4043 Nightmares

Monday, May 25, 2015

India, according to the BBC, is having one hell of a heat wave.  They said on the radio today that the temperature has hit 122 F in some areas.  Wells have gone dry.  A man interviewed said that birds are falling dead out of the trees like leaves, and in residential areas it's even hotter outside than the weather service says because air conditioners are running full blast, pumping more heat out.  More than 400 people have died.   It could get worse because farmers can't work in their fields or get to their animals, and animals are dying, so there will be food shortages.  People are praying for monsoon season ... which may be delayed because of El Nino-like conditions.

The BBC also reports a serious bird flu epidemic in American chicken coops, so we will see egg prices, and the prices of everything that uses eggs, go way up.

I like the BBC.  They report on stuff that matters, everywhere.  US news outlets are useless.

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I remember in the late 1950s, when we lived in Ottawa, we had a few days of 120 F.  Nobody had a/c then.  I don't remember how we coped.  I do remember my mother saying over and over, "This is Canada!  It's not supposed to get hot!"

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Have you heard about the young woman found early last Friday in a Maryland playground pushing her dead three-year-old son on a swing?  It's such a sad story.  People who live near the park said they saw her there pushing the swing the evening before.  Authorities think she may have been there all night, pushing the child on the swing.  They think she was in emotional shock, deep in denial, pushing the swing to make the child happy.  Maybe if I keep pushing him he'll come back.

The mother is still in the hospital. She's apparently not yet coherent.  None of the many articles has mentioned a husband or family.  I'm not sure they know who she is.  An autopsy on the child has shown no cause of death.  A toxicology report will take a while longer.  I was a bit frustrated by the report, because it didn't say how long he had been dead.

I feel so bad for that woman.

I have this scenario in my head, completely made up, where the child had asked to go to the playground, and she said no, so he threw a tantrum, and she left him alone in his room to cry it out.  She thought he cried himself to sleep, so she left him alone, and then later found him cold and gone.  In her overwhelming grief and guilt, she took him to the playground, and pushed him on the swing, trying to make it all better. 

A mother's nightmare.

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