No, I’m not dead; I don’t even have covid — yet, although it seems to be creeping ever closer, given the number of people I know who have or just had it. But I see I haven’t been here at my blog for the entirety of July, which somehow is half over.
I meant to be here; on the 4th I planned to recount for you all the fun I used to have participating in the practically world-famous Crested Butte parade with the Holy Order of Qapla. Fortunately (I feel), I got busy and did not get that post written, since I would likely have been putting it out the to the world just about the time another how-could-this-happen-oh-wait-the-warning-signs-are-everywhere angry young man with incredibly easy access to weapons of major destruction was busy mowing down parade spectators in Illinois.
Perhaps I shouldn’t let others’ misery impinge on my happy memories, or perhaps I might wonder how I would have been able to know this was going to happen, other than the Illinois governor, speaking in the aftermath, pointed out that while we celebrate the 4th of July annually, mass shootings have become a weekly American tradition. By now we should all be assuming that another shooting will mar the day. Oh well, huh?
At any rate, I didn’t even get my tone-deaf July 4 post started as I instead indulged in my self-confessed overuse of water in an attempt to keep flora alive in a drought of 1,200-year proportions.
I try to be mindful, but it comes down to me, like every other entitled person out there, thinking that conservation is fine so long as someone else is doing the conserving. It is a conundrum: how are we going to save the planet by planting more trees if we can’t water said trees?
I recently watched a segment on CBS News about the water situation in Los Angeles, where if you’re of regular means and/or law-abiding, you (barely) water as instructed, even though it means watching all your landscaping turn brown. If you’re Sylvester Stallone, Howie Mandel, Some Kardashian or a bunch of rappers I don’t know and you have a lot of money, you water whenever the heck you want and just pay the city’s fines.
Except that it turns out if you do that four months in a row, the city installs some little metal piece in your water line that chokes the water flow waaaaaay down — the installer said he put one on his own line just to see, “and it was not fun.” Most of the celebrity violators didn’t respond to CBS’ requests for comment, but one (I don’t remember which) protested that they have hundreds of trees that will die without water.
All of us should feel the pain of this dilemma. Of course, every swimming pool shown in the aerial shots was full, but we have to be realistic about necessities, right?
In addition to guilt for using this valuable resource, even as I’m trying to save another resource, I have been engendering a new hardening of opinion toward those who attempt to predict the weather for a living. For the entirety of this half-month, these people who get paid to get everything wrong assure me it is going to rain at least a bit each and every day. And each and every day it does not.
I can see how these misguided “professionals” might be led astray: the skies darken, the breeze lifts, the humidity rises . . . and then nothing. Except for that one day I rode my bike through a lightning-filled downpour, arriving at work soaked to the socks.
Otherwise it’s been nothing but empty promises, promises I’m learning to ignore even as the breaking of them causes rising irritation. How can it rain everywhere but here? How can the radar be that green and no moisture fall?
It did rain a bit yesterday afternoon — not enough to justify me driving to work like I did, but once again I believed the weather’s press, and was sure a sky that dark was bound to leave me drenched — and that’s because Cattlemen’s Days has started here in Gunnison. If there’s anything that can bring the rain, it’s Cattlemen’s.
During my endless watering amid empty promises, I stopped to do some math, and setting out sprinklers, which sounds like a quick little chore, turns out to cut into my already over-stuffed mornings by about 45 minutes.
And when we add in the Tour de France, which had me depressed for its predictability up until a couple days ago, when the two-time defending champion finally got knocked back a bit, unexpectedly — well, it doesn’t matter how many brilliant thoughts I have, if any. They aren’t making it onto electronic paper.
Maybe if Cattlemen’s, or haying season, which follows right on the heels of celebration, can bring rain —
[Let’s just see how gullible I am: my weather forecast is calling for rain every day next week. Just like last week, and the week before that . . .]
— and I figure out how to multi-task better than I have managed in nearly 60 years, my blog drought will ease up. Or not: I keep promising that — maybe I’m a meteorologist after all — and instead of closing my gaps between posts they grow ever wider.
But I am here, and not dead or diseased (although I finally got my health fair results back, and my cholesterol levels are terrible), at least for now, and thought you might want to know that.
Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast 