jedimentat

While I am faaar more disconnected this summer than during the churn of the schoolyear, I can't say I spent July in a blissful summer vaccuum. (Except for the two weeks I was away camping). I'm going to quote two of my fave entertainment and fashion columnists' blog, Tom and Lorenzo, with their thoughts on "Living in the Ever-Changing Now", because same, guys, same.

Tom and Lorenzo, July 2021:
"There’s a bright golden haze in the skies overhead thanks to the raging wildfires, the pandemic is spiking again all over the country, and we’re all watching billionaires fling themselves off the planet inside big metal dicks.
And how are you?
We’ll tell you what: we’re confused. This newsletter went through three completely different drafts on three completely different topics because the zeitgeist seems to have shifted under our feet in the time it took us to get our shit together. We originally wanted to talk about how things have changed for us on a personal level after so much time on lockdown. We wanted to mention how amused we were that high summer came and, like clockwork, we turned toward thoughts of pumpkin spice and cozy sweaters, just like we used to in the Before Times, when we constantly planned or looked forward to what was next. It meant that our seasonal clocks were back on schedule after a 15-month long fugue state in which time had no meaning and we measured the passing of the seasons like cavemen, through leaves and shadows. It meant that the holidays might be good again this year instead of the depressingly solitary and low-energy faux celebrations attempts we made last year. It felt like one more thing to indicate that everything was blessedly normal again.
And then, because we are as the universe made us and can’t help but see the flipside of every point of view (or overthink things, if you’re being less charitable), it spurred on a whole musing session about how our time on lockdown generated a skill for living in the now that we never truly had before and don’t want to lose now that it’s not the necessity it once was. We joked with a friend recently that, because we’d experienced our first full-body MRI since the last time we were on a plane, we didn’t find flying quite so hellish because we’d learned the trick of shutting down completely in an unpleasant or claustrophobic situation. A plane’s just an MRI with wings if you can pull inside yourself and hunker down till it’s over. Our time on lockdown had something of a similar effect on us. All those months of social distancing taught us that we could spend that time wallowing in the past and pining for a future that felt depressingly far away or we could learn to take our amusements and stimulation where we could get them, in the moment, and live day to day.
So, we wanted to write about how we were putting aside our pumpkin-spiced view of the future and taking our newly generated skills to task and enjoying the moment we’re in, turning our faces toward the sun and just existing. We wanted to let you know that despite scoffing at the idea for most of the past year and a half, we think we really did come out of that hell-time a little changed, with an appreciation for slowing down and realizing that every moment of your life is you living the life you get; not just the big-ticket events and milestones, but the time spent folding laundry or peeing or day-dreaming too. Before we could even pull those thoughts together, however, the now that we were trying so hard to live in changed on us."

They go on to talk about how they were doing things in the beginning of July, but then Covid Delta variant began to spike all over the US, and things changed literally in a week.

"It’s hard to really assess how concerned vaccinated people should really be about their own safety, but Americans are particularly bad at living in gray areas (let alone making sacrifices on behalf of the community) and we once again find ourselves defending our choices to people who still think our concerns might be overblown. At the same time, we keep encountering stories of people (some in our own lives) who feel that they have good reason not to get vaccinated, even though every single reputable medical authority is urging people to do so. In other words, while we were all “Oh, we’ve evolved so much and grown as people suffering through that now-over difficult period ” in our heads, the world conspired to laugh at our self-absorption and remind us once again that things don’t change as much as we might like them to. The pandemic never went away and normalcy is an illusion. We’re all back to arguing about masks and conspiracies because the hell-times never end. Yeah, we returned to normal, alright. The “normal” of people being ignorant and stubbornly tribal, which seems like the only thing we can count on anymore.
But okay, fine. Let’s try and apply some sort of self-actualized, semi-evolved way of thinking here. We have to think we came out of all of that crap with something worth using. So here’s what: We’re going to mask up again and return to a limited form of social distancing; staying away from crowds and seeing only the people we know are vaccinated. But we’re living our lives without the kind of quarantine restrictions we imposed on ourselves a year ago. We’re also going to try take a more forgiving approach in encouraging the unvaccinated to reconsider. We think yelling at them clearly does no good and there is a subset of unvaccinated people who are less driven by ideology than they are by mistrust or misinformation. Calling those people idiots or assholes isn’t going to budge them. This is starting to become a pandemic of the unvaccinated and there’s a lot of fear and anxiety swirling around as public pressure becomes greater and greater. People don’t become more open to persuasion in that sort of situation. If anything they tend to dig in even further. We’re going to try to live in the now – whatever now that is – in whatever passes for a normal life. And instead of yelling and screaming about ignorance or fear, we’re going to do our best to appeal to people’s better natures, because we still believe such things exist."

Anyway, I liked it. Sums up July mindset, for sure. Started summery and happy, ended with climate-change-wildfires raging across the globe, and Delta variant. It's August now, and summer-fun-bliss is ending as I try to plan for fall. Should the kids do fall activities? Are they attending school in person? They are still unvaxxed. Makes it hard to plan.

But here's carefree, summery July!

my sweet summertime babies. we have such a good time.

they learned how to swim underwater this year, and Nana was their swimcoach

It's not every day that your Adventure Buddy mails you a postcard via mule...

beach

it's a lovely month in NJ...

Lavendar Picking

The day after the Rubber Ducky race, the bridge had a chunk fall off of it, so...

Town Picnic

Town Picnic

the kids got to help pack up the balloon

Bodhi had a fanclub

Picking up our farm share is always an opportunity to say hi to Winston and give him lots of love and scritchies

BalloonFest

...was I freaking out internally, as the kids sang like 20 songs at VBS in a church full of about 70-100 people, while we were literally the only ones wearing masks? Yes, yes I was. It turned out fine, luckily. But jaaaaysus.

NYC, two times, for doc appointments. (one waste-of-time-and-$, one okay)

cain't plow through a crowd with this one..

feelin a lot better with some soft palate paps removed; my new doc did it in-office like a boss (hurt like a b for two days to swallow and talk)

RRP-wise: lookin' ok except for the speech-affecting web at the bottom. it's crazy how something so small can have such a big voice effect.

The doc also put me on a short time of prednisone to see if it would help with some inflammation, and yikes it made me loopy. Did *not* want to be on that for a long time.

Maine

Had some car trouble which impacted the trip, but on the plus side, got to drive a rental which was a Jeep Gladiator (my current dream vehicle)