if you give a mayfly a minute
Today's high was a sticky overcast seventy degrees, fifteen degrees warmer than the historical average daily high. It marks the second Tuesday in a row I've been able to play soccer in a t-shirt and shorts. I'm thrilled — I hate the cold — but the warmth brings out the bugs in full force. Near standing bodies of water, the air is so thick with mayflies you can squash them underneath your feat without even meaning to.
The mayfly lives an incredible life (BBC). The winged adults don't have mouths and thus can't feed. Their entire adult lifecycle lasts merely a day, in which they use their energy reserves to fly out of the water, mate, and die. Thinking about this always makes me wonder how they perceive time. A minute to them is like three years to us. Does time feel like it passes more slowly to a mayfly?
The big Bernedoodle Leo is starting to get used to me now. The first time I took him for a walk he would stop randomly and refuse to continue. Neither yanking against his will nor using a treat to reward unwanted behavior seemed like good ideas, so I tried all sorts of things: waiting, petting, even reasoning aloud with him. I haven't quite figured out a reliable solution, but he's starting to do it less and less now, which is good news.
Since I have to go walk Leo at 7 in the morning and 4:30 in the afternoon, the commute subjects me to something I've been fortunate to avoid for a long time: rush hour. Even the twenty minutes I spent in traffic today hurt my soul. I hate the constant attention driving in crawling traffic demands, which renders me unable to get up or stretch or pay attention to anything else.
In the mornings I speed a little to shorten the commute. (Don't worry, by speeding I mean going 60 in a 45 zone. A car accident strikes me as a terribly unglamorous way to go out.) I've been a slow driver for most of my adult life, but I realized that a big reason I hated going fast before was because I was driving such old cars. Of course I hated going fast in my twenty-year-old beater! The tires would spin out when I floored the accelerator and I could eat lunch in the time it took to go from zero to sixty. I've heard explanations how speeding doesn't save you much time, though I think those fail as a deterrent against speeding for one reason: it can be pleasurable to go fast. I don't think everyone who speeds is just in a rush; I'd wager a good chunk of them simply enjoy going fast.
It's almost eleven at night. My eyelids keep closing as I write. I like that my dogwalking commitment gets me out and about earlier, but I spend the rest of the day so tired. The days of waking up naturally in time for work are such a distant memory now.