Get Write on It

If you don't know much about Cincinnati, Ohio (where I live), then I'll put you a little up to speed. Over the past few years especially, our temperatures have been setting record highs and lows and erratic weather patterns that mean we no longer experience four separate seasons. We've been seeing more wildlife than we commonly had and this includes the fact that my sister was bitten by a cottonmouth snake, which is almost unheard of here. We have three 'common' venomous snakes in Ohio and that isn't one of them. And no, the house she was in was not the home of an illegal snake enthusiast. Because of the weather fluctuations, animals' migratory patterns and dormancies are out of whack. In fact, the trees almost immediately start belching out pollen at the first sign of warm weather, so it's not limited to the animals.

So that puts me here; abnormal allergies for this time of year and next to no energy. If not for the simplicity of the formatting process, thanks to Scrivener 3 and D2D for REALLY minimizing what I couldn't accomplish with Word and the usual submitting to retailers, I'd really be struggling to get that stuff done.

As is, I've found it rather difficult to get right into... anything. I've been poking at everything, but very little takes. A little crochet, a little writing, a little drawing, but nothing is really pulling me. I feel the ideas fuzzy on the edges of my brain, but the starter is clicking when I turn the key. I feel a wellness week coming on--one where I sleep, practice mindful eating, exercise and tend to allergies and low energy issues. I'd already intended to get to playing more Kingdom Hearts 3, yet I'm still a little disappointed that my creative side isn't a little more engaged. Even if it's down to crochet or making those bead sprite magnets, but no, right now, it's a bit of a vegetative consumption time.

For that reason, I think that the writing will come down to blogs or the short stories I was working on.

I would like to throw up the UBL for UnSung: use this link to purchase/preorder it from your favorite retailer. Or you can look me up by name on any major retailer. If you don't see it on yours, drop me a message and I'll look into it. I try to keep an eye on every channel, but on occasion, especially for my earlier books, there can be holes in what's available where.

Oh, for the record, my sister is doing fine. The finger is actually healing better than expected, but she is still being tested daily for blood infections and any change in the finger. It appears to be draining well and while there is little feeling in it, there is great circulation. So far, no sign that the finger will need to be amputated but it may be another week or so before they know for sure.

It's a good time to remind everyone that, with a snake bite, get to a hospital immediately. Even with non-venomous bites, there are serious risks for infection, including salmonella, and every second is crucial in survival. Don't leave these things up to chance.

Winter Wonder What Now?

Positive posts on FB are why I still bother with social media. Rainbows, clouds that look like dragons and middle fingers, hilarious animal videos and the wit of my many friends. I don't even hate that when weather hits people clamor to show pictures of the destruction and look for each other and scramble to make sure their animals are comfortable. Like books, the less the posts are attempting to influence or call for sympathy, the more likely I am to allow myself to find those depths for myself.

But this post is about weather. Shit's ridiculous here and in many other places besides. These aren't old gripes but rather new for the Cincinnati I've spent a good chunk of my life in. The trees around here have no idea when to cycle, the bugs multiple in huge numbers and take over when the cold would have taken care of it-- it's unnatural chaos in nature. 

This spring, there were several damning false starts. Flower bulbs shot up almost immediately at the first sign of melt then stopped again. The trees didn't even try. Until they did, suddenly, and we had some of the worst cases of asthma, respiratory distress, the pollen and mold counts were insane. Just tree sperm everywhere and well beyond the usual spring cycle, into summer. It was actually a milder summer than usual and one without the drought of the year before that turned everything shriveled and brown. There was plenty of rain and yet, the tomatoes just didn't grow in abundance. I still pine for the summer like the one where there more tomatoes than we and the thieving squirrels could handle.

Fall? What's fall? We had about two weeks that felt like it. Leaves finally started turning colors and the nights were good for bonfires. Yet there were and are still a lot of green on the trees.

Then winter happened.

Kind of. Not really. We got snain, what the boys and I call the combo of fat snow flakes and rain. We woke up yesterday, at first admiring the fingers of ice dangling everywhere, not really paying much attention to the big downed branch in the front yard that came down while we slept.

We heard a loud crack, what sounded like someone loudly and poorly opening a bag of potato chips and saw another rather large branch come down. I went outside to look and immediately noticed that every tree still burgeoning with still green leaves looked at least ten feet short, drooping with the sheer weight of ice that coated every branch, stem and leaf. I told the boys we'd get a better look when we went outside to go to school and nearly every fifteen minutes another branch went down.

Reports all over the area reported down branches and even huge trunks, split under the weight of weather that trees here just hadn't evolved to handle. Power lines as well. People started to post about not having power, some getting it back after hours, some going on a day or more. We worried about it too. A couple of branches rest right over our power lines and if the rain had kept coating everything where it froze, we'd be among them.

I was already devising a way to keep my tropical fish alive if it came to it. Luckily, our house still gets hot water and the stove still works when the power is out.

Until the tree gets taken down, I can't say I'm not thinking about the what-ifs. All the same, nature used to be an adaptive cycle that wavered but always managed to balance out. These years have been anything but.

It doesn't matter if people believe climate change is real or that we affect it greatly. There are actual studies that can tell you that not believing we are part of the problem is willful ignorance. If you're only going to make an argument for human comfort, then you can't deny that even what is out of our hands is still something we have to clean up then work to solve. When you suspect that something is killing you, are you really that surprised that rather than being cautious at the first sign, it got worse because you waited for all the evidence to came in?

There's enough. We're fucking up a world we have the run of, even though we also have the means to fix it. We're sniping away at insignificant petty shit and the greed, even brought to spotlight, is never really tackled. We all bitch about it. I do too. And maybe we can't win people over, certainly not by being 'passionate' know-it-all assholes at that.

We're attacking each other over the big unknowns, writing off what nature is telling us clear as day. Even though they don't directly correlate to all arguments of climate change. I'm not going to hoard lists here of every natural and unnatural occurrence as a way to make everyone bow to the whims        of the planet. I don't disagree that the earth does go through drastic natural shifts. Yet don't use those as blankets for a shitty carbon footprint. I won't make a case for being efficient. Just don't be the dick trashing your neighborhood and choosing luxury over harmony every time.

Life would suck if we always let moral judgements be public domain. I get that. Yet denial over the evident, the whole ant and the grasshopper dilemma of not doing shit until it's too late? Don't be that guy. I'm sure even if you are, people still love or tolerate you. It's just disgusting to me that someone like that pretends to give a shit about the seed they spread. People who pretend to guard the sanctity of human life and willfully give their progeny a future full of their table scraps.

Whether you plan on putting these things to thought or not, give your children some desire to figure out how to help ecosystems heal at least. Human intervention in nature CAN leave an impact on human progress. No, you don't have to go vegan or live a joyless life of strict discipline to be mindful of your impact. Encourage and reward those who are doing it. Look at the efforts of permaculture farmers, scientists, doctors. You don't have to be the big change to support it.

I know I'm jumping between two topics that could be muddied as far as how much they actually intersect, but when people start diving down the rabbit hole of climate change, they sometimes brush it off as natural, disregarding that human intervention is just as natural. Our methods of self-preservation and progress are a necessary balance. We can build a better life, but not on the garbage of the broken things left half-working. We tidy the space and learn from the mistakes.

Maybe I give my own species too much credit, for what we can do and what we will do. I live a good life, but we all think that too. I know it's useless to get frustrated when the mess you try to avoid is the mess someone else makes. What keeps me happy is doing what I believe is right for me. I don't police those I love and I don't police the planet. I just sincerely hope we will continue to discuss it.

Because these goddamn trees need some boot camp style weather training at the very least. 

Not a Fan of Summer

I used to be a fan of summer. It's impossible to say for certain when I went from a summer person to a fall/winter. My skin stopped tanning and started breaking out in rashes. Bikinis made me hiss in revulsion. Shaving became more trouble than it's worth. Fall and winter became fluffy blankets, curling up in hoodies, hot drinks, crochet, the smell of leaves and their changing colors, writing and untouched blankets of early morning glittering snow...

I could run the comparison charts, PowerPoint the fuck out of it, but there's one grand reason this summer stinks and it's not the nuisance of fireworks.

Hot. Summer. Garbage.

I love morning walks, the coolest time to fit them in, but it's still no reprieve from Wednesdays in the summer. Stubbornly, I dodge garbage cans, holding my breath or living dangerously by breathing shallow. I wish Rumpke had a summer bleach spray service because it can be vomit-inducing.

Sunglasses are foggy sweat goggles already but it has still crossed my mind to hang a wicker basket full of potpourri across my face like a horse's muzzle. Would Vick's VapoRub do any good or would I stilll be immersed in the smell of week old diapers and beer enemas with a mentholated twist?

Rest assured, it's not for love of candy corn, pumpkin spice lattes or hayrides. I love just hunkering down under blankets and settling down into low maintenance hygiene. No painting toes for sandalwear, no shaving legs. It also takes well below freezing weather for me to even need the heater so I don't have to hear something running constantly to avoid sleeping in a puddle of sweat. It's not even the holidays or the weather itself. Too many grey days can make me gloomy too. Still, garbage does not transform into silent olfactory assassins. 

That counts for everything.

Cincinnati doesn't see a lot of mild weather like it used to. We get a lot of summer-winters over the years. Mild weather is actually ideal. However, when we hypothetically have to choose between hot and cold, we laugh bitterly first... Then tend to have a PowerPoint ready with a clearly chosen side.