I Hate You, Rain Clouds

This segment of my blog was written yesterday, July 21st, late afternoon:

My mother has this apparatus around her neck that if anything were to happen, she presses the button and an emergency vehicle is on their way, while they are also contacting the next door neighbors, my brother and me. I was reading when the call came through and I didn't recognize the area code...718, but I answered it anyway. They had already hung up after my phone rang for about 3 seconds. They left a message informing me they received an emergency alert from my mother and she wasn't answering. She has this special phone that is connected to the emergency phone line and if there is an emergency they call out to her, like an intercom, if there is no answer, they dispatch the 911. So I listen to the message, call my mother, no answer, call my brother who lives in Las Cruces, NM, about an hour from her house, to see if he had been contacted, he said no....he neglected to give them the new number after he gave his blackberry back to Uncle Sam upon his retirement last month. So I frantically call my mother again, still no answer and leave a message on her machine; I'm on my way.

She's about 10 minutes from where we live, unless there is a wreck on I-10 East, lots of those lovely big rigs slugging along and slowing traffic, 5 p.m traffic or variations or all the above! I knew I had to keep my cool, which is almost impossible due to the fact it's friggin' hot and humid out here...they said 102, but one of the office buildings, along with my car, were reading the temps at 105. I knew I was going to get the slow traffic, all red lights on my way to the interstate and slow traffic heading east. Yeppers, that's exactly what happened! I finally got to her house and as I enter the door from the garage, I hear, "I'm alright, honey!" Of course I was relieved, but all this anxiety and frustration....aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!! So we visited for a bit then I left, knowing the traffic now heading west to my house was going to be even worse and it was.

I decided I wasn't going to rush, after all, my car has a great air conditioner and it's cooler in my car than my house, so I just went with the slower traffic on the far right lane. Now invariably, as one approaches this one particular exit, the one to the mall and all those other neat-o stores which are just down the street from me, everyone who was too impatient to just drive along in the slow lane, now begins to try to swerve into you and try to fit their fat ass' where your front fender should be. 'These are the "entitled ones." The approaching traffic is already, at that hour, bumper to bumper and these crap-heads intrude on your space, so leaving one car length from the car in front means, 20 cars will get into that space just to make sure they get off that exit.

So after that very terrifying experience, the traffic that is, I realized huge clouds just hovering...hovering like a bunch of Amsterdam window ho's, teasing and titillating us with the idea of rain. "I hate you, rain clouds!" They whirl, taunt and tantalize our already simmering brains, tossing out lightening rods and heaving their large billowing blackness with loud thunderous promises of the wet stuff, just to be completely left, high and dry.

Notice the dry shrubbery and the green below it...the Oleanders suffered during the freeze in Feb. and the green is the new growth...plants either died, like many palm trees, or they're coming back slowly, like our neighbor's Oleanders.

That's what looked very promising, but like an old high school flame, it fizzled out. Reminds me of a joke that my grandmother always told us of a little peasant from a small village in Mexico, who was taken to Mexico City and was treated to the opera. When asked about how he liked the opera, he casually explained, "I heard lots of music, but where was the opera?!?" So it loses some in translation, but that's exactly what happened to our black, rain clouds...lots of glitz, noise, but ultimately, it bombed, like a bad John Carpenter movie...oh wait, I love John Carpenter!! LOL

Below is a pic of our air conditioning which has been the mainstay in the desert for many years, till recently. My hubby promised me he would convert to refrigerated air last year for this summer...yea, promises, promises, promises. So this is a "swamp cooler," or "evaporateive cooler" and it works beautifully in April and May, then again in late September, October and even into November, yea, folks, November!!

If you can read the above little graphic, it explains how the worthless piece of dreck works.

The following are my additional words for today, July 23:

So I shall continue to further rant about my air conditioning system. The hubby and I were talking about growing up here back in the 50's and 60's. We had hot weather in the summer, but there was none of that computer, game-boys, DSL or XYZ's or any that technology that impairs our youth today. It might have been in the 3 digits, but we played outside...you can see pics of our Franklin Mountains, well, I played in those mountains. There were always lots of caves to explore, fossils galore, tad-poles that had limited time to mature before the water in the tanks, indentations in the rocks that would fill up with water during the rainy season, rattle snakes that had to be avoided, garden snakes that were caught then let go, horn toads and blue tailed lizards to catch then again, let go. Mother nature was our playground. Later on, a park was built near my house, and we had an extra place to play, but regardless of the hot weather, we were always outside. There was always a neighbor's garden hose to insure we were properly hydrated...at night we spent our time playing hide-&-go-seek or just relaxing under our non-baring Mulberry tree. Nights would cool down to a pleasant 64 or sometimes lower, and in the middle of July!! We would shoo away coyotes that wandered into our streets, looking for "people food" to savor and on occasion, we'd spot a mountain lion also looking for something to eat, usually some old woman's Chihuahua!!

Our swamp coolers were turned off for the night and open windows were sufficient to keep the house cool and comfortable. You see, sand doesn't really retain that much heat for any great length of time, so it would cool down quickly once the sun rested. By the next afternoon, my mother would turn the cooler back on at about noonish and the house would remain very comfortable till it was shut off before my parents bedtime. The humidity was never an issue, we always had rain on July 4th but that never squelched any family gatherings..it was just expected to happen...just like on Good Fridays, the wind blew and we had dust storms...like clock work.

In the last 30 years, the population of our little city has grown expeditiously and with it, progress has come along, giving us more highways, streets, buildings and the ever encouraged, xirescaping...a garden filled with plants, flora and fauna of the desert, utilizing rocks instead of grass. It's a very efficient way to keep water usage down, but with all these additions of concrete, pavements, houses, rocks, etc., the evenings are no longer cool and comfortable. So our house never really cools down from it's 80 degrees during the day with the swamp coolers that run 24/7 at high speed and don't work because now we have high humidity, something we never experienced during my childhood and into the 80's. The times they are a changin' and so it our climate!

Well, I don't know what's going on with Blogger, but for some reason, they're bent on keeping my blog in bold, italicized lettering...I'm giving up and just letting them have their way. I can "Un-bold" the lettering, but not the italicized version...stupid blogger!!!

Today, I'm going into the lab/studio and just let my imagination run again. I already sent off a large box to Xico, Inc. in AZ and have received a reply from Hannah that they want dolls for Dia de los Muertos, so I'm off to make dolls, more ornaments and just what happens to spark my little gray cells., or what's left of them! Hope you all are keeping cool and as I told Anne the other day on FB, after we both complained about the heat and humidity. I told her I've made arrangements for us to spend our summers below the Equator...hope she likes penguins!! Peace out.