Throes of Summer (AKA Pit o'Hell)

In the past month, James has blogged more than I have! Can you believe it?

I keep thinking of things to write, but once I get a few minutes to sit with my computer and my thoughts, I just want to veg. I want to watch "The Story of God" on Netflix, or some late show bits on YouTube.

Because my brain is fried, ladtlemen and gens.

First, there's the fact that we're closing out our second full week of +100 degree temperatures. Our grass is crunchy, the lake is so low that they've closed the first dock, and I'm watering our poor sad fruit trees every dang day. Actually, the fig tree looks fine; the apples are iffy. If they don't make it through to this fall, I think we should pull them out and get something better suited to this area of Texas, like volcanoes or flame-throwers or something. I guess just because they sell a particular tree at a local nursery doesn't mean you can actually expect to grow them here. Sigh. We're $120 in at this point, and I'm not replacing them if they don't both make it... and you do need two apple trees for at least one apple tree to be healthy and produce the best fruit. At this rate, if we ever do get real apples, they'll probably look like those projects we did in elementary school where you carve a face in an apple and then "shrink" it through dehydration. Anyway, heat = shrunken BRAIN.

Second, I have an extremely high-energy, high-needs 5-year-old who is either talking, singing, or making sound effects literally every waking moment. I have difficulty thinking whole thoughts, much less getting out an entire sentence most days. I remember thinking, when D was this age, that my brain might melt toward the end of the day. And that child went to bed at 7 PM and got up at 7 AM. My second goes to bed between 11:30 and midnight and wakes up anywhere from 9 to 10 AM. So he's getting markedly less bed time than D did. My applesauce noggin feels it. Also, I'm repeating a theme from above totally unintentionally because my head can't bother itself to think of another example.

Third, everyone seems to have at least a little pandemic fog. We're still being pretty insular, staying in and seeing few people. We've seen my immediate family somewhat regularly, and have met a friend or two at a park. But the park stuff is over with for a while, until we can go out without turning into puddles of goo. Today I saw that a guy who works construction here in Austin drinks 2 gallons of water a day at his job, and he never has to go to the restroom. So that's what we're dealing with heat-wise (which, I know, I've already mentioned; but that's one reason we've curtailed even MORE what we were doing two months ago). School (such as it is) has mostly started back, so the public pools are closed. (Actually, a splash pad is open but you have to make reservations, and I just booked Mal a two-hour window for a week from tomorrow. That's how desperate people are to get out and do stuff like this.)

Basically, everything is a little more repetitive than usual. We're super fortunate: James is still working, none of us has gotten sick. We're fine. But the days bleed into each other with no major difference in them.  It can get kind of "meh," even as I acknowledge that we've only been inconvenienced and not truly put out, let alone harmed. But there have been numerous articles detailing this common "pandemic brain fog" experience. They seem confident that this will all pass once we're back to "normal," but no one knows when that will be. 

In related news, the city of Austin and Travis County (I live in the latter but not the former) just extended the mask mandate through December 15. I'm sure this is to cover the first semester of in-person schools, and our numbers are still high enough that I absolutely get it! But it seems SO far away. 

After the State Fair of Texas canceled for this fall, I planned an alternate little road trip, since James already requested time off. (He'd requested off for April and just canceled that since no one was going anywhere in April.) I decided to assume everything would still be operating weirdly and planned most things for outside. The one thing I did tag as a "maybe" was the Science Mill in Johnson City, but I think I'll pull that and we can visit again when we don't have to wear masks. I might feel differently when it's not 412 degrees, but just waiting to checkout at the grocery store yesterday, I was so warm and steamy in my breathe-holes that I felt intense pity for the people who work 8 hours a day and have to breathe into those things. 

As an aside, it's completely ridiculous that the wearing of masks has become a politicized issue. First, this:

That's pretty simple. Masks 1) keep some droplets from getting away from you and 2) slows the momentum of the droplets that DO get out. So until we know what's going on (and the better part of a year into this, we still don't), it's one of the easiest and most effective ways to keep others safe (hopefully they're also keeping YOU safe). 

Anyway, all of that to say that I'm glad that there are mask mandates. Before the cities and states had legal mandates, it was harder for stores to enforce their company policies. In case you're reading this in 2030 and don't have much context, look up "people freaking out over wearing a mask." People are yelling, attacking retail workers, committing vandalism, shooting into stores, and generally seem to believe that somehow their civil rights are being violated by being asked to have a little responsibility in this effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 until we can get a vaccine/herd immunity.

Even with governing authorities coming around to put some teeth in mask orders (our governor resisted for a long time, even prohibiting local authorities from enforcing mask-wearing with any kind of penalty at all after an initial warning; but eventually Texas became a hotspot and I think he realized he had to do something), people are still losing their minds over being required to wear a mask or leave. It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for them.

I recently watched a video where a lady was running around a Trader Joe's calling everyone else there "sheep" for wearing masks. Well, I'm sorry, but why did YOU decide NOT to wear a mask? That wasn't just your independent idea. She's talking about breathing her on CO2, which she definitely heard somewhere. And I think people genuinely wouldn't be as angry if they didn't believe the mask stuff was some kind of power grab by the government. But they are getting that idea somewhere. We're all following someone; we just choose different sources as credible.

All of that to say, I HATE wearing a mask. Especially the one time I got out wearing my glasses. It's just hot and uncomfortable and as much as I love going places with Mal, I'll almost always leave him home because trying to manage myself AND continue putting his mask back on him over and over (he can't seem to figure it out) is exhausting. 

It's kind of funny that I felt the need to post a vehement defense of wearing masks before I said that I personally hate it. But that's because of how heated this has gotten politically. I absolutely agree that wearing masks masks us safer as a community. And they're uncomfortable and I will be happy when we don't have to anymore.

Also, I know... many Asian people wear masks as a habit when they go out. I'll say they're made of stronger stuff than I am. Amen and amen.

Finally: This weekend is my 8th Austinversary. I cannot express enough my absolute joy that I moved here and met the people I've met and live where I live now. Sometimes, I come across news or bits of a conversation from people I used to know, and places I used to frequent, and I wonder if I'd still be "the same" if I hadn't left. I feel like I've grown as a person an incredible amount in the past few years, and so much of that has been the influence of this place. I don't know exactly how to explain it, except that I've seen examples of people genuinely trying to be the best versions of themselves and encouraging me to do the same. But I could stand it without the heat.