It's Still With Us

That picture is not me, but it sure describes how I feel today.

Here's the thing - we have been told for over a year that if we are going to be so foolish as to meet with people outside our households, we need to be outside, at least six feet apart, and wearing masks. We've been told - at least in my state - in the past month that now most of us are vaccinated, we can skip some of these steps. But only IF fully vaccinated, plus two weeks waiting time, and not on public transit, medical facilities, or educational facilities. Which we should be able to do right now, and would. were it not for the heat.

Some people take that as carte blanche to whip off their masks in the produce aisle, stand in my personal bubble of space, and talk right in my face. Whether they are vaccinated or not, because how's anyone going to check?

Even if I didn't work in one of the must-mask groups (I do), I'm a cautious sort. This is why once we discovered my older daughter's life-threatening allergy to tree nuts (11 years ago today), we've avoided them to the point where we have never had to use an epi-pen; we are just that careful. As a cautious sort, these behaviors are not okay with me. Forget Covid for a moment (as if we could); where have you been? Are those hands clean? Why are you standing so close? I don't want to see your tonsils.

And now, when the weather is predicted to be ridiculously hot by our standards - the Seattle area is a temperate rainforest, thank you, not a tropical one - we're told to stay indoors, out of the sun, drink lots of clear fluids. Even leaving aside that it's going to be over 100F for at least a few days in a row, in June, in Seattle, which is cause for alarm in itself (climate change, anyone?), this is a cause for concern. And even though we're being encouraged to get out and do things together (if fully vaccinated, etc), we are simultaneously being told to stay home and chill. Some places have even canceled events and classes because they were being held outside due to Covid safety concerns. Now they can't do that or they'll have customers passing out from heatstroke.

The people who have been shouting for a year about opening everything up (who have a huge Venn diagram overlap with anti-vaxxers and antimaskers, but that's another article), are now shouting some more about "just get an A/C unit. Wimps." Or they're the landlords who won't pay for their rental unit to have A/C. Or they deny that this is a pattern that clearly indicates climate change. Or some combination of these.

I have one, thanks to a friend who moved cross-country and didn't want to take her heavy unit with her. But most people in my lower economic class do not, and even if they have the wherewithal, they don't have the time to procure one before the heat hits. But we can't take care of them, oh no. That would be socialism (this is where I would normally use the /s sarcasm tag my teens told me about, but I feel like that's not professional enough for an article).

I'm just so tired of the constant selfishness thinly veiled as "personal responsibility."

And when I'm tired, my anxiety ramps up to eleven. I'm so anxious today that I am literally twitchy (no, it's not heat exhaustion or imbalanced electrolytes; that was last week). I went out for an air-conditioned drive with my 13yo, culminating in a slushie for each of us, thinking that maybe it was just restlessness. I have spent the greater part of a year and a half in my own house, after all; I have cause to be restless.

It wasn't.

So here I sit, writing it out, which usually helps.

We shall see.