You know how January is symbolized by Janus, a two-faced god, looking both forward and back?

I have decided what August is symbolized: a toddler having a tantrum.

So many people are unhappy right now. So many people are in a funk. There is so much fouled up communication out there - so many people on the verge of being VERY VERY ANGRY or on the verge of running screaming in tears from the situation. (I am in the second group more than the first, but then I don't do "angry" well.)

It also seems that there are people going around looking to misunderstand things - there seem to be a lot of missed-communications that seem almost deliberate in their nature. Like people are looking for something to be hurt and offended by.

It's hot, it's sticky. Where I live we don't exactly have ozone alert days (it's too rural), but it sure feels like there's a fug of something bad hugging close to the ground surface. My lungs burn when I try to take a deep breath.

I re-read my old archives, and it seems I'm most cheery, voluble, and come up with the best posts in January and February - and in August, everything I write is lumpen and leaden.

There seems to be a whole wave of "meh" out in blogland - lots of people writing posts on things like the art vs. craft snarkiness, or the whole "I don't knit from PATTERNS" snobs...things like that. It's like every bad feeling - whether it's a bad feeling coming from inside you (as in, "What I do is no good. Why am I not clever like the other people I read about") or from outside you (as in the whole "here's a clique and they're being rude to people who aren't part of them" thing) is coming out and blooming like some kind of hell-spawn flowering weed. Like Jimson weed, only not pretty and twice as poisonous.

I don't know. I'm beginning to think that the French idea of Fermeture Annuelle is a good one - just shut everything but the essential services down for the entire month of August, get as many people out of the city as possible, and have as few people work as possible. So people can lie around and read mystery novels and buy fresh tomatoes at the farmers' market and then figure out ways to cook them.

I know they say Americans don't "do" vacation well - some people have even claimed that our work-lives are now such paradises that we're happier at work than we are trying to relax. But I think maybe there is something about August - something that chips away (or, perhaps, given the heat and humidity, melts the edges of) the sanity of the most balanced person. And it makes the less-than-balanced ones more snappy or needy or more WHATEVER.

But I have to admit - I find the thought, right now, of being able to shut everything workrelated (and volunteer-work related: just because I don't get paid doesn't mean it's not WORK) down for a couple weeks and run away somewhere and do as I please. And be forbidden from taking research work with me.

I'll be glad when it begins to cool down a little. These heat indexes over 100 are really, really old.