May 17: Summer?

It’s been a quiet and rainy weekend. There haven’t been any massive storms rolling through, but more of what the meteorologists would label a “soaking rain.” Rainy days are your friend during a pandemic. It seems like it’s a lot easier to stay in and fill the hours with different varieties of nothing when there’s no motivation to be outside. 

We’re more than halfway through the month now. It seems like the days pass more quickly when you can’t tell them apart. Even though this weekend has been cold and rainy, the forecast is promising/threatening temperatures reaching into the high 80s by the end of the week. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be the beginning of a long trend that will bring us into June or just a preview weekend of the hot days yet to come, but I’m sure it’s going to be enough to put the people around here in the mind of summer. Usually that means beaches and boats, fairs and festivals, whatever people can find to do that will let them enjoy being outdoors for the seventy days of the year when the weather doesn’t suck. 

The state is allegedly scheduled to begin opening tomorrow, but I think it’s going to happen at a much slower rate than most people expect. I saw a survey online with a few thousand votes saying 70% of the responders would not go back to visit their favorite restaurant in the first week it had re-opened. (I was one of them.) 

I know I’ll have bright and comfortably mornings to walk the dog, and steamy afternoons to sit out on the patio and enjoy the warmth. I plan on leaving my air condition off for as long as possibly can this year, just to enjoy the feel of breezes blowing through my house and helping me feel a little less confined. I don’t know what the options will be for getting out and doing things, though. So many summer distractions seem like they’ll either be off the table altogether or only available for those either brave or foolish enough to risk participation. Movie theaters? I could probably get away with that pretty easily since I see most of my summer movies in the afternoon when there are only ten other people in the auditorium. Of course, the theater would have to actually be open for that to happen. Shopping? Probably not. Concerts? I have a ticket to a big one at Target Field late in the summer. I’m all but certain the entire tour is either going to be cancelled or postponed, and if it isn’t, I don’t know how comfortable I’ll feel in a baseball stadium filled with strangers by then. 

So many things have changed because of this virus. People talk about a new normal all the time. I’m starting to wonder if the new normal is going to be something long-term paradigm shift instead of just a temporary collection of frustrating inconveniences. If I had the chance, I’d really like to get just a quick peek about three years into the future to see what the world is going to be like by then. 

The only thing I feel sure about right now is that this summer is going to be marked by little more than warmer days, occasional storms, and a lot of cancelled county fairs.