2021

I saw a single Raccoon at the creek today... s/he was eating a crawdad. Which kind of amazed me, I didn't realize crawdads lived in our little creek!

When I glanced at one of the photos, pretty blurry, I was all, oh, funny Raccoon! You've got a bit of grass on your face!

But when I saw better photos, I realized that was not grass... that was a Dragonfly Nymph!!!

Poor, poor baby dragonfly is fixin' to be a light dessert after the meal of that poor, poor crawdad. :|

Well. delta variant is really making a mess of things. Cases are up, hospitalizations are up, deaths are up. And break thru infections for people who've been vaccinated.
Thanks for all that, anti-vax Republicans.

I read today that if you have the alpha variant, you will probably infect two other unvaccinated people. But if you have the delta variant, you will infect 5 other people.

There were 606,806 new covid cases in the US this week, a huge jump from the 255,000 last week, which was a jump from the 134,000 the week before, and the 85,000 and the 68,000 at the end of June.

sighs. 86,687 new cases on average every day. (ha, an every day total that's so similar to the Entire WEEK total, just a few weeks ago!) 365 people died every day on avg.

In my town, active cases have shot up to 572 and 30 people hospitalized. Before vaccinations started in earnest, the worse we had was 526 active cases on 17 Dec 2020, and on that day we had 47 people hospitalized.

The local hospitals are restricting visitors, again.

And I'm taking a good look at the local numbers for active covid cases. Throughout this mess, we've had awesome, daily reports for cases, hospitalizations, ongoing active cases and deaths!

But mid-May, they started not reporting the sunday numbers. And then the entire Memorial Day weekend. hey. fair enough! But the next weekend, they also took three days off. And the next. After that it was random days of not reporting during the week, and still not reporting the three days of the weekends.

This is shoddy. and shitty. I really want better.

∞ NYC Becomes Largest US City To Require Proof Of Vaccination For Indoor Activities
*thumbs up!*

Yeah, so I was wondering if my state or city was going to DO anything about these numbers... or just let the medical people and unvaccinated suffer. Hello? how bad does it need to get before we take action?

There's action today, according to the newspaper... We are going back to masking mandates on Friday.

My new favorite pastimes are standing in front of the fan and drinking ice water.

Today's high temperature is 102° (39°C) but because it didn't cool down last night, the apartment is miserable... 90° upstairs, and poor Dawn the guinea pig has to deal with 82° in the downstairs.

And, yeah. I think this is the third heat wave... but really. when you only have one day of relief in between heat waves? Maybe it's just all one heat wave. And I hate it.

Just get an air conditioner (and quit complaining!) you say? But I say, this is just going to make climate change worse!! I refuse! I opt out!

Yeah, ugh. Yesterday's drive home from Utah just wiped me out. I slept hard last night, but I just can't get my brain to turn on today. And my patience is completely used up.

I did manage to get the rental car returned with partner's help. And then I crashed back into my bed!

The house plants survived a week on their own. I usually water the Peace Lily more than once a week, and so I had it on a dripper... And it was so happy with the constant water it made a flower while we were gone!

The recently potted Polka Dot Begonia had started making leaves a couple weeks ago, and that's looking really good now!

And one of the African Violet leaves that I'm trying to clone, started growing!! This makes me happy!

Okay! Starting to come alive!

I think a holiday is a good disruption of established routines. My regular schedule was great, but as I mentioned during my Porch Room Project, there is no set time for tidying or cleaning. Which really should be happening! And, there was no set time for blogging. Which I really want to be happening!

I had gotten a couple books over the summer, which I started reading but didn't finish.

∞ Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess by Rachel Hoffman

∞ Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White

Both books resonated with me and the first one actually got me to clean a surface. Yeah, it was a single surface, but still! :)

oh, I should mention that Marie Kondo is just not my thing... it's just too much. I have done Stephanie Bennett Vogt's Space Clearing in the past, including one of her year-long classes. And I'm more of a slow drip and pick up one thing... even if it's just a paper clip type person!! I will def be applying that philosophy in my new efforts!

So anyway. My goals are to do at least 20mins of chores every day. And One and a Half blog posts every day, and maybe do some back-end work with the Utah trip.

We rented a car from Enterprise for our Utah road trip. I was expecting a four-door sedan with a big trunk, but the rental car they gave me was a small SUV, a Kia Soul.

The extra space behind the back seats, was just barely big enough for our luggage and fun stuff. The cooler and Dawn the Guinea Pig's travel box took up the entire back seats. (Granted, the travel box was pretty spacious!)

That all worked out, but the seats weren't very comfortable. The drivers seat didn't have lumbar support, it may have been broken. It wasn't terrible, but it kept my back kinked up a little, as I drove.

There were five of us in Utah, including three men, and I felt bad for my Mom... being the smallest, she had to sit in the middle of the back seat. The seat belt latches on either side couldn't be moved and they were too close together. So you had to scoot your butt way forward to avoid sitting on them, and that was uncomfortable and probably unsafe.

Other than that, the car was fine, and it got us to where we were going, including up and down steep and curvey hills. But not a car I would buy.

I returned the car on Saturday... And I was immediately bereft.

It's been a couple years since I've owned a car. and I miss it!