Smog

This is the skyline today around noon; the smoke still hangs over the city, and it’s like looking out into a fog.  The AQHI today was 330 🫨 but at least  the temperature was cool.  I see from the news and from your emails that it’s smoky all the way down to at least Washington, and NYC had a dreadful air quality reading today.  It still smells of burning wood, and when you consider that the nearest of the wildfires is 100km away, you have an idea of how bad it is.  It’s a little clearer this afternoon than it was this morning, but we’re still coughing and Don’s eyes were burning after a short moment outside.  The sky has been hazy grey all day, and we had no sign of the sun at all.  I saw that hundreds of flights were grounded out of NYC, and I’m sure the same applied here too, as the visibility is really poor.  Jerry hates the smoke smell and is unsettled with it, but at least last night he settled down and didn’t want to play and jump on my poor arm.  He just slept on it instead, so today it’s stiff.

I’m in the throes of birthdays party planning; I got emails asking, “so what’s happening?  The day is rushing on us!”  I promised to have it all sorted by Friday, probably complete with gift registry 😈  My preferred location is unavailable, so we’re working through alternatives.  Stand by for announcements!  

It was recycling day today, and I’d sorted my paper and plastics (few metals and no glass) and I started to think a bit.  There’s been stories that items that are supposed to be recycled actually wind up in landfills or shipped to developing nations where they endanger delicate ecosystems.  That’s a huge rant by itself, but I was thinking about the plastics in particular.  Canada banned single use plastics last year, so supermarkets and other stores don’t provide plastic bags any longer, except for very limited cases.  Restaurants no longer use styrofoam containers, instead using cardboard.  That should be recyclable, right?  Wrong.  If it’s got food grease it can’t go into recycling.  Straws are now all paper, which is great if you’re drinking really quickly, otherwise they turn to mush — I actually have a folding straw in my purse that saves me a lot of angst.  I’ve got a couple of large bags full of “up cycled shopping bags” which are sold instead of plastics (I’m cheap.  I take my own shopping bags with me, plus there’s more in the car, and I don’t buy bags in the grocery)  Apart from those, though, there’s a lot of plastic still in the system.  Ordered something delivered?  It’s likely to arrive in a plastic envelope.  If it’s in a box, there’s air-filled plastic “cushions” to act as padding.  Bread is packed in plastic, but it’s also closed by a little plastic tag which isn’t recyclable.  There are holding rings that are also plastic, as are bottle lids, pill bottles/lids, toothbrushes, toothpaste containers… literally everywhere!  I try hard to reduce my use of non-recyclable plastics, but it’s close to impossible!  My medical supplies are also mostly plastic, which can’t be recycled (medical waste isn’t to be placed with household waste) and I feel dreadfully guilty at having to throw out empty saline syringes or IV bags…  I hope, desperately, that the stuff that I put into recycle bins does make it to a plant, and not to a landfill.  To me, it’s a failure of the civic contract that the city has with us to be responsible with garbage disposal.  I think, too, that the engineers working on sanitation should be developing more efficient methods through which any material can be recycled, regardless of whether it’s got food grease on it or is a light plastic or whatever.  

That’s tonight’s rant… I’m in the middle of my “fast” but I’m actually hungry again, so I’ll repeat last night and eat something an hour after my meds.  I also want to be up early tomorrow so I can have breakfast before the power outage.  It’s scheduled to start at 7am, so I figure if I can be up by 6, I can have a hot cuppa and something to eat, go back to sleep and perhaps miss most of the outage by sleeping.  I’m clever, aren’t I? 😝  Good night!