the midsummer blues

 I know people in Scandinavia (and I guess some other parts of northern Europe) celebrate a Midsummer holiday (I guess it's actually June 23/24, and in some countries they roll it in with St. John the Baptist's day, even though I am pretty sure Midsummer is an old, pre-Christian holiday).

Where I live, June 23, even though it's "early summer" by the calendar reckoning, it's been hot for a while. It often gets hot in early May and stays hot through October. So for me, it's not that much of a celebration. I don't like heat: I don't tolerate it well, I'm not a big fan of bright sun (I burn easily, I get heat exhaustion easily. I'm ready for summer to be over in July. 

Also, right now, I'm sitting here listening to people let off "homebrew" fireworks (sold by various stands in town) and it's loud. I'm trying not to begrudge people their fun - both my dad and my brother liked to shoot off fireworks, though I know my dad was more careful than a lot of people here are. I do remember one summer when we were up at my uncle's lake cabin, they constructed a trough so bottle rockets could be launched out over the lake, which, yeah, litter in the lake, but it seemed safer than the more random setting off

At least it's been wet here this spring so the chances of fire are low; it's not been that way every year.

But yes. It's been hot and I am OVER IT and I can tell it affects my mood. I'm tired when I walk out of class every Monday - more and more I learn that lecture-intensive classes after noon do not work for me. Labs are different; you give a short pre-lab and then walk around answering questions; you don't have to be on the top of your game the whole time, and there are downtimes when you can just stand there and watch people work. 

Also, I'm right in front of a LED (? I think it is?) smartboard and MAN that thing gets hot. I was dying last week when it was over 100 degrees outside. And I think part of my exhaustion after the class is that heat. 

I think there are three weeks left. I still need to cover log-linear models and talk a little about multivariate analyses and Bayesian stats (and I can't find my book on that!) and non-parametrics. 

But anyway. Was sad and tired when I got home. I went out in the backyard and tried to cut brush - sometimes that helps and I also got on the list for next week to have it picked up (my city makes it hard for stuff like that, you have to call and it's only once a month) . It helped some, but there are a lot of overwhelming things in the world. Least of which, but closest to me, that twitter's dying. Yes, I have no love for the manboy who now runs it, and I figure he's actually taken some kind of Duke Brothers style bet where another oligarch bet him a dollar he couldn't destroy a popular social media site within a year. But it still makes me sad. I have friends on there who don't seem to be migrating to any of the places I might hang out and I'll mostly lose contact (for a couple of them, I guess I have numbers I could text them at. But I hate doing that; I feel like texting people bothers them because you're imposing on their time whereas on social media, if they want to see what you posted, they can look it up and respond i they want - opt-in in a way that texts (or worse, phone calls) aren't. 

Also just the sense that the well-connected, the wealthy, and powerful, even if they have less sense and even compassion than God gave a goose, have the ability to take something that was a good way to keep up with the world, and destroy it. 

I also remember way back in January 2016, one Friday evening, when my brother called me to ask if I'd heard from our parents, that he couldn't reach them, and I started a chain of calls to find out, and in between worrying and trying to figure who to call next, I had people on Twitter who figuratively sat with me and prayed for my family and you KNOW that meant something. Ultimately everything was OK (A medication mix-up sent him to the ER but he went home that same night) but then three and a half years later people sat with me again as he was dying.....and that's worth something, and that means something, and it makes me mad that someone who could buy and sell me many times over would probably belittle it. People make me sad these days, they very seldom live up to what I would hope they could be.

And now - apparently there's been another mass shooting, this time in Philadelphia. (I have a few friends there; I hope they're all OK). I don't know what's up with humanity; it's like we've forgotten other people are PEOPLE, that we think those around us are "NPCs" and their lives don't matter.

Anyway, I cut brush for almost an hour (and pulled weeds) and made what feels like a very small dent. I mean, I'm doing it PARTLY for the exercise, but. it would also be nice to see a big effect of what I've done. No lie, one of the distressing things about living in a warm and sometimes-rainy climate is how rapidly weeds and brush take over no matter what you do. I don't *quite* have the money to bring in landscapers a few times a year to cut it all out, so it's on me to. 

***

I really want to start the new sweater, but figure I should be disciplined, so I pulled out Chalcedony to work some more on it. I'm not as close to the sleeve divides (60 rows in) as I thought I was, but maybe I work on this for a while? I don't know. I want to finish something

I did do more sewing on the blocks for the current quilt yesterday but wound up bailing on that early to cut brush for a while because I felt restless and also the view out my sewing room is into the back yard so I can see how bad it is.