Can't believe we're all just doing our stupid little activities as the world burns. Have a meeting, pick up bagged salad at the store, answer texts about a friend's visit. "YAY!" I type, squinting in the burning hot September sun.
The cafe still doesn't allow me to order coffee in a glass. For pandemic reasons. But there are several strangers at the bar, maskless sharing such close air. I take the plastic latte, try not to think about it. Use my metal straw, wonder if the metal in the earth will actually be better than, what, the couple hundred straws it's saved? I'm not a scientist.
We have those and we didn't listen to them.
Question if that email was passive aggressive and if my response was in return? I didn't mean for it to be. But how you feel and what you did are two very different things. Wonder what will politeness be at the end of days. I like my job because it's creative and pink and cute and the money is good. I'm saving the extra I took home this month for an emergency. As though we're not in a climate emergency now. That's the term we're supposed to use, according to my environmental groups. "Global warming" was bad branding because it's not just that. There are also the Texas blizzards and NYC floods. I was told some ten years ago "climate change" was more accurate, but oil companies made that up. I only learned recently. It was a very sneaky way to sound professional about the whole thing. Things change that's life. I don't believe my life will be as long as I used to believe it would be.
Or maybe I should be spending every dime. If the computers really fry that alleged money, numbers on the internet, won't get me much. I think I'll have wished I bought more cakes and tipped better. Although I already came to that conclusion a few months ago, and I've been doing it. I'd be more extravagant if I had more material desires. I don't like delivery that much and I have no need for new clothes. If anything, I wish I would have gone out more when I lived in Chicago. But I couldn't. It would be so handy if you could give what you had in the future or past to your present self, but it doesn't work that way. Our government could give us a Green New Deal though. And, alarmingly, excitingly, it would truly work. I know. I couldn't believe it either. But, yes, it would work. And we could force it. But "we're" not. So. Something something get what you deserve. I make my stupid little calls to representative, pleading to end oil drilling. "Friends" I know saying, "You go, girl" and then not participating. I don't need a cheerleader, I need someone to kidnap the CEO of Shell.
But then again my hamster is only six months old. She's never known anything before the year 2021, and she is good lump. We're happy you're here, anyway.
Still, the work email makes me question. I have to lay in bed twenty minutes and close my eyes and give myself a little speech about not being weird when inside I am going insane. I type away at stupid little messages on this stupid little box whirring because I'm in the bedroom and the AC is in the living room. 13% of millennials can afford to buy a home. But maybe if I could, I wouldn't. Why? So I can spend good years fixing it up to have an earthquake rip the foundation apart, so an insurance company where my peers--overworked and melting--can argue with me about what settlement I'm not getting? I don't mind small spaces. Less to accrue, means less to lose.
Saw a video that this was the last "normal" summer of our lives. I'd assumed they meant because it's the "coldest" summer of our lives. But no, it was a Covid thing. Because Delta is just the first of many strains. Is going to a haunted house safe? Most people vaxxed, masks required. It's not the smartest choice, but not the stupidest. That was capitalism. Will there be haunted houses next year if the pandemic is worse, worse? In two years if the smoke from fire season persists? In eight if the houses quit being haunted when the planet is in itself.
