We just booked two tickets to Tucson…for August. Yes, August, the off-est of off seasons for that desert destination. The month when Tucson’s average high temps hover at a balmy 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A month for which Arizona’s heat index has been referred to by one national daily newspaper as “a brutal endurance match.” Yippee!
On the upside, though, flights to Arizona are pretty darn cheap this time of year. And because few other people are nutty enough to plan an Arizona getaway at the height of summer, we anticipate a quick spin at the airport luggage carousel and a very short line at the taxi queue.
We’re going to help a friend prepare her (thankfully air-conditioned) house for sale. We’ll also be packing up a lot of her possessions for donation or for shipping to Portugal, where she’s moving. She’s promised that we’ll do something fun each evening and has encouraged us to bring bathing suits for the hot tub and pool. And that creates a whole new level of anxiety. I haven’t had a bathing suit in years, mostly because I haven’t wanted to subject anyone to seeing me in a bathing suit. There’s already enough PTSD in the world.
I have ordered a new suit, but am a little bummed that Victorian-style bathing costumes are no longer in vogue. You know, the kind that looks like a dress with bloomers, stockings and a matching cap. I think that’s the only bathing attire in which I would feel comfortable. But we’ll see. Maybe the ordered suit won’t look as bad as I fear.
Before heading to Arizona, we’re hosting a Perseid meteor shower party for the family on our back deck. Since we live in a rural-ish area, there’s not a lot of light pollution. And the big farm that neighbors our property is mostly flat grazing fields that don’t block the sky. So, we should have a great view of any meteors that wander our way. Now I just need to come up with an appropriately “spacey” menu for the party. I’m looking at color-changing lemonade for the signature drink. The swirl of blue/purple/pink colors in this drink evoke a beautiful, sparkling, multicolored nebula. But, to make the lemonade, I need to find blue butterfly pea flower tea, so the search is on.
I’m also helping my sister to set up a YouTube channel that will review and parse popular movies from the ‘80s. To be fair, she’s doing 99.9% of the work. I’m just the person off whom she bounces ideas, and I offer her marketing and promotional suggestions.
I think her channel will be a hoot. My sister has an incredibly quirky sense of humor, probably shaped through her many years in law enforcement. Working as a police officer can be heartbreaking, and you need to have a personality that can balance the heartbreak against the ridiculous.
One of my favorite police stories is when my sister arrived at the home of an 80-something-year-old man who had called to report a possible prowler. The gentleman in question answered the door in his birthday suit, apologized to my sister for not being appropriately attired and then went and put on a pair of glasses. When he returned to the door – still nude, but now wearing spectacles – he said “That’s better” and calmly launched into explaining the reason for his 911 call. My sister took copious notes on his statement, which allowed her to keep her eyes on her notepad and not on the sartorially challenged octogenarian.
Speaking of sartorial challenges, I need to rummage through my closet for appropriate desert wear for our upcoming trip. I’m not looking forward to Arizona’s high temperatures, but it’s a dry heat, right? |
