Weather

So…do you risk your life, limb, and (even more precious) your beloved wheels for two hundred bucks?

Raining here. Raining, raining, and raining. It’s almost 8:00 a.m. but the skies are no brighter than the dusk of predawn. The pool water is up to the coping. If it rains steadily for another two days, as predicted, the pool may overflow. Make that will overflow, if we get the prognosticated five to ten inches of rain. No sign yet, mercifully, of the 50-mile-an-hour winds that were supposed to accompany this storm.

One of my client editors expects her page proofs back by tomorrow at the latest, a very easy job for which she will pay a couple hundred bucks. I just finished reading them about 5:00 this morning. Tomorrow I have to teach, 12 miles in the opposite direction of her office, which at the outset is far enough, thank you, from my house. I really, really, really do not want to drive from north Phoenix to central Scottsdale through a downpour over roads that flood in a light sprinkle.

You understand: it doesn’t rain in Arizona (right?), and so we don’t build roads to accommodate water falling out of the sky. We don’t teach motorists to drive in falling water, either.

So high is the hysteria level over this freshet that the police sent out a warning to the city’s neighborhood associations, asking people to stay off the streets or, if they must go out, for godsake to hang up the phone and drive.

Cassie the Corgi, being a smart little dog, feels utterly abhorred by the prospect of going out in the rain to do her doggy duty. When the downpour let up briefly about 4:30 this morning, I decided to take the opportunity to let her into the backyard and wring her out. She decided otherwise. Had to put on her leash and collar and literally drag her out the door.

At any rate, Cassie and the human, in addition to being without visible means of support, have also about run out of food. I put off buying groceries until after the AMEX cycle closed yesterday, so as to put off having to pay until this time next month, when a little money should have arrived in the checking account.

So, in addition to needing to make a run on Scottsdale by way of garnering some of that little money, I also need to stop by a Costco for a major shop on the way home. There’s one more or less on the way. Only one saving grace to that prospect: the store will prob’ly be almost free of crowds.

Yes. Fifty mile-per-hour winds, with gusts to 65. Doesn’t that sound like a balmy breeze? Don’t count on it, though: if we were going to have that kind of weather, it would have blown into town by now. It sounds like more stupid media hype.

You can’t believe much that you hear on the local Play-Nooz. Stürm und drang is the stuff of ad sales, and so the pretend reporters exaggerate every weather report to the point of outright falsehood. Two or three years ago, one TV news operation actually exclaimed that a “typhoon” (i kid you not!) was headed our way!

Typhoon…heeeee!

The day of the typhoon dawned clear, blue, and still. And it stayed that way.

Of course this is terribly dangerous for public safety, because having gotten all worked up for nothing time after time, now no one takes anything they hear on the news seriously. When a real storm comes in, nobody pays the slightest bit of attention, and so the Highway Patrol gets to launch searches for motorists who set off across logging roads as powerful snowstorms roll in and the local cops get to haul people and their cars out of flooded arroyos.

{sigh} I guess I’m not really undecided. I need the money at the earliest possible moment. I can’t afford to piss off that editor by missing a deadline. I’ve got to make a Costco run. And given a choice between charging off to Scottsdale in the rain today and charging off to Scottsdale from North Phoenix in the rain tomorrow after spending half the day in front of classrooms, I suppose today is the lesser of two evils.