Here we are at the top of August, hotter than Satan’s housecat, hissing at anyone who looks at us cross-eyed and just waiting to whip out the claws for a social media shredding. If we’re this tetchy in August, how’re we going to make it through Grumble Season, which doesn’t end until the hurricane boxes are back in storage?

Grumble Season begins like a cat purring but with an accompanying warning that teeth and claws could be an option. It properly starts at 2:19 p.m. Sept. 22, in tandem with the Autumn Equinox — or on the day one feels the slightest hint of coolness under the daily breeze. The day when four changes of sweat-soaked clothes becomes three.

Since it’s neither hotter or moldier than last year and the sargassum isn’t yet chocolate pudding and since it’s pretty quiet on the island what with a dearth of sidewalk-to-sidewalk visitors — a fact that usually makes us happy — how come we’re so irritable so early?

We swallowed our own marketing. We’re sold as the laid-back, don’t-be-a-jerk One Human Family that works three jobs, takes care of each other and happily eschews the follies, foibles and fancy clothes of the Up North mainland. We’re the land of mayors who water-ski to Cuba and of casual-but-only-vaguely-disturbing corruption that’s built into small-town DNA. We are denizens of a rainbow island where one might find a unicorn munching orchids in a gumbo limbo.

Instead we’re trapped in a miserable pinball game, bouncing off the bumpers, flipping aimlessly from target to target and eventually circling the drain before we add credits for another round.

In less than a year, we’ve seen three top-tier city officials arrested and charged with criminal corruption. We’ve seen city staff, trapped in a toxic work environment, resign in frustration. We’re searching for hundreds of local residents who’ve been forcibly disappeared into the grinding maw that is Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

We’ve watched as nonprofits scramble — in the face of local, state and federal defunding — to provide services from food, shelter and healthcare to art, music and cultural and entertainment events. We’re buckling under relentless budget cuts that at best leave painful wounds and at worst pose life-altering threats to all but our wealthiest residents.

We’ve ridden the City Hall roller coaster from euphoria to disgust as commissioners wrangle over water quality, cruise ships, 287(g) immigration enforcement, payouts, pay raises, fake grass versus real and whether private real estate developers ought to be rewriting the entire city land use plan.

August in Key West | Despite the grumbling, it’s home

Last Saturday about 300 of us pulled out our most colorful glitter and jammed the Duval and Petronia intersection in joyous defiance of petty federal and state directives to remove those rainbow crosswalks as a matter of “safety.” The mayor was there, as were three commissioners, standing tall in Key West pride. It was the kind of day that becomes part of the Key West legend. Yet we know there’s a commission vote coming that will either keep the rainbows or capitulate to the D.C. and Tallahassee overlords. Euphoria to disgust is, indeed, not far-fetched.

This isn’t the Key West the Tourist Development Council markets to the world. Heck, it’s not the Key West that keeps those who love the island tethered here despite the challenges of living 150 miles from the mainland, connected to civilization by a couple of umbilical cords for water, electricity and communications.

All that leads to grief, anger, anxiety and frustration as we watch the Key West we thought we knew be subsumed by rapacious profiteers, fearful leaders and the inexorable state and federal overreach that makes home rule a punch line. No wonder Grumble Season came early this year.

So do we give up? Oh, heck no, my friends. We get out our glitter.

Instead of pinballing aimlessly from one cause to another, pick the lane or two most important to you. No one can fix everything, so focus time, talents and money on where YOU can make a difference. Join with like-minded folks and do the right thing. We will reap tomorrow if we grow not weary today.

Because no matter how different our experiences or how comfortingly seductive our grumbling, Key West is our home.

(Photo credit: Key West Rainbow Crosswalks by Nick Doll.)