SHARE YOUR WORLD AUGUST 2, 2022 – HERE COME THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER!

The “Dog Days” of August are misnamed. They should be the dog days of the GOP because they are still trying to kill our first — and possibly last — hope of getting some kind of climate package passed. Here in normally soggy New England, we’ve been waiting for two months for rain. Meanwhile the sun beats relentlessly down. Considering all of North American continent has been cooking, what do they think is going to happen if they don’t get it done this time?

Climate change has arrived. We are in it. While people are dying from floods in Kentucky, we are in the cooker elsewhere. I don’t remember a summer like this without so much as a thunder squall to clear the air. It’s particularly worrisome. Unlike other problems to which you can sometimes figure out a solution, nothing you do can will make it rain or make the floods recede. Yet the people who are supposed to be caring for us don’t care. For them, it’s all a political game, all about money, greed, and power.

I suppose it should not surprise me, although their utter lack of compassion for anyone to me is mind-boggling. Surely everyone has to care about someone. That’s part of being human. Maybe they aren’t human. After all, these are the same people who won’t allow gun control no matter how many children are slaughtered, so why should they care if the world they live on burns down? If they don’t care about children, why would they care about anything or anyone else?

QUESTIONS

Do you ever feel more excited about getting the package in the mail, rather than the item that’s in it?

Considering how many packages we get in a given week, I’m more surprised that a package has not arrived. It’s all things we order because they are less expensive online or we can’t get them locally. It’s just not very exciting stuff.

What is the difference between your “ideal” self and your actual self? (Note: What IS my ideal self? Is there one? Was there ever?)

I would like ONE WEEK of not feeling slightly ill. A whole week without pain, without things swelling up, with nausea when I eat or the medications I take making me sick if I don’t. I don’t even know what “normal” is anymore or if it’s achievable. It probably isn’t. Past a certain point, as you age, you begin to realize you can’t fix everything. Every cure seems to come with side effects and if you try to fix the side effects, you usually feel worse. Feeling good is so easy. Feeling crappy is very tiring.

Also, I’m not sure I can remember my ideal self, if indeed such a person ever existed. There has always been something wrong with me as long as I can remember.

If you found $2,000 on the ground and there were no witnesses, what would you do with it?

There was a time when I would have donated it to something I thought was useful, but these days, I’d probably give it to the oil company so I’d know we could afford heat this winter. I think values begin to alter a bit as you get poorer. We are managing, but barely.

The price of heating oil is up by 100% from last winter — and it wasn’t cheap last winter. That means it will cost about $1000 to fill the oil tank ONCE. That’s a lot of money for people on a fixed income.

Are you ever morally obliged to take action? Under what circumstances?

Within the limits of what I can do? Yes. Especially about climate change which I’m beginning to find directly and personally terrifying. No rain for 2 months? Everything burned brown? Even the trees beginning to wilt in the heat and sun? AND unless this time, they really actually DO something meaningful about it, it will keep getting worse until this planet is uninhabitable.

The problem is, we’re kind of old. We aren’t dead yet. We aren’t planning an imminent demise, but there’s no way to go back to a younger us. Oh, if only there were. Wait. If there were, they’d make the price too high for anyone but the very VERY wealthy to afford. The rest of us would just keep on dying.

Ah, humanity.

Please feel free to share how last week went for you.   Bright or not so bright spots?

It didn’t rain. That’s the very bad news and it’s not just our bad news. It’s bad news all over this continent.

Good news? I stopped taking one medication and it doesn’t seem to have had any negative impact — and started taking another medication that has hugely reduced the pain in my back and hips. It’s almost a miracle … except … it makes me feel sick when I take it. So I have to balance how bad it makes me feel versus how much better it makes my spine feel. There’s always a balance. I’m working with diet, trying to find foods that convince my gut to let me take the medication.

Also, my toes are swollen. No one knows why. Not everything can be fixed. I want the medicine they practice on the Enterprise. Cure anything and everything without nasty medications or surgery. Please pass the tricorder.

Categories: #SYW, Anecdote, climate, climate change, Share My World, Summer

Tags: #Photography, birds, climate, drought, Marilyn Armstrong