To Be Human Is To Complain

Where I live, in southern Maine, it's been raining a lot. Like every day, for weeks. And weeks. It's simply raining too much. And the rain is making it very muggy and humid. It's also too buggy. Too many mosquitoes. Too many biting flies and brown-tail moths, which are the worst if you ask me. It's very unpleasant to be outside. Most people are complaining about it, especially boaters who have been denied their weekends on the water all summer long thus far.

I know that in some parts of the country they have it even worse. Like out west where it's too hot, breaking records hot. Not raining, but too sunny. Those folks are doing a lot of complaining too. So that's a lot of complaining, from coast to coast. 

But to be honest, complaining is pretty much what humans do, no matter what, and it's a bummer. You rarely meet people who say, "Praise the Lord, thank you God for letting me wake up today, to another glorious day on earth." In fact, I have never heard anyone say that except maybe in a church sermon in a movie or in a book, since I don't actually go to church.

I try to make myself stop complaining, but it's hard when you itch literally from head to toe, which I have been doing since early June. Still, I am aware that summer will end and the heat will be a distant memory, if I live that long. And I don't mean that in a morbid way, just in an accurate way, since one never knows. 

A year ago today my friend Debra was alive and well, and six days later she was killed in a car crash. I can't remember if she was complaining about anything the last time we spoke, which was the night before she died, possibly a little about how hard she had been working for weeks, preparing for her family's annual two-week camping trip in the Tetons, cooking and freezing enough breakfasts, lunches and dinners for nine people for 14 days, which ironically ended up scattered on a highway in Wyoming.

I'm not complaining about her death, which was horrible and still is, every day, I'm just trying to impress upon myself and anyone reading this that perhaps too much rain isn't so bad and we just should accept it, even though everything carefully and lovingly planted in the vegetable garden and flower beds in May is now turning to mush.

The itching sucks, though. Like right now I just got a new bite on my ankle, sitting here inside my house, and it's driving me crazy. Itching is completely unacceptable and I shall keep complaining about it until October.