Heat and Humility

The nearly unbearable heat and humidity that last couples of days has basically prevented me from doing just about anything other than irritably and immaturely overreacting to the constant sticky feeling that I’ve had for the last three days. When I’ve ridden my bike that breeze is only a temporary relief to the full body sweat that is awaiting me as soon as I stop, so I haven't ridden that much. It’s been so hard for me to concentrate to even so much read that I watched a movie yesterday, something I rarely do, and the entire baseball All-Star Game tonight, something I probably haven’t done since I was twelve (just a couple of years ago if you ask the right person), just to take my mind off of the heat. And I swear that the next fucking bug that lands on my monitor (I write this in the late night dark, undried from a shower just to be able to sit still long enough to hopefully finish it) just might land a perfectly justifiable punch that will more than likely break my hand rather than the monitor. And yet I’m still not convinced that I won’t do it.

Still, I was able to get my weekly food shopping in this morning. When your house is on the eastern end of a duplex and facing south (or north for that matter), there isn’t much in the way of what is popularly known as “air movement” brought on by wind blowing into your house unless you have a fan or two (we only have one and it’s on the opposite side of the house from my room). This lack of movement creates a somewhat—that is: somewhat insufferable—warm, uncomfortable, and still air that sits smugly in the house all night and day. If you manage to get any sleep, it’s not even that good of a sleep and makes you wish you didn’t even bother wasting your time.

So when one finally steps out of the house from this sort of setting, it seems a lot cooler than it is. So as my roommate and I walked out to ride our bikes to Wegman’s, we thought it was far cooler than it was. Only after getting to Wegman’s and leaving did we finally realize otherwise.

(A bug came by again and I tried to smack the shit out of it—I went with more of a slap—but I goddamned missed him. It won’t happen again.)

After unloading those groceries we then went to my new favorite place for food, and where I now do the majority of my grocery shopping, Guercio and Son’s market over on Grant St. By no means a well-kept secret, as evident by the lines always accompanying the deli and the checkouts, I nevertheless had never gone there until just a couple weeks ago. It is now a weekly stop if not more frequent.

For a store that has an old-time feel in the face of the overabundance of a Wegman’s and the impersonal convenience of convenient store, it offers exactly all I need in the manner of both abundance and convenience. Half the bike ride that it is for me to Wegman’s and, by all noted calculations, cheaper or on par with most of the items that I buy there, it’s an obvious preference for me

(And why in the hell does my left hand smell like a goddamned flower/weed all of a sudden?)

Combined between the two stores I spent just over $24 for the week. Other than the half gallons of milk that I’ve been buying at the Lexington General Store just across the street for $.99 (better even than a gallon deal at Wegman’s), that will pretty much be the entirety of my spending for food this week. In fact, it is just under half of the $52.23 I’ve spent thus far for at least two weeks’ worth of food, putting me right in the $100-$125 per month on food, which I will be tallying as a separate field and figure that it will either be the second or third biggest expense each month.

This is more than affordable enough, especially considering that today I found out that we haven’t paid our deposit in full and we’ll have to pay a little extra over the next few months in rent to even that out, thus giving me my first unexpected expenditure of the year. This normally wouldn’t be a big problem except that normally people have a job to pay such bills. To make matters a little more irritating I finally did my federal tax return today (filed for an extension in April due to a long overdue W-2) and am getting $100 less that I originally thought and planned for. This of course means that I have to step up my job search immediately.


And by step up I mean begin. And that might be the most irritating idea of the entire irritating few days.

(You never really know just how much you have to look at the keyboard for characters like ‘$’ or parenthesis until you try typing in the dark, which you’re only doing in hopes to spare yourself of the one more degree the light would add to the room.)

I hear that it isn’t supposed to be more than 80 degrees for the next week and I certainly hope this is true. Because my room still feels like 95 degrees, I haven’t got a decent night’s sleep in three days and probably won’t again tonight, bugs keep coming out of nowhere and in different shapes (just had to kill a spider spinning down from the ceiling that went right in front of my face), the beads of water that I didn’t dry from my body now feel like bugs so that they very water I meant to cool and calm me is now further irritating me, and I think my right hand now smells like that weed or flower as well.

(And now my computer, with propitious timing, is acting obnoxiously slow.)

If it’s the little things in life that make it enjoyable then it’s certainly true that it’s the little things that make it sometimes insanely irritable.

At least I have food and a place I like to get it.