Life of Wry

I’m sure everyone’s got an anxiety list — I mean, it’s 2020 — mine’s a doozy. Though, I expect I share a lot of the same anxieties with others. My list keeps me going…. in the sense that I imagine a time when this list will dwindle down to nothing. I have my eyes on the prize, a time in January when I am hoping that most of these will be resolved or mostly on their way to being resolved and I’ll be free and clear with a whole new horizon to look at. I’m thinking maybe by my 65th birthday.

Girl can dream.

No real order… but here are the things that occupy most of my head space right now.. some are time consuming, some are just plain anxiety provoking, some require just putting my head down and seeing them through, some are heart rending… some have elements of all of the above.

1. trump
2. pandemic
3. election
4. Peter getting settled in Ann Arbor… safe and happy
5. fire season
6. front and backyard landscaping
7. all this election-related volunteer work
8. Matt, Chris, Michael, Chad’s health

I feel like I might be forgetting an anxiety or two. But man… can you imagine what life will be like when we’re beyond all this? I can, and it keeps me going.

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It’s been hotter than blazes..

This was last Sunday (it’s Friday as I write this). We’d already had a day or two of temperatures well into the hundreds. That was noteworthy–and record breaking–enough (130 in Death Valley, 113 in Modesto). But then we had dramatic thunderstorms and thousands of lightening strikes that weekend, which sparked hundreds of fires which are still raging across the state. For most of this week, it’s looked and felt apocalyptic: yellow air, brown skies, a red sun.. all from the fires close enough to cover us in ash. Seriously.. it’s like someone dumped an ashtray over our world. For days I didn’t even go out.. not once.

Here are some pics…  sun at midday. You can stare right at it; it’s behind so much smoke.

My car..

Ash collects in the grooves in our driveway..

The fires closest to us:

Oh.. and this is neat: Recall that Jim gave me a PurpleAir sensor for Christmas last year (why, yes he did!). He installed it yesterday, which means we have one of eight such outdoor sensors in Davis and serve as a data point in the local assessment of Air Quality.. here’s a map:

We’re the 93! Today it got up to 256 (at least that was the highest I saw it go, but I didn’t watch it all day). At this very moment, it’s (hang on, let me check): 14! I kid you not. Jim just opened the windows and the temp is dropping (11:30pm and it’s now 72) .. and we might get into the 50s later this week. Glorious after nighttime lows in the 70s all week (couldn’t open our windows anyway because of the smoke).

Anyway.

Crazy stuff… these pandemics, heat waves, fires, ash storms. All layered on top of trump and what will be a brutal, soul-sucking final two months of a truly wearying campaign season.