Summer is already over :(

This time next week, the kids will be back at school. 

Where has the last three months gone? 

Considering we have been reaching over 100° (with humidity) for the past several weeks, the kids are going to be drenched in sweat as they wait for the bus, but freeze in the schools because the air conditioning will be on full blast. What a way to get sick the first week! The high numbers have not been every single day (to make or break a record), but it's been enough of a notice, that even the normal storms are like "nope. Too hot". We must have had only a week's worth of rain lately. Or so it feels. Normally we have something every day by this point in the year. 

The Saharan Dust is what is keeping a lot of the crazy at bay, so what we're missing in water from the sky, other areas have gotten, and then some. Although the northern border states (next to Canada) are getting inundated with the Canadian wildfire smoke right now. The news keeps showing how the air quality is so bad in places like Chicago, New York City and Boston, that you can't even see in front of you. We have (snowbird) neighbors who are living in North Dakota. They are about an hour from Canada and the woman said to me via text that "it's really bad here". Just because they aren't getting heat and humidity (it's in the 80s though), doesn't mean they're not getting something worse than us. 

This seems to be happening more frequently as the years progress: The fires from Canada enshroud a lot of the United States and it becomes a health hazard to those who have breathing problems. Florida gets stuff too, but when the dust settles (literally) and the haze goes away (it was orange yellow last night, so it's still floating around), we start getting into trouble. 

There are three storm systems in place right now in the Atlantic. National meteorologists are watching them, and luckily, we aren't halfway through the alphabet like the Pacific is. For the Atlantic, the most current name is Dexter, and he is just hanging out in the ocean, doing his thing. He's vibing with the sharks and chillin' with the fishies. Dexter seems to be staying enough off shore, that anything he does, may only affect the tides, not the continent. However, there seems to be two more disturbances behind him. Hopefully they'll follow his lead and stay out in the water and not step on land. We are at that point in the summer where these things start to slowly ramp up and the east coast gets pop after pop of low lying crazy. 

Considering tt's projected that Fort Myers is going to be 100% rain the rest of this week (into the weekend), but we'll see. They've been saying for a couple weeks we'd have daily rain and we haven't. We've gotten some thunder and lightning (ooh, there was a quick strobe last night around 1am. I got up to pee and all of a sudden my room flashed like someone was doing a security sweep. There was no thunder with it, though) but that's about it. Bone dry. Which is also why the 105° humidity is so brutal. The moisture in the air isn't enough to make the clouds do anything except help the sun beat on everyone. We're all sweating here and fat kids shouldn't be sweating so profusely. It's gross and feels gross. Trust me - I'm in the fat kid club. It's not a good feeling, although "swamp ass" makes it all worse for everyone - the skinny kids too. 

It's the price you pay to not have snow, I'm told. I'm not amused or sold on the idea. There's something inhumane about the constant "blah. Too hot to do anything". Even Tay would tell me it seems so immoral to be "living in the tropics". If my mother didn't feel like my shoveling 4 feet high snow in the middle of 2010, just for an oil delivery (for an oil delivery), we may still be in Massachusetts. Who knows. I would like to go back though. Permanently. Just need to find work. 

Finding work is hard these days, especially locally. Summer is when things close down in the area. The tourists and snowbirds aren't around, so businesses don't keep a lot of employees. A lot of companies start letting people go "whenever Easter falls" and will then pick up and hire workers "around Halloween, sometimes a little before". 

For summer work, I've been told by numerous hiring managers that "hours depend on business needs" and the amount of projected hours they can give would be 8-15 a week. Nothing more, but maybe less. Everyone they keep for the summer also needs work, although one manager told me that majority of her staff have two or more jobs, so she has a little more freedom to give an extra hour to someone, but that's it (strangely enough). It's because she won't take away an hour or two from a long standing employee, just to give the new kid some extra time. She also knows when people say they can work 15 hours a week, they're working 15 somewhere else. Or they have a family they're dealing with, so they can't work more than that. 

That may work for those people, but I'd like to know that if I'm committing my time, effort and energy to your business, you're going to reciprocate and do the same. I'm not looking to have multiple jobs. It gets too confusing and I won't know if I'm coming or going. If I have "open availability" for one job, then please allow me the benefit of working more than 20 hours a week, every week, but I'd prefer over 32 for insurance purposes. 

It's not fair to expect people to be at a beck and call and able to work whenever, but you only give them 8 hours in five days. I know everyone is different and I'm no better than anyone around me. I don't claim to have special privileges or want to be treated differently. I'd like to just find work where I can hone my skills while learning new ones, experience life and be able to help both myself and the business I work for, grow, all while working 32 to 40 hours a week. It seems simple enough, but it's not. One company said they have a minimum of 4 hour shifts some days, and due to the fact it would take me 30 minutes to get to the business, it might not be fair for me to work there, especially since they too, only offer a maximum of 15 hours a week. That and they weren't hiring when I walked in to inquire. 

I know New England isn't immune for no work due to lousy weather. Winter there can be as bad as summer, but business don't close down so severely that they basically fire 80% of the work force for six months. The only hindrance of "the daily grind" is snow, and I've worked at plenty of places before moving to Florida, where I got stuck at my job for a couple extra hours due to an incoming / ongoing storm. Or, I got delayed at home a little bit when I went to start my day. I know what it's like to commute over an hour on the train in bad weather and the tracks are frozen. I've been there and it caused me an extra hour of time so I'd basically be within 30 seconds of start time, rather than have 30 minutes to collect my thoughts before start time. I'm aware of the differences. But the fact that you can see the snow and touch (shovel) it, is far more of a reality check for "incoming!!!!!! *boom*" than a tropical depression turn storm turn hurricane. Hurricanes are far more powerful than snow, and in a shorter amount of time, once they arrive. Snow is cold and can knock out power so you may freeze in a situation, but there is no excessive water that decides to go swimming in your house and ruin the integrity of the structure. Unless your pipes burst due to freezing over. That's not an every day occurrence though. When I was little, we got flooded on our property a few times, but that was because we were the end of the street with a sewer system that the city didn't admit was there. Luckily, we never got water inside our house, but we did have a lake in our yard. It happened to be in summer and fall when it rained for more than 3 days. The ground was so saturated, the water had no where to go. One year, it was so bad, a quarter of the street was blocked off and we couldn't get out of the driveway for a few days because the water was that night and due to being at the intersection of another street, we watched neighbors try to figure out how to get to their place without riding in the water. It was the oddest thing. We survived though, and I think only one neighbor needed to fix one of their cars because they didn't realize how deep the water was. You live, you learn. 

Nature is cruel and crazy. Much like how I squirreled this post. I'm going to end it here so I don't get any more wild, talking about random things. 

If you live "in the south" and have kids, now is the time to make sure your child has all their back to school stuff ready. Keep an eye out for the storms. If you're anywhere else, especially "in the north", be safe while breathing in that wildfire. Stay indoors and don't do anything stupid. For everyone else, just be kind and do what you need to.

Cheers;