As the thermometer climbs over one hundred degrees, the urge grows strong to find a deep, dark hole where it’s cooler. Knowing we’ll probably have many 110 plus days this year, I’m already contemplating a summer with curtains drawn, air-conditioner blasting, and minimal clothes.
This means poking my nose into the fresh air when the sun is long gone, furtively looking around to see if anything is going on, then popping back down into the hole. I guess I’ll call it desert life a la mode, or mole, as the case may be.
I’m a writer. I can do this. Those of you still work outside the home have to endure the heat and mole-out when you get home.
What about food, you ask. What about entertainment?
In case you haven’t noticed, society makes it easy to be mulish, er, molish. If you have internet (and who doesn’t), you can go online, punch in your grocery list, and get your food (even meds) delivered in less than two hours. You can buy just about anything on line and if you’re Amazon Prime, it’s at your door in two days. Even restaurants in our area deliver.
Entertainment? Netflix subscribers can endlessly watch movies and binge on tv shows (I don’t) or bookworms can endlessly read books downloaded to their computer or mobile device (I do). Free and bargain books are available on many sites if you can’t afford to pay big bucks for the big authors.
An entire summer can be spent indoors, venturing outside only on trash day.
Is that really what life has become? Are we showing signs of becoming a reclusive society? We don’t talk on the phone. We text or email. We don’t go to the bank. We deposit and pay bills on line. We share our lives with internet friends, many of whom we’ve never met. We go out to put gas in the car, but we do it ourselves.
It’s easy to crave the comfort of the hole, especially in hot summer months or cold snowy ones. But working, volunteering, raising children—all these things still require human interaction, so we’re still a ways off from becoming a society of moles.
On the other hand, if you are a writer, like me, you have to fight extra hard because writing is a solitary job. I do it in a comfortable chair, computer on my lap, banging away on the keyboard, preferably in the dark hours of the early morning. Outside I have companions: cottontails, quail, and an occasional lizard. No moles.
Just me.
There’s always a visit to the beach in Southern California. Not usually quite as hot. Open invitation There’s a cool breeze, pool, bed, food, wine, good company & every day (& night) is a 3 dog one.
Sounds like bliss to me! Especially the critters…