Day: May 31, 2021

Summer Is Supposed to Be Hot

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I am so tired of freezing in June, July, and August. I grew up in the country. We didn’t have air conditioning. Fans sufficed.  We wore shorts and tank tops. We tried to absorb the heat like solar batteries to get us through the long upstate New York winters.

My husband grew up in a high rise in the Bronx. But he went to sleep-away camp in the Catskills every summer. Yet he must have air conditioning. Why?

I do not understand the obsession with air conditioning. I hate going to work because it’s so blessed cold half my co-workers are running space heaters. It would be more cost efficient to reset the AC from “meat locker” to “summer dawn on the lake” and let those who are  warm use a fan than it is to run at “meat locker” and  have more people turning on their space heaters. But what do I know?  I shouldn’t have to wear a cardigan inside when it’s 90 degrees outside.

Yes, I will run the air conditioning in my car, spoiled American wench that I am, but I prefer opening the windows and the moon roof.

Just because the thermometer reads 75F does not mean the air conditioner needs to go on at home.  It roars. The noise pollution is as bad as the frigidity.

Summer is supposed to be hot. You’re supposed to open windows to catch warm summer breezes and the scent of flowers.

I’m not talking about deadly heat waves.  I’m not talking about deserts. I don’t live near a desert. I’m the first to turn on the AC when the weather hits 90+. I’m not an unreasonable woman.

And it’s not unreasonable to expect warmth in the summer.

 

2021: The Year To Come

2020 has been a challenging year. I don’t need to enumerate or recap the Dumpster fire. The malaise isn’t going to magically vanish when we flip the calendar page to 2021.

As is my habit, I’ve been thinking long and hard about my goals for the coming year. The strategy for my life. The changes I need or want to make. Not resolutions. Never resolutions. Resolutions are made to be broken. Goals are set to meet.

One of the changes I’ll be making is cutting back on the number of blogs I write each year. This is my final “Thursday Thought” for at least twelve months.

MJ Monday will not be as structured as it’s been for the past couple of years–Meals on the first Monday, movies on the second, etc. I will also be adding at least one new category, perhaps more as the mood strikes me.

I hope you’ll continue to join me.

Have a safe, healthy new year.

MJ Monday-Motivation: Lightning Bugs

Once again, my schedule–writing and day job–prevented me from getting to my patio/garden/back yard in a timely manner. It doesn’t help that the person who had all these grandiose plans for the space disappeared on me last year.

The first year of my garden was the best. It looked amazing. I had fresh herbs. I had colorful coleus, and planters of other beautiful things.

Since then, the space has become more of a jungle. I still love sitting out there, especially at night.

I love watching the lightning bugs. (Yes, I am born and raised in upstate NY, and we always called them lightning bugs. I never heard of a fire fly until I started school.) This year they start flashing early and continue to flash often.

No wonder summer is my favorite season.

MJ’s Musing: A Halloween Memory

Halloween can be cold in my neighborhood. Some years there’s snow on the ground. The weather can play havoc with costume plans.

One year–I must have been six or seven–my mom made me wear a winter coat over my costume. How humiliating! The matter got worse when the nasty old lady three or four doors down answered her door and said, “Where’s your costume? That’s no costume.” As if she couldn’t see the snow swirling around us.

She had a point. I should have worn my costume over my winter coat.

 

MJ’s Musings: An Observation on “Healthy” Food

Many of my friends and most of my extended family have dietary restrictions. One person recently made a “cookie” she shared. I would never hurt her feelings, and I understand completely why this cookie met her food requirements, but I did not want another one.

When I’m grocery shopping, there are frequently people pushing free samples at the customers. The most recent one was a cookie in the health food department. Or maybe it was a “power bar”.

All I know is I stopped eating sawdust when I was about 3. Yeah, we used it as a “cooking ingredient” when we played house when I was an older child. But we also cooked with mud, gravel, and milkweed pods. Oh, and there was that disastrous experiment trying to make the cat eat a combo of Snowy Bleach and Oxydol. But like the cat, we never actually put the stuff in our mouths. (OK, we smoked cattails behind the barn, but that was different.)

So why does so much modern, “healthy” food remind me of my extreme childhood, sawdust-eating days? Particularly the sawdust part?