The box fan blasted toward me, propelled by a huge gust of wind, like the window frame that hit Dorothy in the head and sent her on her journey to Oz. No such adventure for me: the fan missed me and landed hard on the floor. As I rushed around closing all the other open windows, I saw water streaming in unbroken sheets down their outsides, like someone had turned a fire hose on them.
I’ve seen my share of sideways rain, and branches flapping furiously in the wind. But this storm was on another level. This was where you’d expect television networks to send someone outside in a slicker with an umbrella that immediately blows up backwards as they lean into wind so strong it could blow them off their feet.
The power went out, and stayed out for 20 hours. The internet was out even longer. I unloaded everything from the freezer and all the perishables in the fridge to a cooler with what remained of the ice cubes, and hoped for the best. I charged my phone in the car, after I figured out how to open the automatic garage door without electricity.
No damage to the house, and we only had two small branches down out back. Others close by were not as lucky. Many lost entire old-growth trees.
You know that I do not “summer” well. Although I have always aspired to be a person who uses the word “summer” as a verb, as in “where do you summer, Bitsy?,” I am without the means to buy an enormous WASP-y cedar shingled “cottage” in Kennebunkport or a cabin by the sea way down Maine. Instead, I gut it out on a third of an acre of midwestern grass (okay, weeds) and thank God for the wisdom of the people who planted the trees where they did, shading the house and helping to keep it reasonably cool. Miraculously, when the power went out, taking the air conditioners in the bedrooms with it, the temperature outside never exceeded 72 degrees.
Losing power and internet access this month has been a wake-up call. Ditto a week of wildfire smoke that had us bringing out the N-95 pandemic masks while temperatures reached in the ’90s with heat indices above 100. Even my thick-walled little house couldn’t withstand it, and it heated up uncomfortably inside.
A month like this could turn the most optimistic person into a doomsday prepper. And generally speaking, I’m not much of an optimist. Mice chewed through a plastic bin in the basement containing rice, beans, and flour, and Angelic Daughter made short work of the juice pouches and granola bars I had stowed on the laundry room shelves. But I congratulated myself when a water main break put us on a boil order for about 48 hours a few months ago: I had adopted a habit of filling any empty glass jar, as well as any 2-gallon plastic bottle that formerly held cleaning vinegar (all rinsed out thoroughly, of course) with filtered water from the fridge, and sticking it down there just in case. That came in handy. Smug little me.
So, July: fires, storms, floods, earthquakes, and war. Measles, Cyclospora, e-coli, salmonella, and a witless wormhole-in-the-brain secretary of ‘health’ shrugging it all off while acceding to cuts in food safety monitoring and spouting nonsense that deters parents from getting their kids life saving vaccines. The hero of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, gets hauled in front of a Republican dog-and-pony-show-trial of a senate “hearing” that only proved those senators’ spectacular capacity for hypocrisy and amnesia and their obvious intent to find something new to turn into an accusation against Fauci.
July, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry, don’t let the screen door hit ya’ on your way out. Buh-BYE.
I’m not completely without hope, though. The midterms are coming, Republicans are abandoning ship, and our Malignant Mango Marshmallow Megalomaniac of a “president” got thoroughly booed at the world cup, while the team from the allied country he just insulted won the whole shebang. Viva España!!
And Canada, God love ya. I’m all swoony over Mark Carney and the premier of British Columbia, David Eby, who stuck it to our tariff-tantrumming toddler and got on with the business of positioning Canada as the rational trade alternative to the irrational, bloviating bully below. But Eby is right: if we can’t be friends with Canada, then we don’t have a friend on the planet. SAD, as our Demented Diaper-loading Demagogue might say.
So Canada, please pay no attention to that man behind all the vulgar, ghastly, gauche, gilded gunk plastered all over the Oval Office. Somewhere, over the rainbow, the dream of being friends again might come true. Until then, I remain,
your sweaty, SAD, looking-forward-to-August-because-at-least-it-isn’t-July,
Ridiculouswoman
There is a picture on Reuters of the person in the oval office and cabinet members hunkered down at Camp David where they are supposedly trying to find a way out of the mess he created in February when he believed that Iran would just buckle under and cry uncle.
November mid-terms can’t get here soon enough! Though the messes that have been created in the last two years will not be easy to find solutions for and correct, even with Democrats, Independents and a few brave Republicans that have jumped ship, occasionally.
Still, what is life without a little HOPE!!
I’m glad you and your daughter made it through the storm with little damage.