Hello, folks.

Somehow, it’s July.

If you read my site, you won’t be surprised that June was a bit of a slog for me (as I posted uh. Almost nothing. *cough*  Sorry about that; I’m working on getting back to getting stuff posted both here and on Patreon).

Some of this – well, no, that was July.  July has been a slog because my *@#(@& prescriber didn’t call in my ADHD-meds script, after, at last count, THREE calls from the pharmacy.

You know, the one thing I’m on that has serious withdrawal issues?

*grumble*

Okay, that aside!

My job has said “If you can do your job from home, you should remain working from home.”  So it seems I’m going to be here in Alder Cave for the foreseeable future (I mean, the future is pretty unforeseeable right now, but at least my job decided on: what they’re doing about Autumn classes.  What they’re doing about our salaries.  That sort of thing.)

It’s kind of weird, living in a time-and-place where on one hand, everything seems rather the same from day to day and on the other hand the future is so completely up in the air.  I get a little boggled by the scope of this whole thing if I think about it too much.  How’s everyone else doing on that front?  Life-is-life?

Let’s see.  I learned how to cut my husband’s hair (first the clippers for the back and then I learned how to do the scissors for the front and it looks pretty decent if I do say so myself)!

I also learned that he’s liking mine long which, ahem.  Does mean I can’t get him to cut it but is weird.

Also, a july with temps in the high 80s is not REALLY the time I wanted to learn this… Hair is heavy.

I had a bob before this started.

Well, okay.  To be fair, I’d been putting off getting a haircut for like a month or two before the lockdown, just because I generally go into hermit mode in late winter – that’s just sort of a me thing.

So I had a bob before 2020.

It’s now long enough for a ponytail.  It’s long enough to twist up on top of my head in a clip.

And I had to FIND my clips.  It hasn’t been long enough for a clip since I cut it short like… what? 8 years ago?

So right now my hair is at my shoulders and, um, it looks pretty good.  Which doesn’t mean I won’t get a cut soon, but.

Technically NYS is open again.  It’s still wear-your-masks-everywhere, of course, and I’ve found some interesting examples of this:

* The guy at pizza takeout in sandals, board shorts, and a mask.  Priorities.

* Same pizza takeout – the guy who realized he’d forgotten his mask, pulled his t-shirt over his nose, and kept it there the whole time.

* Sub take-out – there was a mid-twenties pair of men in front of me; in front of them was a women with 4 kids.

The woman told one of her kids “you have to have it [your mask] covering your nose” and for a second I thought she was talking to the 20-something guy, who most definitely had his adorable nose sticking out of his mask.
The kids listened better than he did, tho.

There’s a Bad Mask Wearing Bingo card out there; I generally only see “wearing it under the nose” and “forgot it” but I’m intrigued by the VARIETY of masks.

The knit one-layer ones, the Bandito, the “hey I have a summer scarf, this’ll work,” the handmade, the medical mask, the weird sideways-duck-bill medical masks, the Gas Mask (seriously), the neoprene thing with valves…

There’s a lot of variety out there and I love looking at it all.

Dollar General has branded face masks for their employees.

(Dollar General is like 5 minutes away.  Sometimes that’s all I have the spoons for. And they sell milk & ice cream).

Picking this up two days later, because it’s been that sort of week. The prescriber HAS finally called in the prescription – and our pharmacy is out of that med AND it’s on backorder.

I miss my brain.

That being said, we have an AC unit and I love it.  My husband keeps trying to tell me that 90°F is normal but it doesn’t feel normal.  (Rochester has more moderate everything than Ithaca, because of our great inland sea).

On the plus side, heat down here is not nearly as sticky as it is up in Rochester (And winters aren’t as snowy, but I don’t really mind the snow.)

This is likely to be the most unorganized blog post, so please bear with me.  😀 😀

This past weekend was the Fourth of July, of course, and I did not go to a family picnic, of course.  Most of my family is over 70 (okay, Dad’s turning 70 in like a week…) and has had health problems; even if they were going to have a gathering, it wouldn’t be responsible to go breathe on them.

But it made me think about how much of events is tied up in people for me.

So summer holidays – Memorial Day, 4th, Labor Day – are cottage holidays.  My aunt and uncle had a cottage on Lake Ontario, and we would have a picnic there for every summer holiday.  There’d be swimming and boating (They have a smallish? sailboat called the Relief, as well as a Catamaran and a Sunfish).  (My aunt and uncle are dual-income, no-kids, comfortably affluent sorts). There’d be Jello salad and croquet and fireworks (illegal) and sparklers (legal) , and long walks down to the neighboring roads, maybe a bike ride.  There’d be sandcastles and maybe a canoe ride down the creek that fed into the lake next to their cottage, and we’d go home tired and peopled-out and happy.

I miss the feeling like everything made sense and I belonged, the way that family picnics and hanging out with my cousins were an understandable thing that was the same every year.  I miss the cottage, too, and the way it felt something like home, like Grandma-and-Grandpa’s house did, like my dad’s grandfather’s place did.

Traditions are a powerful thing, even if they’re traditions born from habit, even if they’re things you make yourself (Like: T and I go to a movie and sushi every year on Christmas day.  I would be very sad if we did not).  And they change as we get older – and they change, again, now that Covid-19 has changed our whole world.

Tell me about your favorite traditions?

Tell me about your holidays?

What are you missing as you grow/grew up?

What are you missing as Covid-19 changes your plans?

Are there new traditions or new routines you’re making?

(“turn around the car to go back and get the masks… again…” probably not the best new routine 😉

How is your summer (Winter to the Southern Hemisphere) going?

Why are music videos so weird and why is the video for Some Nights a civil war battle?

What are you using for escapism lately? 😀