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. 

Annual complaint

Every time I look to see where my huge number of readers come from, I find one visitor from Portugal. It's probably Madonna.

*****
It's 12:15 on Sunday, Labor Day weekend. This is my least favorite time of the year, because summer is almost over. The pumpkin spice trolling has already begun. But there's still a day and a half of pool time left. A day and a half of pool time, but also a day and a half before school starts. I just realized that I probably need to buy school lunch food, and school supplies. I assume that people have backpacks, or that they would have said something by now if they don't. I assume that their summer reading is done. When it comes to school preparation, I'm less hands-on than I used to be. It's only a year before at least one of them will have to take care of all of this on his own, so it's probably good for him to get some practice now.

*****

I don't want to think or write any more about this guy; and with this guy, I can't even begin. It's all too much and my mental and emotional resources are limited. Maybe later. For now, I will write about handbags.

I'm pretty relentlessly practical, in most matters. I have far too many handbags, because I love them, but even my too many handbags are very practical. They're almost all nylon of some sort, with lots of pockets and organizational features, and 2-inch-wide seatbelt webbing crossbody straps that never wear out and that allow me to carry everything that I or anyone near me could possibly ever need. That's the way I have always liked it. And then a few weeks ago, I felt like I wanted to stop carrying 40 pounds of stuff with me, everywhere I go. All of a sudden, I wanted to carry a bag that is small and elegant and stylish and expensive-looking and incapable of accommodating more than a wallet and keys and a phone and maybe a lipstick or something.  I don't want to be a pack mule. I don't want to wear a seatbelt unless I'm driving a car.

When I was in Montreal, I almost bought a little Coach bag that I saw someone carrying. I looked at it at the Hudson Bay store, and then visited it online a few times, but decided against it. Too busy a pattern. It wouldn't go with everything. I have to be at least somewhat practical. Then, when I returned to work, I admired a new coworker's Kate Spade bag. It wasn't exactly the right bag for me (I want small, but not too small) but it made me want to own a Kate Spade bag again.

Did you know that Costco carries Kate Spade bags? I didn't either, but I checked online, because I love Costco. I'd rather shop at Costco than Neiman Marcus. Again, I'm very practical. The selection was very small, which is a good thing in my case, because I'd rather not have too many options. Of the four or five Kate Spades that Costco was offering, one looked like just the thing, so I ordered it. It should arrive this week. I'll share a full report.

*****

It's Tuesday now. School is back in session, and the pool is closed, and the easy rhythm of August has to yield to conflicting schedules and overlapping activities and Halloween displays that will disappear weeks before Halloween to make way for Christmas decorations. Night will come a little earlier every day. And of course, the pool is closed, and that means that summer is officially over, meteorological calendar notwithstanding.

As much as I love to swim, I didn't really hang out at the pool very much this summer. I swam almost every day, but that's all I did--I would swim laps for 30 minutes or so, and then go home. Yesterday, I stayed at the pool all afternoon, and was in the water for over three hours, swimming and floating and talking to my friends and watching the neighborhood kids frantically wringing every drop of chlorine-soaked fun out of the last day of summer. As the darkness fell and the air grew a little cooler, I realized that I was too tired to continue, so I finally had to get out of the water. The last whistle blew  a few minutes later, and it was over again, just like that.

*****
Curse you, pumpkin spice. Curse you. This last weekend was nearly perfect, and I'll be sad for a few days now that it, and summer, are over. Maybe a new handbag will cheer me up.