6:40 a.m. Dear Gawd, it’s HOT out there, and hideously WET.
Just back from the morning DoggyWalk. The weather is so nasty out there that I am literally DRIPPING wet.
No, it’s not raining. Nary a cloud in sight. Just hideous, Saudi Arabia-style humidity, so thick you’re practically walking through water. Horrible, horrible weather.
And purely NOT typical of Arizona. Dry is typical here. This kind of hideous humidity is so rare as to be regarded as nonexistent.
But…heh! It ain’t non existent…not today, anyhow!
What an ugly day.
Worrying about my son. He lives in an older house, originally air-conditioned by what was called “swamp cooling.” That method sucked outside air into the ventilation system and (sorta..kinda…) cooled it by running it over vents bearing tap water. Better than nothing…but as you can imagine, there was a reason that everyone who could manage it decamped to the high country all summer.
Even though a real air-conditioner is now attached to his roof, the allegedly “cooled” air has to pass through the antique ventilation system…less than halcyon, shall we say.
Anyway, because the morning is so ugly, Ruby and I escaped running into any idiots with crazed, out-of-control dogs. That’s something, anyway.
I must say…at times I hate living in Arizona. If my parents hadn’t dragged me here when my father took a spectacularly early retirement, I’d be in California right this minute. Where I came from, and where I belong. This is truly NOT my place.
My place was San Francisco. There, we lived in an apartment development called Parkmerced…just a gorgeous place. My mother got herself and me in there when we came home a few months early from Saudi Arabia, leaving my father in Hell to finish out his contract with Aramco. I just loved the place — Parkmerced, that is: certainly not Arabia!
My father was just FURIOUS when he got back and discovered she’d signed a lease on a place that cost about eight times more than he was willing to pay. He flew into quite the little rage. 😮
After he went back to sea (he was a Merchant Mariner), she got a receptionist’s job in the Parkmerced front office. Pay was hardly enough to pay the exorbitant rent, but at least it defrayed the cost a little. And shut my father up…a little. She quickly moved us into a cheaper apartment, out of the elegant tower where we’d started. Not enough to smooth his feathers, but at least she tried.
At any rate…I miss Parkmerced. I miss my relatives’ home in Berkeley. I miss the houses and apartments around the junior high school I attended.
Arizona is really not my Thing…but I’m stuck here now. Not going anywhere else.