Blue-Footed Musings

Hurricane Henri was downgraded to a tropical storm before making landfall near Westerly, RI, just after noon. Here, we had some heavy rain this morning, now reduced to a drizzle. Our driveway is strewn with leaves and twigs, and the power occasionally flickers, but that’s the extent of the damage so far. We are neither in the path of the highest winds nor the hardest rains, so with any luck we’ll get through the remainder of the storm without much ado. That sure would be nice. Fingers crossed.

• I wouldn’t have thought that there was anything that could make me love jewelweed more, but then there it was–a hummingbird feeding on the bright flowers. My husband doesn’t see the beauty in the jewelweed, just its wild untidiness, which is too bad. There are other plants in that area that I do not love so much, though, and I have been waging my little wars against them. This week I ripped out all the ragweed. I also pulled out some briars and a rather stunning number of birch saplings. This week my goal is to remove more birch saplings, a ton of baby oaks (they are everywhere!), a few massive pokeweed “trees,” and at least some of the bittersweet, which is a very pesky, invasive vine that only recently arrived here but is already trying the choke the life out of everything else. But I will leave the jewelweed, asters, and goldenrod to grow WAF.
• Today Twitter asked, “If you could live in any state, which one would it be?” It’s an odd question, in a way. There is nothing forcing me to live in Rhode Island. I could live in any state. So I guess the answer is, for the moment, “Rhode Island.” That will not always be the answer, though. When the answer changes, I’ll move. I can already feel that day approaching. I moved a lot during my 20s and 30s, and I became accustomed to it. Now I miss it. I have been in the same place for such a long, long time.
• To answer my own question from earlier today, I am a little lazy, but I am also suffering from stress and depression caused by a combination of factors, one of the most pressing of which is that my kids are supposed to return on school on the 30th. The Pandemic is worse for children right now than it was last year, when we kept them home, but distance learning is not being offered this year. So I’m supposed to send them daily to poorly-ventilated buildings where hundreds of unvaccinated children gather in confined spaces, tra-la-la, while a significant proportion of their parents refuse to be vaccinated, tra-la-la, as if everything’s back to normal. But I don’t know that I can. And what if I can’t? What then?
• As of a few days ago, the school board had not decided yet whether students and staff would be required to wear masks in the schools. Many parents were advocating loudly for “parent’s choice,” which is, as one pro-mask parent commented, “like having a peeing section in the pool.” We never got to see which way the debate would go, though, because the governor issued an executive order mandating masks in schools. So at least that question has been answered. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Today I feel like doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is a hurricane barreling toward us, though, and at the least I should charge my cellphone, because our power will almost certainly fail during the storm. The only question is how long the outage will last. It could be 10 minutes, or it could be 10 days. So, yeah, I should juice up the phone. But getting up, finding my phone, and plugging it in all seem like onerous tasks right now.

Damn, am I lazy, or super depressed, or both?

Once my husband and I were vaccinated, we started bringing the kids out occasionally. It seemed safe enough. Coronavirus numbers were low, and children were not considered to be at high risk. Being out in the world had started to feel normal again, so normal that I even offered to bring Livia clothes shopping in person this weekend. But, reading the latest news about Covid, I decided not to follow through, even though her disappointment is going to be fierce once she realizes.

So be it. I’d rather disappoint her now than have to live with myself if she became ill. The daily case numbers are as high now as they were last November, and word is that the Delta variant is taking down otherwise healthy kids. Vaccination rates are better in the Northeast than some other areas of the country, but the risk level here is still rated high, and there are pockets of low vaccination all around us. The town that’s just down the road, for example, was still less than 50% fully vaccinated as of the end of July. I can avoid that area, of course, but the unvaccinated people aren’t going to stay in one place, so every place is dangerous. The very thought of taking Livia into a changing room, where the air smells stale and never seems to move, gives me the heebie-jeebies, but if she’s not going to try things on, then there is hardly any point to shopping in person. So I’m just not going to.

Am I being too cautious? Maybe. But it’s my job to keep her safe, and I do not take that responsibility lightly. TBH, I’m starting to get nervous about the impending school year, too. I don’t know what I’m going to do when the first day of school rolls finally around. If the situation has worsened a lot by then, I may well keep her home, and damn the repercussions.

• Today is a Wednesday, for which I am grateful, because Wednesdays aren’t screen-free days. That means I can watch as much bad television as I please tonight.
• I worked hard today because my work project must be finished by 5:45 tomorrow. I’ll be working hard tomorrow, too. But, for now, all I have to do is throw a load of washed laundry into the dryer, make a blueberry pie, and then watch bad television.
• Speaking of the blueberry pie, I measured out the blueberries and washed them, then left them on the counter to drain. While I was away, Livia ate a whole bunch of them. Oops. Next time I guess I’d better label them.
• My computer is lagging badly. Microsoft is probably adding more stuff that I don’t need or want.
• It is raining again. I don’t think we need any more rain. OTH, it will make our stream flow strong again, which will remind us how totally awesome our Bridge to Nowhere is.