No Way to Win - Pasty White Boy!

I had the occasion to visit the dermatologist a little while back.  She checked my aging Nordic skin. "Ummm" she says, "This looks a little troubling".  "Do you use sunscreen?"  blah blah blah  "You should be careful about getting too much exposure to the Sun's harmful rays, especially with this type of skin."

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I had the occasion to visit my family practice doctor to get the results of a routine blood work up.  "Well, everything looks pretty good, though you do need to cut back on [blah blah blah].  However though, you are lacking in Vitamin D." 

But I drink my milk every morning Dr. Dyo, I tell him.  Dr Dyo replies, "That ain't going to cut it, I mean for a pasty white boy like you, you are seriously deficient in Vitamin D.  In fact you are developing rickets, your bones are about to be warped!" 

How about scurvy? Am I going to be like a salty, sea-dog with scurvy?"  "No, vitamin C intake looks fine, but you'll have to take several weeks of mega dose Vitamin D (here's a prescription - and they're cheap pills) and of course you'll have to get out into the sun a bit more to allow you body to process the vitamin D - [pasty white boy]."

Tough choices.  The plight of a pasty white boy: Sun or Shade?  Bones or Epidermis?  Rickets of Carcinoma?

Misery Loves ...

They say "misery loves company".  Maybe. 

I say misery loves record-breaking isolation that truly separates us from the run-of-the-mill unpleasantness.  Yes, misery loves something so stinking rotten and so low-down deep that you can wallow in your misery until it is over your head, misery so thick you can blow bubbles in it.  Misery so off-the-charts that you have to pick your face out of the dirt, and as you scape the dust off your tongue, you feel a perverse pride in saying, "This is the worst.  It has never been more worser".  For some, this is the sorry condition for denizens of our 2011 Dallas summer.

It was long held that 1980 was the unbeatable record hottest summer in Dallas.  For years, when the local news gave the weather reports with the day's high and low, they also included the record high temperature for that date, and so often we heard, "the record high for this date was of course set in the blistering year of 1980."  1980 had 69 days in triple digits, the likes of which many believed would not be seen again.  Wrong.  For 2011 we ended August with 68 days of high temperatures recorded at 100 degrees or above - just 1 day short of tying the record.  If we have endured this much drought and this extreme heat, all summer of 2011, surely we deserve to suffer just a bit more just so we can be officially miserable to the max.  Then, after a few days of cool(er) temperatures, the high pressure ridge returned to sit upon Big D like the a sweaty sumo wrestler, and on Tuesday, Sept., 13 we reached a scorching 107 degrees (F) setting a record that now stands at 71 days of 100+ degrees for 2011.  During this time, the average minimum temperature from June through August was above 80.  It got hot and stayed hot through the night.  Much grass is dead, trees are stressed, but we cling as survivors to our record misery.

Now, Suneson House Rules state (Sec. III, Art. 14) that if we have 10 consecutive days of high temperatures above or equal to 100 degrees; key lime pie will be served for dessert.  In my heat-addled brain, along with my extensive summer travels through the Northwest, I have fallen behind in procuring key lime pies.  We are now a quarter way through key lime pie #3, but I believe we should already be done with pie #6, after a streak of 40 consecutive hot pie days followed shortly thereafter by a streak of 20 days.  At this rate we may be savoring the summer well into the Fall.

Now for us miserable whiners; who have sought pity for our plight by enduring the heat while in our air conditioned houses and in our air conditioned cars as we drive to our air conditioned offices and shop at our air conditioned malls and air conditioned big box stores, we of course hear the whisper of our stoic angels in our sweaty ears, "There is always someone worse off than you, you have no right to complain".  How true.  A single wildfire 250 miles to our south, in Bastrop County, has burned almost 1,500 homes, destroying everything for these people but life itself.  Other fires across the state, though not as large, have burned hundreds of homes and memories.  These massive losses are truly miserable.  Who am I to complain?

Now with rain clouds building in the early evening sky, this sabbath I will cut a piece of key lime pie and sit among the dining room photos of family and savor my many blessings.  In retrospect, it is not that hard to be thankful - no sweat at all man.

Irene to Serene

Last Saturday it was 107 degrees (F) outside.  With the parched lawn more dust than grass, there really was no yard work - as there is essentially no yard.  It is even too hot for fire ants this year, no sign that they have yet to burrowed up above ground and form even the smallest of mounds.  The fire ants continue to stay deep underground where they enjoy the relatively cooler climes of hell, which is where they reside.  Now in August the cicadas have wisely stopped making their distinctive high-pitched summer sounds, fearing that by rubbing their wings against their legs to make their mating calls, they will cause themselves to spontaneously ignite as if they were Indians starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together.  Yes, it is even too hot for cicada sex, and you know these guys only have a few days to find a comely cicada chick and make babies, then give it a rest for 17 years before they do it again.  Imagine, if it is too hot for fire ants and too hot for a cicada quickie, who am I to go against nature and get outside and do something.

Taking my cue from nature, I was staying cool, laying on the couch in my underwear last Saturday beneath the ceiling fan as it turned anti-clockwise like a tropical depression in response to the Coriolis effect.  I lived vicariously through the TV, drowsily watching those bottom-rung field reporters on The Weather Channel who were assigned to get the elements of  "good TV" by being in the elements, namely the elements of turbulent rain, wind and surf.  I watched as North Carolina, then Virginia and then New England got pelted with rain.  I sure would like to see rain.  I wish some of the rain bands of Hurricane Irene would wrap out around my house.  Under the constant heat and above the cracking, dessicated Texas ground,  I imagined that what was on my screen was actually out my window.  I was serene as I watched Irene.