Things That Make It Rough to Keep on Keeping on

(Obviously these are besides the death of everyone in my family of origin over the past ten years except me and my little brother.)

(1) Spring is here, which means summer is soon to follow

(2) No seasonal fruits are available at the moment. If I want fruit, it has to be dried fruit or imported grapes or extremely expensive apples. 

(3) When did apples get so expensive?

(4) The weather has been both hot and damp over the past few days. If I wanted to live in a city that felt and smelled like an armpit, surely I could pick a better place than Arkansas.

(5) Insomnia

(6) None of my favorite writers are publishing books fast enough. I can only re-reading their older works so many times.

(7) Pollen.

(8) Dishes and laundry have to be done over and over and over. See also: making dinner.

(9) I can't just exercise one day and be done, oh, no, I must exercise every single day

(10) Major papers are coming in, plus drafts of complete scripts for my script writing class. I do love my students but there are 23 in each comp class and ten in the script writing class, and that's 1156 pages of work to read over the next week, and not just read but think about and comment on.

(11) The GOP. What is happening with these people? They have lost their fucking minds. They have left reality. It's gone beyond disturbing and into the realm of "don't they have loved ones who can get them some help?"

(12) There's nothing I really want to eat anymore, except coffee. Ugh.

How to Survive a Heat Dome

Murderously hot weather continues. I took my dog outside (he's blind now, so we have to carry him outside and then stay with him so he doesn't get confused) yesterday afternoon, and a hot wind was blowing across the city, fever hot against my face. 106 degrees at four in the afternoon.

Today will have a high of 103, says the weather channel. Tomorrow is cooler, if we can count a high of 99 as cool. And then back up into the 100s.

How are we surviving? Some tips for living in an old house in Arkansas during a heat emergency (that's what the weather guy called it yesterday -- more than 30 without rain, and killer temps every day):

(1) Eat cold or frozen foods. I've been living on watermelon, cheese, salad, and popsicles. Sometimes I eat pistachios as well. I keep thinking I will have some peas and rice for dinner, after it cools off, but it doesn't cool off until well past midnight, so I never do.

(2) Wear as little as possible. I had two sleeveless shirts and a pair of loose shorts that I wear around the house. 

(3) If you have to go outside, don't stand in the sun. Find some shade. You won't be cool, but you won't get heatstroke either. Also, don't stand in the sun if you're wearing sleeveless shirts, unless you like getting a sunburn in ten minutes.

(4) Don't leave the house after 10:00 in the morning. You can leave after sunset if you have to, but what's opening in your useless town after 8:30? Not much, and I'm speaking from experience here. There's a drugstore which is open all night, and it sells very bad ice cream. Not worth the trip. Get everything done at dawn if you can.

(5) If you do have to leave the house after 10:00 in the morning, take it slow. Park your car in the shade if you can. Drink a lot of water. Be kind to each other. 

(6) The gym has an indoor swimming pool. Unfortunately, this means you will have to go to the gym at 3:00, since the pool is scheduled for classes until then. See above concerning leaving the house after 10:00 a.m.

(7) To save a little $$$, turn off most of your window units at dawn. Keep the curtains drawn after 10:00, especially those on the southwest side of the house. Don't use appliances if you can help it. Eat off paper plates so you won't have to use the dishwasher more than twice a week. Since you're not wearing any clothes and you're showering at the gym, you won't need to do laundry very often either. Yay!

(8) Take naps.

(9) Obsessively check the weather reports. Maybe the forecast will change! Maybe it will only be 95 degrees next week!

(10) Remember fall is only -- checks notes -- nine weeks away!

Weather

Y'all, it is so hot here.

I know, I know it's hot everywhere. And it's Arkansas in July, of course it's hot.

But wow. I have to water my sad little garden (three tomato plants, some basil, and some oregano) twice a day, and I can't take the dog out for his walk until after sunset.

Eight more weeks until fall. And that's if fall comes on time.

Update

We retrieved the kid from Fayetteville yesterday, in a speedy trip up the mountain. We wanted to get back down the mountain before the big storms hit, which we did, just barely -- the tornado went by just ten miles behind us, where we were stalled on the interstate.

Which is another story.

As we were leaving Fayetteville, about six minutes down the interstate, traffic suddenly came to an absolute standstill. No traffic was coming in the other direction either. We assumed it was a huge wreck. Police cars wailed past on the shoulders, and one ambulance -- just one.

"Must be some wreck," I mused. I had turned the car off and we were waiting. I was watching the weather, but it looked like the huge storm would miss us, despite the near constant warnings that kept coming on NPR, telling us to take shelter at once. (Where? Not even any ditches on that stretch of the interstate.)

After we'd waiting nearly an hour, the traffic started moving again. We passed about sixty police cars, their trouble lights spinning, up under a bridge. No wreck that I could see. Also, about a mile on, we saw the police had shut down the north-bound interstate, and it was still closed. Traffic backed up for miles.

"That's odd," I said, but we were moving, and I got the car up to 80, getting home just as the storm reached the Fort.

Later we found that someone had robbed a bank in a town near us, and the police had shut down the interstate in both directions to swoop down on the bank robbers and arrest them. I guess they didn't want to risk shooting passing motorists?

We're home, anyway, and the Kid is home, and our house is still not flooded.

Update on Floods

With the bridges closed, the only route out of our city was State Hwy 59. And since so many people live on one side of the river and work on the other, Hwy 59 had jammed to a standstill by dawn this morning.

The good news is that one of the bridges in now open again -- the river rose more slowly than AR-DOT had been expecting.

The bad news is more rain is expected to fall in Oklahoma and Kansas, both of which feed into the Arkansas River.

We're fine where we are, though, and I'm hoping to get the Kid tomorrow, before the water from OK/KS arrives.

Flooding in the River Valley

The part of Arkansas where I live is on the Arkansas River. This is downstream from the all the massive storms that have hit Oklahoma over the past month.

So our river has been rising steadily over the past week, and starting flooding the city a few days ago. This evening the state closed almost every bridge that goes across the river -- there's still one open, but we would have to drive way out through Oklahoma to reach it, and also from what we've heard, it might close soon too.

This means we're stranded in our little city, I hope for only a few days. The kid is up the mountain, in Fayetteville. We were supposed to go pick him up on Wednesday, to bring him home for the rest of the summer. I'm hoping the bridges will be open by then.

Meanwhile, everyone is stripping the shelves at the Wal-Marts, buying mostly bottled water, from what I could see. I bought ginger ale and extra cream, because I cannot live without my coffee. Also, I don't expect that we will lose water. But someone started a rumor that our water had been contaminated, and there you are.

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Teaching Again

I've picked up a Summer I class from a colleague who has a family emergency, which mean we have a little more money this summer -- yay!

In other news, the air conditioner which was fixed three days ago failed again yesterday afternoon. The landlord sent new guys to fix it. The other guy had said it needed Freon and also my filters needed cleaning (they didn't -- I clean them religiously, mainly because that's one way to help keep the cost of electricity down, summers). He cleaned the clean filters and put in new Freon.

These guys said the compressor was shot. They're supposed to come back today with a new compressor.  I hope they do, and I hope this works. Summer in Arkansas without AC is... well, many people in this country are having a worse week than I am this week, obviously, so I won't say hell on earth. But it's very unpleasant.

Right now I'm in my office, where I'm the only one on the hallway, since it's summer.  I have the AC cranked down to 66.  Bliss.

Complaining Post

This is going to be a whine, so feel free to skip it.

We rent, because my cancer some years back destroyed me financially in a way we are only just beginning to recover from. I don't think we'll ever own a house, at this point.

Luckily, we live in an area where rent is cheap. And we've had more or less decent luck with landlords.

Grades Are In, Summer Begins

I have submitted my last set of grades (go me), and now my first true summer break in -- good shit, thirteen years? Yes, thirteen years -- is about to begin.

Attacked by Giant BUGS!!

The kid and I take our walks in the early evening these days. We just about have to, with the weather Fort Smith has been having lately -- summer's vicious heat having arrived. Today was the first day in two weeks that the temperature did not go over 100, and usually the high was closer to 110 to 100. Also, no rain and few clouds have combined to dry up our world.

So just at or just past sunset (9.00 or so in these parts) is when we go walking.

Which has been fine until lately.

Just lately, and I can't say why -- maybe it's attached to the drought? -- all the cicadas have taken to dropping out of the trees. While this is sad for the cicadas, who struggle around and die on the pavement and roads and among the dry stubble of dead grass in people's lawn, it is worse for me and the kid, because when we're out walking at night, giant cicadas keep landing on us.

I don't know if you have ever seen a cicada up close. Here's a picture of one on Wikipedia.

Our are bigger, and MUCH UGLIER.

Especially when they land on you. And yell at you.

The kid thought it was funny when it was me it happened to. Because I made a sound like this: "AAAAGH!"

But then it happened to her.

Not so funny now, huh?

Enough to put you off exercise, I swear.