Re-entry

Just like that, Beach Week is over and with it, summer or so it seems. It’s Monday, my first day back at work (which was just fine after an hour sorting through last week’s emails in conversation view) and it was unseasonably cool; cloudy and gray and slightly breezy with a few drops of rain here and there. I don’t think it got any warmer than 72 degrees today, and that is cool for August in Maryland. 

I write about the weather a lot, don’t I? 

Anyway, school starts in two weeks. That is the end of summer as far as I’m concerned, but the cool temperatures and the October gloom are encroaching on my last weeks of sunshine and warmth, trying to fool me into believing that summer is already gone and that I should just get started with the pumpkin spicing (no) and the Christmas shopping. And I’m not having it. It’s 6:30 and the pool is still open for two hours and the water can’t have gotten that cold overnight (it was just right yesterday) so I’m going to put on a suit and swim laps before I cook dinner. No one here is in any danger of starvation, so dinner can wait. The remains of summer cannot. 

*****

Ha ha ha, that was ridiculous. “The water can’t have gotten that cold overnight,” she says, blithely skipping out the door with her bag and her towel. I should have also brought a space heater and a parka because it was actually freezing. 

Well, let me clarify a bit. The water itself was in fact not that bad. It had gotten a bit colder but it was still quite a nice temperature or would have been had the air temperature not been in the high 60s. Plus, it was rather gray and a bit breezy, and without the sun sparkling on its surface, the pool water appeared dank, which made it feel that much colder. 

My son and his friends were working when I arrived at the pool at 6:45. I was the only swimmer in the place, and my son shook his head when I signed in. “It’s cold, Mom,” he said. “I mean, it’s been colder, but just warning you. It’s pretty cold, especially when you get out.” 

And he was not wrong. Getting into the pool was quite a bit easier than getting out, as a stiff breeze made the already cool air feel downright chilly. It was Baltic, I tell you. Baltic. 

*****

What is it with Wednesdays around here? I am once again writing at work as I await resolution of a technical issue. This time it's everyone, not just me. There's a partial power failure right now where I work, the result of a fix gone wrong. The library is one of the few places where there is both light and WiFi so that's where I am. But it's taking some time for the shared public workstation to set up Windows and sync all of my files and whatever else it has to do. 

30 minutes later and I'm sitting in the courtyard waiting for a call from the help desk. They need to reset my SSO password and they cannot connect to the PW reset application, leading me to the question: What do you do when the help desk cannot help you? And an even bigger question: Who helps the help desk? Who are they supposed to call?

It's 9:30 now; still quite early. I could just go home and work and if this continues for much longer, then that is what I'll do. But we're all in this together and I kind of want to see how it all turns out. Meanwhile I brought a tuna sandwich and some fruit for lunch, so I could just have brunch now rather than waiting for lunch. Tuna salad is good any time of the day. 

Yes it is. 

*****

I’m home now. I worked at five different desks today. I’d connect for a bit and then the connection would drop, and then someone would message me that I could come to room x in building y, and I would be there for a bit and then the whole thing would start over again. I accomplished about three hours’ worth of actual work today, but I  got to hang out with some new people, and I also came up with a really good idea when I was sitting around waiting for my password reset, so it was a pretty productive day altogether. 

*****

It’s Thursday afternoon now, 5:30 PM, and I’m just home from work. I left my phone at home today, not on purpose, of course. But once I was sure that the phone was actually safely on my kitchen counter and not in a ditch somewhere (why would it be in a ditch I wouldn’t go near a ditch to save my soul from Hell) I realized that it’s quite nice to spend a day semi-disconnected. Now I’m catching up on correspondence, and responding to what seems like 50 text messages. It’s not 50. It’s maybe 15. But it’s a lot. Why are these people texting me all day? Am I the only person who works on weekdays? 

*****

My son attends the University of Maryland, which (of course) is now reporting its first case of monkeypox. And there has to be a better name for it, doesn’t there? Monkeypox. Gross. 

I’m not even particularly worried about this; not yet, anyway. It’s Friday, and my mind is blank, and my hands are just moving across this keyboard in an almost-reflexive way. Everything about today, the sunshine and the light and the coming transition from summer to fall, reminds me of 2020. A school year was about to begin and no one knew if or when that would involve entering a school building. The pandemic raged on with no end in sight. The election was around the corner and although I couldn’t wait to see the end of the Trump presidency, I also knew that chaos was going to ensue no matter who won that Godforsaken election. I went to work every morning in my little home office, watching the birds and suburban wildlife outside my window, and wondering if normal life would ever resume. I wondered if anyone even knew what constituted normal life anymore. I still wonder about this. 

*****

But it’s Saturday now, not quite 10 AM, and I’m sitting in my backyard letting my hair dry and listening to the birds, just like I did every morning at the beach, but with different birds. The birds here are quieter. You’d think that inveterate pests and thieves like seagulls would go about their business a little more quietly, draw less attention to themselves, but Avalon’s seagulls are out there and they want you to know it. Hold on to your kids’ sandwiches, they cackle, taunting. Don’t leave those corn chips unattended. Silver Spring birds are politer. You can eat your lunch in my backyard, and your sandwich will remain unmolested. 

But even if a rogue oriole absconds with your lunch, that seems like the worst that could happen right now. Monkeypox and COVID and war and inflation and the constitutional crisis of the day are all out there, but they’re keeping quiet for the moment. With the warm sunshine, birdsong, and clear blue skies, it’s shaping up to be a perfect tail-end-of-summer day. Everything is almost still, except for the trees, barely rustling in the breeze.  

Weather and birds - that is the content that you came here for.