I am so tired of people right now. Grump grump grump.

A friend was just commenting on a different social media site about how all of their friends who were not previously inclined towards lives as solitary hermits (pre-Covid) seem to be going feral right now, and maybe that's a reasonably accurate description of what's happening in general this August?

I don't know.

I just know that right now it feels as though dealing with people is sucking all the time and energy out of me, leaving me anxious about all of the work I need to do that requires deep focus and concentration. I read it as a form of displacement behavior: they're anxious, so the coping mechanism being deployed is riling up other people until other, non-anxious people are anxious, too!

Just stop it, people. That's too much mental overhead and it's unproductive and unnecessary. I have enough of my own anxiety as it is and I really don't need yours, nor do I need to do your emotional labor for you.

...And by virtue of complaining about it here, I am now thinking this means I need to reestablish personal boundaries for myself.

It might be time to start closing my personal email account during the day.

I also need to figure out a way to put myself on a timer or something when it comes to text messages. I'm okay with people texting me if it's an emergency, but now I'm getting WAY too much braindump and concern-troll texting, such that I might just need to completely ignore my phone. For me, concern-troll texting is using things such as last night's interesting weather as an excuse to text me and ask me how I am doing.

Just, no.

Boundaries are really important.

Grump grump grump.

Here we go, Wednesday.

Floats, floods, flotsam, jetsam [housekeepery; rowing]

We got hit by some of the aftermath of Hurricane Isaias yesterday afternoon and early evening. Things weren't nearly so severe by the time they reached us as they were for some of you, so we only wound up getting around a 3.5" downpour and some gusts of wind. The weather radar loop sure looked interesting, though.

That was still enough rain to reach up over the top of the wooden platform in the basement:



That's a box of small bike parts and tools that got tipped over on its side, there. It will need to be dried out.

S and I have a running joke about how to repurpose the basement to take advantage of the flooding. I like to imagine filling it with pumpkins, so then the pumpkins would lift up and bob around whenever it floods.

Kind of like how this pair of wheels (center) floated and bobbed around, most pleasingly: (sorry, it's dark down there so photos are hard)



While checking on things I observed that there was an impressive amount of water spewing out of a drainspout on the apartment building next door:



Lots of flotsam and jetsam at the boat launch, too.



The water was higher than usual at high tide, but I've seen worse flood conditions on the Hudson before.

Two hours after the heaviest rainfall and the basement sump pumps had mostly finished their job, thank goodness.