Cold Snaps and Heads Up

This is such an evocative video for all the things this strange year has lacked — friends, food, music and convivial fun — especially this summer.  It’s a catchy tune, too.

We’re currently having a cold snap — a wet towel pop on bare skin kind of snap, that is.  It went from the 90’s F (30’s C) to the 40’s F(4-6 C)  in a 24-hour period and for the next 24 hours never climbed out of the 40’s F.  We’re in luck today, as the predicted high is 57 F (13.8 C).   After a predicted high of 77 F (25 C) tomorrow, our highs will be in the 80’s (26+ C) for the next 9 days.   I have resolutely refrained from turning on the heat despite the fact that it’s noon and 70 F (21.1 C) at my desk, which is consistently the warmest spot in the house.  I just put on more clothes (and got a twin size snuggle rug out of the chest and put it on the bed).

My sleep cycle is out of sync again — what a surprise (not).  I was drowsy and threatening to go to sleep in the chair, so I went to bed at 5 p.m. and, not surprisingly, woke up at 3 a.m. to discover it was 68 F (20 C) on the hall thermostat.  I did the most intelligent thing I could do.  I went back to bed and covered up.

Time was, I could play various android games on my Kindle Fire 10 while listening to internet radio on a streaming app, a most enjoyable pastime.   Alas, no more.  As of about three weeks ago, the games suddenly decided to promptly kick the stream off line the minute I try to play them.  Repeatedly and stubbornly.  I am nigh unto a state of screaming rant trying to find a fix — an hour on the phone with Amazon’s help person, hours more fiddling with the tablet to try to hit on the right setting.  I emailed the streaming app people and the various games people and told them which, what, when, and screenshots — and expressed my excessive displeasure at whatever they did to break up what was once a happy pairing.  Did it help? Nope.

I’m so disgusted with the whole shooting match that I’m about two inches from uninstalling the games, which is a shame, because they’re nice games, but listening to my music while I play makes them so much nicer.  That’s one more pleasure the world has stolen from me, and I vascillate between disgruntled and irate.  Having to give a miss to this opportunity to snuggle up beneath covers and play games has not improved my mood.  I realize that I should be grateful that I’m not burnt to the ground, hurricaned into sopping pieces, or COVIDed into an early grave, but that doesn’t stop me from my God-given right to feel like a thwarted two-year-old named Karen.

Now that I’ve established my mental state when I got up out of a warm bed into  a cold 7 o’clock this morning to get dressed and dutifully trundle off to that epidemiologist’s Valhalla  that is the VA clinic for my yearly labs . . .  It’s cold, I’m in so many risk groups it’s not funny, I get past the Spanish Inquisition at the front door, go up to the desk to check in, only to discover my appointment was cancelled and nobody bothered to tell me.  I came home chilled and even crankier than when I left.  I actually made a pot of hot TAZO chai tea in my stainless steel 32 oz water bottle when I got home.  I’m thinking I may need to get up here directly and zot some soup in the microwave — and a melted cheese sandwich on toast also sounds appealing.

This bout of unseasonable frigidity would be the perfect time to murder some of the acrylic yarn shawls I need to block .  A thorough death by steam iron would warm up the house.  Of course, I’m not in the mood to.   Or else boil up a box of rotini to make a chicken and pasta salad would also take some of the chill off, but I’m not in the mood to do that either.  MOOMPH!