying shoes and phone also triggers an alert.  Need to research more eco-friendly cleaning approaches for these (or skip) 

Cleaning Up Book Notes: A Healthier Home: The Room-by-Room Guide to Make Any Space A Little Less Toxic(r)

I posted a review to goodreads, but wanted somewhere to capture my detailed notes that don't languish as a print out wedged in a notebook somewhere.  Holman organizes her book based on room, but I found it was easier to group these differently.  There were ideas I wasn't quite persuaded were worth the effort and required a bit more experimentation, ideas that were quick hits of low effort and addressed problems I already have I want to capture on a shareable pinterest board, wishlist items (but let them age to perfection before pulling the trigger), and ideas that I contemplated and decided didn't make sense.  

Experiments --> Habits:  

• Check if DH has an air quality meter or procure one.  Test:  
• Baseline indoor air quality
• After opening windows/doors 10-20 mins-- how long 'til notable difference?  If there is a difference, how long until air quality returns to baseline after closing?  
• When cooking (pizza, induction Mex Mondays, instant pot)
• When burning a candle 
• Revise habits around opening windows, cooking, candle burning accordingly 
• Deep clean floor + white towel tests (save + compare towels)
• White towel back entry immediately after deep clean (control)
• Retest after various intervals:  1 day/1 week/1 month and compare towels, note confounds
• Implement shoes off in house policy and repeat tests
• Revise mopping frequency and shoe policy to reflect findings
• Meal prep- try soaking and sprouting beans prior to cooking.  Did it have an effect on gas? 
• Meal prep- do you still have a kill-a-watt?  How much energy (and time) do you need to heat a mason jar in the instant pot vs. the microwave?  
• Laundry - try putting vinegar in the fabric softener compartment and evaluate whether there is a notable difference in clothing texture (or build up in machine)
• Playtest buckwheat pillow again (and figure out what is in my favorite pillow)
• Playtest rolling duvet up like a burrito to put cover back on
• Playtest decanting super perishable produce (berries, 2lb bags) for easier consumption and to rogue out ones damaged in transport
• Playtest D minder app 
• Playtest a bottle of Ms. Stewart's bluing in the shower instead of a toning shampoo 
• Playtest packing a to-go shower kit for Tue
• Try growing arnica (perennial herb for pain/bruising but may only be hardy to zone 9)
• Stow wifi headphones on the charger (vs wearing as accessory) when not actively using 
• Recurring to do list additions
• Daily declutter 
• Mitey Monday do a dust
• Thirsty Thursday- water plants
• Thermostat Tues/Thurs (go upstairs and disable/reenable based on DH WFH usage)
• Quarterly 1 gal vinegar to washing machine clarifier (discontinue if no appreciable difference)

Pinterest green living ideas board: 

• Teeth:  floss first, nano-hydroxyapatite toothpaste (don't rinse!), brush your tongue if you like!  
• Dryer balls with safety pins
• Hang dry swim gear, hang dry pants (they just get creased and elastic gets shot faster in dryer)
• Simmer pots on low humidity days instead of burning scented candles 
• Ripe avocados go in the fridge to buy time
• Separate onions and potatoes 
• Dilute Dr Bronner's soap in the hand soap refills to 1 part soap 3 parts water (hopefully it will gum up less than undiluted) 

Planned Upgrades:

• For product swaps, check ingredients on at least 2 to defend your purchase:  EWG, CIR, incidecoder .  
• Saalt menstrual cup (wish I had hit my stride with this before the hiking trip!)
• Silicone bottles to enforce post-swim lesson dichlorination shower and decant my almost empty products into a container I can completely empty.  
• More weather-resistant plastic box for poolside first aid kit
• Amber motion detecting night light for bathroom(s) should help with less overall light pollution at night, and less sleep disruption for DH in the morning.  I don't think this needs to be a salt light to have effect and and led may have a lower eco footprint than an incandescent.    
• Berkey filter- still pretty happy with our city tap for the price but could see this being very useful in an emergency.  
• Refill emptied hand sanitizers with rubbing alcohol, aloe, and an essential oil (get more Tea Tree, Frankincense, and Myrrh)

Will Not Implement:  

• Think Dirty:  $40/year subscription with minimal technical info outside the pay wall (top 10 lists).  With my cabinet o' vinegar and baking soda, I am not buying enough novel products to justify this much of a research budget.
• EWG as a one-stop resource:  I found several criticisms of their neutrality-- they push the agenda of the organic lobby (I usually do too, but good to know where the wind of incentives is blowing), requires companies pay to have their product certified (didn't the mafia offer protection services too?), uses fear-based tactics to mobilize product consumption (ick, my water has arsenic!  ooh, check out all these filtration options!), and posts consumer research questionnaires that are actually marketing lead generation tools (/unsubscribe).  Net, I'm inclined to believe the world is a better place for their efforts but think it is prudent to look for a second opinion on their suggestions and be more circumspect before designating them for charitable giving.  See additional options linked in the planned upgrades section.    
• Charcoal teeth whitening: abrades your enamel! 
• Veto'ing everything with petrochemical origins (author equates these to swathing oneself in plastic) - petrolatum is a world class occlusive agent if you need to lock moisture in.  
• KO all the candles - I will probably eventually come around on this one...  but I have so many candle-making supplies and fun fragrances!  At least let me learn the candle making badge series first! I have an inkling they aren't great for indoor air quality based on how black the HVAC filter looks when I've been dialing up the hygge, but it would be great to quantify that more precisely.
• Acid bathing all produce immediately after purchase (besides root veg).  This seems too extreme for the trace amounts of ick on predominantly organically grown produce.  
• Buying additional microfiber cloths-- I have a bunch I am slowly wearing out, but too many resources have commented on how they shed microplastics and I have way too many discarded clothes I am "donating" that I should more realistically be using as rags.     
• DIY ACV and baking soda hair treatments to offset/clarify soap alkalinity -- the pH rationale seemed suspicious here.  We are slightly alkaline (7.4) bar soap is more so (8-10) but vinegar is substantially acidic (2-3).  It seems like you could knock your microbiome more out of whack with vinegar in an effort to correct a slightly off pH balance soap.  I'm staying the course of generally trying to use less product-- skip shampooing's if I'm having good hair days, focus soap on the stinkiest/dirtiest bits of anatomy.  
• Store citrus and apples in the fridge-- it may extend shelf life (and in the case of apples, delay ripening of other items in the fruit bowl) but I find it way harder to remember to eat things hidden away in the fridge so to have a rip van winkle apple in there is a pyrrhic victory.  
• Turning off wifi in evenings -- maybe an aspiration if ever there is a Widow Belle.  DH goes to bed after me and relies heavily on screens to wind down (I know!) or finish office work.  We are also a week past installing newer faster wifi because we are concerned about all the smart lights, thermostats, cameras, etc. that might break in the process.  The faces of addiction!  
• HOCL machine-- this was described as a lower tox alternative to bleach using only salt and vinegar but further googling leads me to conclude is basically diy bleach maker pre-dilution.
• Applying diatomaceous earth with a turkey baster-- man, that stuff was messy!  So I will file that baster trick away as a good tip, but we are not actively trying to defend a perimeter from ants with DE and if we were, I'm pretty sure it would only last until the next robo vacuum sweep.    

Bibliophile- Beginner Level

Objective 1:  Get a library card and find out all the things you can do with it.  

I have had a library card for as long as I can remember, so I'm not sure when to say I formally started working on this badge.  I love inter-library loan.  If I am considering a book for my TBR pile, I look for it here before buying a copy.  For example my daughter's teacher recommended a graphic novel series to challenge her reading and this was today's haul!  

We also love play testing board games using inter-library loan before deciding to buy our own versions.  

I am posting this right after meeting with the monthly Spanish-speaking book club (Julia Alvarez's En el Tiempo de las Mariposas).  We joke that we only come for Olga's snacks, but I think my Spanish comprehension and fluency is improving.  

In the summer, my daughter's girl scout troop could not meet in their normal church school spot, so we often overflowed to the library's outdoor but enclosed patio.  They also have free smaller group meeting rooms and homework areas.    

The kid programming here is great.  There are story times, guest performances, a 1,000 Books before Kindergarten and other challenges.  

Objective 2:  Start your TBR (that's "to be read") pile and take a picture to share on social media.  

I got back into using Goodreads as a digital "to be read" pile.  Sometimes when I am considering reading a book, I check its reviews on GR and to my surprise, find my own!  I'm still struggling with a tag system that is useful and where to put my reading notes for books I can't physically mark, but posting them here would be spoilers.  Right now, I dump those into a notes app on my phone and periodically print them out and shove them in a folder I never revisit.  Let me know if you have found a better way.  

If you are a stickler for seeing the physical pile of TBR books, here you go:  

(the focus list where I am concurrently skimming ~6 titles)

(the comprehensive list)

The titles I love and aspire to read again, I procure my own copies of (if library books), ideally for a song pre-owned off abebooks.com and move up to the "Steam Room" which is doubling as DH's 40% time office.  But the vast majority go back to the library after a quick skim for some fast tips or are donated to my kid's Buck a Book sale.    

Gratitude Practice

While DD is working on her handwriting copywork, I am taking on the challenge of a daily gratitude journal.  

The Sisterhood suggests pairing this with reading a chapter per day of The Book of Awesome.  In good faith, I skimmed a library copy, loved the premise, but found Pasricha's style grating after a couple entries.  So for this month, I am savoring a chapter a day from the Book of Delights instead.  

1/12/2025-  Persimmons.  

I discovered persimmons late in life.  Our neighbors to the west plied us with some from their tree shortly after we moved into the Steamstead in 2011.  I couldn't believe such a sweet vanilla custard could come out a fruit that was so forgiving of extended countertop neglect.  As we planted our east side urban orchard, I smuggled in a persimmon tree so I could bedazzle the fruit bowl with edible gems.  We make plans but God laughs and snaps my sapling down to almost the graft line with the first Santa Ana winds of the season.  I still managed to coax a few fruit from my stump this year, ripening at the perfect time to deter from the more processed desserts on offer during the Thanksgiving to Christmas gauntlet.  I supplemented my home-grown stash with a few from the grocery store, refining my trick of freezing and thawing them to remove the astringency, like tonight's freshly thawed dessert...  Though not quite as sweet and nuanced as home grown.  Those neighbors have long since moved on but as I come and go through the back door, I still admire that gateway persimmon tree, overburdened with orange ornaments hanging from its nude branches and wonder if the new neighbors appreciate the treasure they have.     

1/13/2025 Cali "Kuvia." 

At undergrad, we had a tradition of waking up at dawn in the depths of Chicago winter to do calisthenics with classmates.  It culminated with rolling around in the snow, saluting the sun as it rose over a frozen Lake Michigan.  While it is still hard to get out of a warm bed, I love my mellower California routine.  No alarms needed, I wake up naturally a couple clicks before 6 and at this time of year that means the sun's rays are just creeping over Silverado canyon (which thankfully, is not burning today despite several fires around LA) as I make my way to the garage gym for 3 sets of bench, lunge, row.  But first, the cats demand satisfaction.  As I pour kibble behind the tire of my husband's pickup so they can snack semi-sheltered from the wind, I reminisce about the many patient days invested luring them into feeding on a schedule, then into crates, then off to the vet for cut rate hysterectomies.  This is delight in the gratitude for having done and continuing to do hard things.    

1/14/2025 Rosacea 

Not a condition I would choose for anyone, to be sure.  But the relief was palpable in the dermatologist's office learning that I wasn't trapped in teenage purgatory as I entered perimenopause; that this was a condition that could be managed!  Gone are the counters strewn with cosmetics and cover ups I thought could help but only aggravated things, replaced with a few bottles I reliably empty.  And with a clearer complexion came a clearer perspective on the flare up triggers.  While my husband's stress simmers until it explodes into a full case of an excruciating and disfiguring shingles, forcing him to take time off work and recover, I get a more gentle reminder that maybe I overindulged a bit in desserts, caffeine, stress, sun or exercise.  I prefer the early warning.  Plus now I have a medically valid excuse to take a break and lounge in the shade devouring page turners on outdoorsy family excursions!    

1/15/2025 Bananas

Reminiscing about a favorite local Youtuber who embarked on an Apocalypse Grow 30 Day Subsistence Challenge.  As a person of Irish descent, I was amused to see he pulled it off largely on a surfeit of potatoes.  At the Steamstead, bananas have become our potato equivalent.  At any given time, I have a several gallon freezer bags filled to the gills with bananas.  One Christmas, my in-laws gifted the best sorbet maker that can convert these air potatoes into a delicious n'ice cream.  They drink our laundry water and repay us with dessert.   And yet I still can't manage to eat my way through them all.  They go to work, they go to school, soon, we will need to establish a "take what you need" produce stand to contain their bounty.    

1/16/2025 Health YouRu's

On the whole, my life has become more enjoyable since I started curating a cadre of health and well-being focused YouTube "gurus" and prioritizing their uploads over the doom scroll.  In this case, it was a perfectly timed 30 min Huberman "short" on stress management to listen to as I jogged through the neighborhood awash with the orangey glow of sunrise.  +5 recovery check!  Chirps my watch, probably in part thanks to the tips I've gathered from Huberman.  I define health broadly as anything that puts my fears in a more workable/humorous perspective, or informs/inspires me toward improvement and expansion.  So I count artists and comedians in this set-- Adriene, Rajiv, Wheezy, David Nihill, Siloe, Lindsey Sterling.  I should also note it is delightfully gratifying to periodically declutter your YouTube subscriptions.  

1/17/2025 Nostalgia

"It kind of looks like an oil slick..."  Ironman was hard on my toes.  One big piggy has never been the same since coming back from the war, even after a trip to a podiatrist and a stint in liver-damaging antifungal rehab.  So maybe this particular polish isn't perfect; it doesn't advertise itself as 5 free or made in artisanal small local batches with proprietary voo-doo that allows it to easily wash off textiles while also being long-wearing, but I love this mercurial color and the compliments I get on the rare occasions when I am showing some toe.  I love that my husband has gotten in the habit of doing pedicures and the conversations we have over the chilly acetone and waiting for coats to dry.  

1/18/2025 Bodily Movements

Crude one.  Pushing off a bit chilly and preoccupied with maneuvering in my new clips, some alchemy with the temp, exertion, and allergies left me in a sniffle battle with gravity for the whole 90 minute bike session.  I hadn't packed a tissue and things never got so dire I felt I needed to get dropped by the group and resort to a sleeve or an experimental snot shot into the sage.  But what an incredible relief to rifle the glove box of the car and find a half-forgotten packet of several soft Kleenex.  Emptying my nose was a 3 tissue job that left me giddy and so unencumbered I felt ready to do an extra credit workout.  Note to self next ride, pack a hankie.  

1/19/2025 Lapsang Souchong in the beat up tin

LS has twice been my underground railroad to a freer life.  First with booze being the social lubricant it was in my 20's and 30's, I slowly descended into whiskey and mezcal snobbery.  The smokier the better.  Over elaborate cocktails in a SF speakeasy after a hard day of gamer conference networking, a friend mentioned his twin taste for LS when he was operating in a responsible adult capacity.  Sure enough, you could replicate the smoky flavor without a hang over.  The second salvation came when I confronted my caffeine dependence and the prospect of managing it on a backpacking trip (plus the small but annoying toll of arranging my daily life around it).  I'm still not fully out of the woods with that, but I have tapered to the point where withdrawal symptoms without 2 morning brews (and the attendant multiple pitstops) are no longer a lifestyle liability.  Sometimes a semi-leaded cozy smoky beverage helps fill the void I would otherwise have filled with higher calorie, lower-joy alternatives.  

1/20/2025 Heat Window. 

It was not easy to get central air installed in a 130 year old house.  There were many HVAC company ghosts after groking the massive no longer standard square heat registers and the one that did eventually put the units in did not pull permits for doing so.  The delightful technician who services them emphasizes the return on investment we'd see with insulation and the unit that was craned onto the roof is unlikely to see its full lifespan, despite our only intermittently using it.  But when my feet go numb feeding the outdoor cats, it is delightful to open the door and be greeted by substantially warmer air and a kid lolling around in the dog bed strategically placed in front of the heat window with her hair whipping around her face.  

1/21/2025 Morning Pages with Fountain Pen

It had been a while since I took a crack at Morning Pages.  This is a concept introduced in all Julia Cameron's Artist's Way workbooks about tapping into creativity and getting unblocked.  I still do MP from time to time, particularly when I feel I need to dial up the self-care but am not in any way consistent about it.  My morning essay from the Book of Delights was a panegyric to writing compositions (particularly poems) out long hand.  So I decided that an a cup of salty chocolate were the way to start the day.  Oh, and as long as we are dialing up the fun, why not refill the iridescent fountain pen I bought in the heady days of starting correspondence with my two Daily Connoisseur penpals?  With satisfyingly inky finger tips and writer's bump which will likely haunt me all the way to school pickup, I cross the finish line of the 3rd half page and am off to the next item on my to do list.  Will I cross it off with the fountain pen as well? 

1/22/2025  Bedtime Stories with Boogie

In a hormonal fugue of a migraine, I tell my kid she's going to have to sort out her bedtime herself because I need to lie down.  She cozies up on this ottoman and reads me a few pages of the Boxcar Children to lull me to sleep (or at least take my mind off the waves of nausea).  When husband arrives and finds me shivering on the tiles, he offers to pick up the kid activities shuttle the following day and pries a deep frozen ice pack out for enough relief to finally drift off.  At 2, Boogie climbs in with us and adds her little kid breathing to the symphony.  What I wouldn't have given for this family when I had a rough night in my 20's and had to nurse myself back to health before the 7AM appearance at the client site.   

1/23/2025  Barristas that know your name

Sure, this one probably gets mentioned on gratitude lists a lot, but it is novel for me this month.  I am in the habit of wearing my "mom nametag," a pink baseball hat on errands about town which makes life for barristas a bit easier and inches me closer to honorary junior cougar membership in the RHS (bucket list item?).  But I'm also trying to limit my meals out to 3 or less per week, with coffee counting as a meal in a cup.  So I am super impressed that today's barrista was able to recall my name without a hat and with what must be pretty sparse patronage data points to go off of (considering I don't remember hers and was too embarrassed to ask).  Do better next time, Belle!  

1/24/2025 Updated traffic punctuation

On the 2 mile stretch into old town I drive several times daily, there are two sketchy patches that have gotten sketchier as density and traffic patterns have evolved.  This morning, I was thrilled to see a protected green turn light added on a street I had long since abandoned hope of being able to turn left on.  Yesterday, two blocks further up I saw rigging going in for a stop light at a white knuckle patch with a poorly marked lane reduction that felt like being a roller derby pack, meanwhile the wealthy-oblivious-not-yet-local cars from the new high rise (and their attendant army of Amazon and Uber eats shuttles) are coming off the frontage road with limited visibility of the cross traffic and your jammer situation.  Three cheers for safer streets!  

1/25/2025  Fizz Water

Once upon a time this was a kegerator that could handle 2 different styles of beer, but I like it so much more as a water chiller and carbonator.  It feels so fancy and helps us garnish our way through aging citrus in the fruit bowl.  I also love that DH can micro-dose caffeine with powders rather than having a lot of aluminum cans to contend with.    

1/26/2025 Rainy day under a reinforced roof

An unusual belay request as DH bum shuffled along the ridge lines of our 3 storey house, "Bad luck" Social distortion T whipping in the breeze as the sun set and the ominous thick grey clouds moved in.  But about an hour, a lightly tarred climbing rope and one lost hammer later, we had a fresh strip of ridgeline shingles tamped down and this morning a triumphant update of "no leaks!"   

1/27/2025 Homeschooling on sick days

The decision to homeschool was complicated and still not one I am entirely at peace with, but in no small part informed by our experience of Covid and wanting to decouple formal education from the immune system education students get in close quarters.  So here we are, a family with full blown colds, but we still had a productive math discussion about symmetry, learned about the preservation efforts of Minerva Hoyt in a national park we plan to camp in May, and had a few opportunities to practice tricky cursive letter connections.  There was no squabble over who would stay home as we all work from home.  Today is a good day.     

1/28/2025 Accountabilabuddies

Many moons ago, I asked the /getmotivated subreddit if anyone wanted to check in periodically over diet, Spanish and garden goals.  I'm so lucky Ben responded.  He's the perfect balance of encouragement and tough love.  It has been so fun to see his baby cabras, grinning gym and date night selfies as he gradually morphs into Wolverine.  Hopefully he sees some progress in my updates as well. 

1/29/2025 Pet sitters

It wasn't until Kim quizzed me on how limiting full time parenthood was that I realized that actually, the kid is driving us to get out of town and go on adventures and scratch more states and countries off her map.  Meanwhile, concern about our aging pets puts a break on trips.  Are inlaws available to watch them?  Over the last couple weeks in trying to make a bucket list excursion work for DH, I renewed the Rover pet sitting service and made the acquaintance of Diana.  Hopefully all goes well on this first sit and we can scale it up to longer adventures in the future.  

1/30/2025 Expansive vocabulary

It started when I asked ChatGPT what level Spanish fluency it would peg me at.  To gauge, it asked me for Spanish synonyms for words -- truly a mind-stretcher of an exercise after the speed-based multiple choice drills of Duolingo.  I realize I delight in writers whose diction gives me pause- "callaloo," is amaranth- possibly specifically the inflorescence of it (today's Book of Delights essay), a "garret" is a tiny room in the attic and all this time when I read that word, I had been picturing those semi-submerged basement-level apartments with maybe a single awkwardly high and small window (yesterday's Wise Man's Fear joy read).  I've been talking a lot about antonyms and synonyms with my daughter.  "Yorba Linda, pretty Yorba, 'Linda' is pretty in Spanish, 'hermosa,' 'bella,' ..." "... 'pretty' and 'beautiful' are cinnamons?" a still small voice queries from the backseat of the car.  

(Bonus) Serendipity 

Those weird coincidences that make you think everything happens for a reason, you're on track.  The two completely unrelated authors both mention a character named Auri.  To see a teacher friend at Legoland.  

1/31/2025 Legoland

Often in ethical dilemmas, I catch myself thinking "what would Dude do?"  GranDude is my laid back surfer father in law.  His 79th bday is coming up so what Dude did was join us for an uncrowded Thursday/Friday in Legoland when kid's school was observing a random "mid-winter break."  The lines were minimal, grandkid took this coaster 10 times with combinations of her 4 adult-sized chaperones.  The Castle Hotel was convenient, cute, full of cool perks like a treasure hunt to get a code to unlock the safe.  She even scored a super rare collectible badge from a groundskeeper.  Does Dude intrinsically love Lego?  I'm not sure, but I am sure his wife sure does and so does his grandkid and Dude usually does the thing that creates the most joy and comfort for the people around him.  

2/1/2025 Beginnings 

I love rolling the calendar over to a new month. The flurry of "monthly" to do's I try to tackle on the first of the month which are so quick and satisfying to dispatch-- change an HVAC filter, make sure the dogs swallow their heartworm meds.  This is a particularly fresh beginning, having just returned from travel, getting what felt like the first good-uncomplicated-by-sleeping-on-the-hotel-room-floor-or-suffering-cold-symptoms-or-hearing-bedmates-suffer-likewise in a very long time.  February is the shortest month too, so a new beginning is just a short sprint away...  

2/2/2025 Snarky signs at race day 

"Run faster!  They only validate for 2 hours!"  "Keep chafing your dreams!"  "Worst parade EVER" "You're almost there"+"<-- bad at math" (at the 2 mile mark of 1/2 mara) "Tap here for a boost" "Pain is just French for bread"  ... Also delighted in a 'can relate' way, the guy who was in the home stretch stopping, screaming at his watch, "F**ck!  I ended my run!"  And the Tijuana barrel runners who managed to do the whole thing pushing a wheelbarrow/carrying a log. 

 

 

Worm Factory

Day two of the worm ranch reboot and I think most of the red wiggler Houdinis are settling in.  Hopefully this fulfills the requirements for the Beginner level Gaining Ground badge!    

I did/plan to do a few things the same: 

1.  Use Uncle Jim's as a supplier as we had good luck with his red wigglers in the past.  This box arrived really banged up, but the worms inside seem fine.  I had ordered through Amazon this time to get the farm and the occupants to arrive on the same day.  Probably would have been smarter to order them sequentially in case shipping delays left the red wigglers homeless.  Is there a good way to recycle these ubiquitous cheap nylonish "goodie" bag textiles?  I feel like we get a lot of them -- even from the FRB landfill!   

2.  Use shredded junk mail, school work, and to-do lists for our "brown" material.  I am now on my 3rd paper shredder, but have some tips from the reddit BIFL community about how to oil it every time I empty it and chose a brand with a durable reputation (Fellowes).  I haven't been super-selective about leaving out the glossy color printed material, but perhaps I should be.  The Factory came with a peat brick but the idea with this is not to add more complexity and extra inputs to our household economy and I'm not convinced that peat is a renewable resource.  

   

I did a few things differently to extend the longevity of this composter: 

1.  Bought a bin designed specifically for worms and frequently recommended by the reddit/vermicompost community.  I selected the Worm Factory because it looked most popular and closest to what we had been using with our old improvised system.  For perspective, the previous one had been plastic nesting totes with ventilation holes punched in it.  This did the trick, but got brittle over time, didn't drain as well or as conveniently as it could, and when full was a little heavier than what the plastic was specified for.  I appreciate the factory is black plastic which camouflages less than immaculately clean nesting trays.    I was intrigued by the Urban Worm Bag continuous flow system but had too many doubts about the tidiness of harvest and ability to monitor the health of the worms.  Maybe if we scale up we could experiment with that as a second system.  

2.  Positioned indoors in a more climate-controlled spot.  Previously, we had the bin on our back enclosed porch with a wall full of southern exposure windows.  It got brutally hot there in the summer and since it was close to our "main" door, we fielded a lot of questions about the unaesthetic muddy looking tote from house guests.  When fruit flies got into it, they seemed to quickly find their way into the kitchen and our countertop produce arrangements.  The new one is positioned in the basement by our overflow fridge.  This is still on a moderate traffic route to allow casual supervision (maybe even extra fitness, because I've taken the stairs a couple extra flights of stairs to check for drainage, escapees and share some tasty scraps).  Yet is much more "cool" climate year-round and not subjected to my weekly cleaning routine so I can tolerate it getting a bit messier.    

3.  Calculate volume of worms needed.  I used Appelhof's method to determine we throw off 11.2 pounds of kitchen scraps/week.  So I'd need 11.2*12in*12in = 1,612 square inches of worm space to process that.  My 14x14 trays can currently hold 784 square inches or 48% of that volume once/if worm populations scale up.  If I added 3 more trays to get up to the max 7 tray stack, I'd be able to handle 85% of my kitchen capacity.  We plan to continue to slow compost outdoors for the overflow.  Tamar Adler's Everlasting Meal book had a ton of recipes that reduce the amount discarded.  

4.  Gradually introduce worms to food.  In the previous bin, I would dump massive quantities in (orange juicing!) and have a boom and bust cycle complete with extra smell and overflowing leachate trays that were difficult to empty. I ordered a pound of worms so I can add about a half pound of scraps per day.  In 2 or 3 months (Mar/April '25), their population and throughput should have doubled.   June/July '25, around a half year from now, I'd be operating at full 7 tray capacity with 2.7 pounds of worm residents.  If all goes well.  I have some hints from Appelhof's book on favorite items of worms -- so far they have "disappeared" over-ripe strawberries, seem pretty happy with watermelon rind, and congregate in coffee grounds.  I'm holding off on citrus peels which seem aversive to Appelhof's worms, especially since our outdoor compost is orange tree-adjacent seems to have a lot of biodiversity to break citrus down quickly.  This has created an awkward dynamic of having 2 compost staging containers on the counter, but I think as the worms settle in, we will find a more streamlined process.  

To get a general sense for the whole system and coming attractions at the intermediate level, here is an overview:  

Kitchen sink green composting bucket-used to store under the sink in a cabinet, but that got so much use the door hinge was forever coming loose.  Also some choice worm scraps (coffee and bananas from our tree).  The contraption to the left is a fresh water shrimp aquarium with a resprouted celery stub and carnivorous pitcher plants in a grow tray.  Not central to the system, but showy and maybe they catch some fruit flies?  Pingula/butterwort would have been  more effective.    

Outdoor overflow.  We have been lazy composting into boxes, sometimes supported by movable dog kennel fencing for quite some time.  This box is overflowing and we have a second set up to go.  Ordinarily, I would not recommend composting against your house.  I was horrified one evening to look over my shoulder in my reading nook to see several roof rats scampering down the mesh screen that is compost pile adjacent.  However, I justify our approach for now because: 1.  we worked with a pest company to completely seal all exterior openings with the appropriate gauge mesh and have not seen rodent activity on the interior of the house.  2.  we have slowly gained the trust of 2 feral cats who patrol the grounds and sometimes leave us their trophies.  3.  this is a historic house and the soil samples I took at the foundation have very high lead content.  The guidance was either to dig out all the dirt, dispose of it somewhere (where?), and backfill with other dirt... or do your best to bury the lead under a layer of heavy mulch.  Since I don't plan to disturb these piles when they are finished slow composting in order to amend our garden beds, I am thinking of them as a very thick layer of mulch I am slowly applying around the perimeter of the house.  

Back to the worm factory.  

So far, my only modification to the instructions was to put a soaked burlap coffee roaster bag on top of the worm bedding because initially a half dozen or so worms wriggled/fell out through the roof/top in my repeated check ins.  I think this might have been a bit of shipping disorientation about which way was up (the basement lighting is really dim as well).  It might also be due to the the peat block which came with the kit still being a bit too dry despite my adding an order of magnitude more water to it than the guidance.  I've been continuing to irrigate it a little bit more on each visit and keeping the tap open at the bottom to know when leachate starts to run off.  

[day 4 update]-- Maybe that cheap nylon bag could work as a branded exclusion layer?  The burlap sack is pretty bulky and competing with space for scraps and I'm not sure I want to cut into it.  Still no sign of leachate, but the worms seem very active, fully rehydrated, and not interested in escaping.  I've stopped irrigating when I bring scraps and am thinking about bringing down more shredded paper for cover.  

Frank R. Bowerman Landfill

 

Yesterday, a classmate's dad hosted us at his work, the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill (11.6 miles).  This one isn't historic, per se, as it was established in 1990, but it is an integral part of our daily lives.  "We only close 5 days per year and stayed open as an essential service all during Covid,"  remarked Isaac.     

DH was jealous he couldn't get a peek behind the curtain because this landfill takes commercial waste haulers only.  His latest landscaping debris had to be driven all the way down to Prima Deshecha in SJC (27.2 miles).  A busy day for DH was two trips, the commercial haulers try to make 4, sometimes 5 drops at the FRB in a day.  These are massive semi trucks that dwarf the still substantial trucks that patrol residential areas.  These trucks deposit 11,500 tons of waste per day, netting FRB just short of a half million dollars per day in revenue.          

I was particularly interested in this excursion because I am starting the Cleaning Up badge sequence and, having lived in Irvine, I appreciate how particular the Irvine Ranch developers are about NIMBI considerations.  "We get about 5 complaints per year from the 'super smellers' who are in the new housing development on the other side of the toll road.  Always in winter, when there are temperature inversions, the days you may get "no burn" alerts because a warm layer of air is being pressed close to the ground and making everything smoggy."  This called to mind the introduction of The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs and Gooley's observations that during temperature inversions, you can hear train and traffic noise more loudly and even pick up on radio transmissions outside of your normal range (like behind the iron curtain during the Cold War).  

Isaac went on to elaborate the numerous mitigations in place to keep the complaints to a minimum.  There are hurricane fences with screens that match the landscape built to the perfect height to mask the volume of truck traffic along the roads.  These also catch fly away waste and have mister heads to suppress dust.  Every night, the exposed cells are covered with $30,000 of tarping to deter coyotes, birds, and smells.  The 22 megwatts of methane is sequestered "to power Disneyland" in Anaheim (or 14,700 average sized homes) or burned in flares when permitted.  The land run off is routed to basins and tested before any is released into the water table while leachate from landfill cells is collected in tanks for hazmat disposal.  "Usually this time of year, these basins are full," Isaac remarks wistfully as we drive by an empty cement divot and we say a silent prayer for rain.  Green waste is heaped in windrows to cook as compost for a quarter before being sifted and offered back to the public and public works projects at low or no cost.  "Most composting facilities operate on dirt, but we put ours on an asphalt pad on a 2% grade so we don't have pooling and smells, we pump the run off back up to these towers for fire mitigation and to continue to irrigate and turn the piles to keep them at 150 degrees."  They even have a biologist on site who has created a segment of the land that is kept native and introduced a wetland to protect wildlife.  This biologist also works with a paleontologist to determine if there are archeological finds that need protecting as multi-million dollar earth movers carve new cells into the canyon side and cover over the filled cells.  The lobby of the visitor center has a trophy case filled with mammoth and prehistoric river dolphin tusks and bones alongside Lunch at the Landfill and Dinner at the Dump gala invitations and numerous awards.     

Thinking about the sink holes I had read about along the California coast which had been drilled heavily for oil, I asked about subsidence and he nodded to a newly repaved section of the road we had just driven over.  "We get that.  Some older landfills have enough settlement that even though they are at the max altitude allowed, they can still stay open because of some settlement."  

"I come almost every week day, unless the waves are good..." quipped a deeply tanned Darryl, with Windy, a Harris Hawk perched on his glove.  "The crows almost know which days are the weekends."  Windy acts as a deterrent for birds which would come to pick over the trash, making it hard for dump trucks and machinery to see and operate and leaving droppings on the new housing developments full of super sniffers on the other side of the toll road.  "Harris hawks are like the Labradors of the raptor family, easy to train, hard to spook.  If she goes missing, she has telemetry on her ankle band and I follow it and put out her favorite toy to recapture her.  My Red Tail at home would never tolerate this..." he grins as my 6 year old reaches up to touch a feathered chest.  

Isaac also mentioned challenges on the horizon, even for a well-managed dump.  The leachate collected from the cells is removed by a hazmat company, which is better than older dumps which do not have liners to capture leachate infiltrating their water table, but I wondered how this company went about neutralizing the liquid.  He itemized materials that were pulled out for recycling like mattresses and household appliances and I wondered about how responsibly refrigerants were removed with the awkward handling of the forklifts.  He talked about cameras on trash pick up trucks that could detect, notify, and eventually penalize residents for improperly sorting their trash.  He noted that China no longer takes our poorly sorted recycling and that solutions have had to be cobbled together domestically, but it is hard to get them approved in California.  We discussed waste haulers who were understaffed and made the decision to combine pre-sorted residential green and household waste dumpsters to be able to complete their pick up routes.  "They aren't supposed to do that, but the directive is to divert 50% of green waste now, increasing to 70% in future years, so some make the decision to do it..."  But he notes that when the canyons are full, we might face $100 trash disposal bills like those of NorCal.  "We would have to rail-haul it inland to another state and that isn't cheap."  Current projections have this 725 acre canyon on track to close in 28 years.     

Richard Nixon Library

 Well, I'll be pecking away at visiting the many historic locations within a 100-mile radius for a while. (Outpost 2.  Outstepping  Intermediate).  Here is a start!    

We took our Daisy Girl Scouts to the Richard Nixon Library & Museum (14.6 miles away) to earn their Democracy for Daisies merit badges.  

"I asked the docent to gloss over the war in Vietnam and Watergate!" my co-leader stage whispered before entry.  Amusing, as these were the most salient aspects of this particular presidency from what little I remembered of high school history courses and I was curious how the sympathetic docent would approach them.  But even the abbreviated tour was educational!  

First, I discovered that the flags were flying at half mast because Jimmy Carter had died last week at 100 and would continue to fly at half mast during the next president's inauguration.  The docent speculated that Jimmy's body would probably be moved to the Carter Center to take advantage of federal security (at which point I studied my shoes, having nearly smuggled a pocket knife into the Nixon facility).   

I didn't realize that every president since Hoover has established a presidential library.  I didn't realize this library is the second most popular place in the county to have a wedding, with its terraced library of roses favored by each first lady.  If I were first lady, my selection would be problematic-- miniature or black?      

They had a wonderful model of Washington, D.C. that laid out the branches of government buildings (White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court) in a way I had never appreciated in my childhood visits from Maryland.  I want to go back to visit to see the cherry blossoms and rediscover the non-descript grey Smithsonian galleries.  

They had replicas of several rooms in the White House and it was so fun to see the girls behind the big desk in the "oval office."  

Title 9 and the EPA were established under Nixon.  A few rooms later, the docent shared "Nixon loved reading by the fireside so much, he would have his aids turn on the AC so he could sit next to a stoked fire and read even in the middle of summer!  When the next administration began renovations, they could see the stain his pipe smoke left on the ceiling over this chair!"  We are all a bundle of contradictions, aren't we?  

We saw Nixon's childhood home which had not been moved, just supported with a foundation and Nixon's burial site just a stone's throw away from the back door.  Things come full circle.     

Trans-Catalina Trail Recap

That was fun!  

12/27/24:  Me and my 2 hiker buddies (Kim and Frank) grab burritos in Avalon at sun up and begin the 10.8 mile mostly uphill hike.  Hermit Gulch campground is a ghost town-- it wasn't "full," it was closed for the holiday.  When we reach the ridgeline, I feel pins and needles of mist-rain on my hands.  This continues for 3 more hours and we abandon our plans of leisurely hot lunch at the park by Haypress reservoir (we arrive at it at 9AM anyway).  Instead, we dine on a mouthful of protein bar and Kim captures a couple photos of 2 loan bulls hunkered down on the hillsides.  Instead of putting on my poncho, I opt for my trusty Pata fleece which is cozy at first but in retrospect a mistake.  Mud accumulates in heavy clods on our shoes-- a phenomenon I only encountered once while training.  When we arrive at Black Jack campground around noon, we are completely soaked and for the first time in over a decade, my fleece has an odor.  We mutter a few words of gratitude for the sprawling oak cover and the high ridge windbreak features.  Then outside of a hasty jetboil meal and a sighting of two mule deer and a fox, we huddle in our tents waiting for the rain to stop, trying to dry our clothes with body heat, and fantasizing about hailing a cab from the airport in the sky the next day.  Thankfully, the temperatures in Catalina don't dip so low that hypothermia was much of a threat.    

12/28/24:  At daybreak, it is still overcast as we put on our wet (stinky) clothes and book it the first quarter of our 8 mile hike to get to airport in the sky.  I'm so glad I ran some shock cord through the contact points on the back of my pack so I don't have to stuff that wet muddy mess into the pack but just lash it to the back.  I'm usually plant-based, but this day called for a bison burger while admiring an impressive taxidermized shoulder mount of the same over a faltering fireplace flame and some supplemental hot chocolate.  We stay here 3 hours, waiting for our gear to dry, the sun to come up, and for me to stop making stupid moves as I learn 3-hand euchre.  I understand a bit of the camaraderie described in through hiker travelogues now as we meet most of the hikers following a similar itinerary and learn a bit of their backstory and will see them again in 2 Harbors and along the trail.  By afternoon, we are ready to finish the last 6 miles of descent into Little Harbor/Shark Harbor.  We see a herd of 12ish bison we dub sausage fest because we don't see babies but learn from a guide friend later that this herd was mostly female.  Shark Harbor is as far off the TCT as I could have gotten, but I make up for it with the PB cup s'mores and an adult beverage I packed in.  

12/29/24:  Another big climb day, but only 5.4 miles into Two Harbors and an hotel that boasts wine and cheese hour.  We get the closest we have ever gotten to a loan bull on the ridge line on the way.  Banning House was definitely worth the upgrade over the campground.  They have the best chocolate chip cookies on the island and a really cool lodge great room/library that my cell gets some signal in.  The groundskeeper worked at the same obscure Alaskan fishing lodge my buddies just returned from, so they spend most of their time comparing notes.  We take long hot showers, dump an entire mini Bronner's soap bottle into the laundromat washer and adjourn for more burgers, brew, and euchre.  At dusk, we meet Jasper, the unusually friendly fox and an unusual raven-pigeon cartel.  

12/30/24:  Slack packing with just a stove, 3.5 liters of water, first aid and rain gear on a 14.5 mile loop out to Parson's beach for lunch and back.  The beach campground is deserted when we arrive and the leftover water jugs are plentiful (but what we carried was more than sufficient).  We have Frank pose next to the scout camp he attended 40 years ago and count the 11 inlets we need to trace to get back to 2 Harbors.  We hang with 4 Catalina employees, the only other guests at the Banning House, in the great room that evening.  3 of them recognize us from leading tour groups through the airport 2 days ago or serving us burritos in Avalon.  Small world.    

12/31/24: Our cab picks us up to take us back to Avalon and gives us a tour of back roads on the way.  We have brunch at the lobster trap, do some souvenir shopping and more euchre in a biergarten before heading to our respective ferries.  

So yeah, that went well!  

I used just about every piece of gear I packed (outside of first aid kit)-- maybe I didn't need the extra backpacker meal, protein bar, and piece of pita bread but could have easily consumed it and more in 2 Harbors if Kim and Frank didn't insist on picking up the tab on dinners at Harbor Reef to pay DH back for taking them on a fishing trip.  If I weren't smuggling gentleman jack, I would have swapped its weight for a travel size deodorant stick, but settled for spraying a bunch of lavender hand sanitizer on everything and making sure I did a bandana bath in the tent every night before changing into my dryish-cleanish sleep clothes.  My pack weight was 22.5 without any water bottles filled (18% body weight).   

I don't *think* I was boring.  It would have helped if I were a better cards player.  I think Kim and Frank were spooked by my sobriety streak but the 2 Harbors general store seemed to have an endless supply of 0 gravity Heineken so we found a way to not make this an irreconcilable difference.  

Being uncomfortable was a thing with the soaked start, but I got to test all these truisms about wool and fleece keeping you warm even when they are wet.  The switchback camping pad never created a hugely restorative night of sleep (even with a valerian tea and 2 tylenol PM), but with only two nights rough, it didn't compromise my mileage that much.  

Shark week was pretty much right on schedule and my triple play (tampon, pad, period underwear) was plenty of coverage.  Maybe some day I'll get back to experimenting with diva cups, but it is unlikely I'll need one to do long excursions before going menopausal.  

The house was in chaos when I got home, but the kid and dogs were in good shape, which was all I expected DH to do.  He also did some major yard landscaping for extra credit and planted a potted citrus Christmas gift for me.    

The one area that surprised me was how little time in the total day we spent hiking-- 2.5 hours to 5.5 hours/day.  If I were planning another excursion for myself, I'd want to see if I could push the mileage a little higher.  I would put more thought into arrival and departure times from campsites and how they would work with meal times.  But now I know that if climbs are involved, my average pace is 26ish min miles and if it is flat, plan for more like 23ish min miles.  

I'm tempted to consider doing a longer excursion with fewer hotel stops, since there still some leveling up to do in terms of quickly breaking camp and packing equipment in a way that makes it easy to set back up (i.e. wet tents).