The smoke from a thousand wild fires has settled into a large portion of Northern California and has now become a weather system. It’s been the weather for a few days now and the forecast for tomorrow is…. smoky. The air quality has gone beyond the health warnings for the elderly and those with respiratory problems. Things are more along the lines of “We’re all screwed, stay in your house, close your windows, close your doors and turn on your air conditioners”.
There’s a big red ball up in the sky that’s the closest thing we’ve seen to the sun for the last three days. The lower the red ball sinks in the sky, the more it disappears into the dense lower layer of smoke and darkness is coming a little earlier while we are supposed to be at the peak of daylight hours. It’s kind of eerie, but mostly, it’s kind of uncomfortable. Like a slow suffocation.
Satellite picture here.
I’ve been cycling a lot lately, over hill and dale, along the coast, through the redwoods and city streets. Miles and miles of cycling. I do it all from the air conditioned comfort of the sports club I joined a month ago. I have neither the cojones nor the desire to go out and bicycle the streets for real, having a distrust of strangers in cars. I really like this homogenized version of the sport. The Expresso bikes have become my favorite workout. Watching the scenery change on the flat screen attached to the bike is distracting from the fact that I’m exercising, plus it has a login feature and connects with the Internet, allowing you to check on your progress from your home computer. Calories burned, miles cycled and time spent on the bike are all logged.
I could get addicted to this. Here’s hoping!
Today I received my annual physical. Even though it’s business as usual with the cyclical events of my body, the physician was required to discuss certain changes that could strike at any time, any minute in fact, since I have recently celebrated my fifty second birthday. At the end of my visit, I was given a manila envelope with the words “Midlife” written on the front in large letters and a goodie bag of condoms. Seems only yesterday that I was leaving the doctor’s office with a lollipop.
I’ve just opened the ominous envelope and it contains some literature and one pamphlet on menopause that reads something like this:
“Warning: Your body is about to self destruct. Mother Nature no longer requires your reproductive services and so you will begin to experience aching joints, extreme sweating, frequent urination, headaches, hot flashes, insomnia, mood changes, night sweats, decrease in ability to concentrate or recall, vaginal dryness and changes in sexual desire”.
A change in sexual desire? So what are they saying here? That if one finds themselves unable to recall where they left the personal lubricant and while rummaging around frantically, sweating profusely between mad dashes to the bathroom to pee, while their head throbs and their joints ache and getting more and more pissed off in the process, they just may lose that loving feeling?
Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I’m tossing the pamphlet in the garbage and going to the gym.
