Balloon Fiesta gates open, at, ahem, 4:30 in the morning.
What the $%#& am I thinking?
And to make it more fun, it is supposed to rain tomorrow. Oh yay.
Wonder how many of the seven dwarves I can be tomorrow? Cranky and snarky are part of the crew right?
Let’s see, there’s sleepy, cranky, snarky, PMSy, drunkey, slap happy, and Bob.
Right?
Wheee!
And there is nothing you or I can do about it.
Today heralds the incoming month of September.
Labor Day, the “official” end of summer, is nigh.
And, if you are perceptive, over the next days, you can sense a change in the atmosphere. The earth has moved in her orbit a tiny bit, and the angle of the rays from the sun are a little less direct, a bit less overhead, more muted.
The days get moment by moment shorter.
When the breeze blows by on a warm day, you catch the faintest bit of chill in the air. Almost imperceptible, but it is there.
And Fall starts to move in, unpack its red and gold and yellow hued bags, and set up residence.
September is the month of still summer warm days but cooler nights. Of State Fairs and rodeos and roasting chiles. In the Bay Area, the crab fishermen start patching nets and negotiating rates, getting ready for the Fall harvest.
An extra blanket may find its way onto my bed. The Feline will sleep a little closer to her humans.
There is talk of Halloween in the air. “What are you going to be” and bags of miniature chocolate bars for sale.
Soon pumpkins will be lit with candles and ghouls will rule the night.
But today, oh today. Today is still baseball and flip flops and cinnamon flavored churros. In small towns, talk of “will that steer take the blue ribbon this year” and kids are back in school and the public pools grow quieter.
The day is still warm and I still grip, and grip *hard*, to the last, butter slippery straws of summer.
Growing up in the high desert, I learned a lot about the cycles of the day. Especially the cycles of a good and hot day.
Living at over a mile in elevation, you can expect some really spectacularly hot days. One hundred degrees plus. Burn your leg on a hot seatbelt, sweat out your body weight, run through the sprinklers kind of heat. But you are rewarded at the end of the day by the cool that comes with sundown.
Living in the desert, you can expect some really spectacularly windy days. The kind that knock you down, dump over your trashcan and send it a mile away, tip patio furniture and blows the shingles off the roof. But you are rewarded at the end of the day by the calm that comes with sundown.
And you are rewarded, at the end of the day, by the fantastic pink melon and deep blue and yellow and purple and red colors that come with sundown in a dusty climate.
Where I come from, sunset is a show. It’s cooling and it’s calming and it’s a fine time to pour a glass of sun tea over ice and sit in a lawn chair and slap at mosquitoes and smile and remember just how great the summertime really is.
Today was a pretty hot day in the Bay Area. Not New Mexico hot, only in the low 90’s. But add a dash of humidity and it was a bit of a broiler.
There was an kerfuffle at a factory near where I work, so we were instructed not to go into work. Today I got to sit in my little rental home and watch the cycle of this day.
The morning was nice, clear, warm, but pleasant. Birds chattered at each other as they stole figs from our tree.
Noontime brought the heat. And the birds and animals sought cover. The Feline laid flat on the floor, making sure no limb touched any other limb.
By 3:00, it was oppressive.
By the time The Good Man got home from work, it was really pretty disgusting. A haze hung in the air with a lingering shimmering heat.
But…now it’s just past seven, and the sun is setting. The day is cooling.
That nasty haze is converting the sky from gacky gray to a pinkish blue.
Sundown hasn’t let me down yet.
(Unless you live in Phoenix. That place never cools off.)
Image removed at the request of the photographer, Glenn Hohnstreiter. You can view it on his webpage. Go take a look. You’ll be glad you did.
Ok, confessional time. Yes, I’m owning it here, publicly, on my blog.
Here we go
Due to the immense amount of food they provide here at my job, cookies, cakes, lots of candy, full lunches, parties, celebrations, the whole nine yards….
I *might* have maybe, sort of, kind of….gained some weight.
I know. *gasp*
Not a lot. But enough to make most of the clothes in my closet feel tight.
So, I do that thing that women do, “Oh, I’ll lose this. I don’t need to buy new clothes! I’d just buy them and have to give them away, what a waste of money!”
What do I do? I wear the few items that fit over and over. And wear the tight things and sit at my desk with a wince as I get marks on my body from the clothes.
So, I just…I don’t know…gave up. I started dressing like crap. If you know me, you know clothes and style matter to me. So this is REALLY giving up.
I’m not proud of it.
Well, as fate will do, I had a *very* important meeting today, one where I needed to be on my game. And I needed to dress in a businesslike way.
In preparation, I tried on all my current dress pants. Yeah. No luck. Ok, I could get them on and zipped, but they were tight and immediately began pressing into my waist.
This isn’t humorous.
With fear in my heart, a couple days ago, I took to the mall, shopping discount outlets looking for *something* I could make work. Something I could wear and look professional and still be comfortable.
Guys, you have to know. To a woman…shopping for pants is the seventh level of hell. I don’t know why, it just is. Only slightly more appealing than shopping for a swimsuit.
The mall I visited is all broke down and busted (like many malls are these days) and it was a very hot day in the Bay Area. The entire mall had NO air conditioning, so shopping for pants (ugh!) with a sheen of sweat on your brow is not amusing. May I reiterate: NOT!
And being the cheap ass that I am, I wanted something at a low cost.
So. I found a couple things. The quality was only so-so. I wasn’t overjoyed with the items, but ok. I’d have something to wear.
I was depressed.
Then, yesterday I had an inspired idea. There is a store I used to shop at quite a bit, but then drifted away from. Their stuff is good, stylish, but often a little pricey. Their last couple of lines were not attractive at all, so I had moved on.
But I remembered that they usually stock a good range of sizes.
Yesterday after work, I went to this store. And I almost cried. In addition to air conditioning, they had gotten in all their new Fall line and much of it was TOTALLY my style. And sizes! Oh the size choices. I tried on some stuff that was too big! Some too small, but they had the next size.
And their prices were not that bad, actually. Reasonable. They’ve clearly made a shift to help with the economy.
So I stocked UP. I mean, I went a little nuts. I bought good quality clothes that fit and make me feel *good*. I bought a whole new wardrobe!
I walked out smiling. Today I’m wearing one of the new outfits and I am walking so much taller. My pants fit! They don’t bind. My waistline has been spared for the day. My whole outlook has vastly improved.
Ladies! Don’t give in to stuff that cuts and binds! Wear clothes that fit and feel good!
(and yes, I’m cutting back on the feed rations and exercising. Lifelong battle.)
Lord knows, I’ve been prone to giving over to a deep, hearty kvetch about living here in the Bay Area, and these marine layer weather patterns this Flower of the Desert must face.
Ok, fine, I own it.
However, today, I’m here to say that all the wet weather actually *does* have some benefits. Occasionally even *I* can find a place of gratitude for all of that goddamn rattin’ smattin’ essential rain.
See, The Good Man and I are renters, and as such, aren’t required to take care of our yard. Good thing, too…cuz we’d have grass a mile high.
My landlord and his son do yard work that’s mainly limited to cutting the grass every few weeks and chopping down nice trees that never did nothing to nobody. But that’s another story.
So over on the side of our humble abode, we have this:
It may be hard to see, but that’s a little spindly tree.
I mean…it’s pretty sad. Look at this puny little trunk:
What you should know about that little tree is that no one really does much of anything with it. We don’t water it. We don’t prune it. We hardly look at it. It’s just “that tree” over by where we store the trashcans.
I’ve occasionally photographed the tree when it puts on white flowers, working on my macro skills. But other than that, it goes totally ignored.
Well. This year, the little tree that decided to get noticed.
This year, that son-of-a-gun put on a crapload of fruit. Apricots.
I’ve lived here five years. That tree has never, not once, put on fruit. It would flower, halfheartedly, but that’s it.
For some reason, even in a fairly dry Bay Area winter, that little spindly tree got enough water and sun and nutrients to fill its skinny little boughs with fruit.
Wow.
And it’s tasty fruit too! VERY delicious. Boy, I do love a good juicy and tart apricot in the summertime.
I remember my college roommate’s mom would put up a fantastic apricot jam…that she’d serve on top of homemade biscuits. Oh my.
So ok, I whine. I jump up and down. I tantrum. I complain that I am a convection-cooled device (a human swamp cooler) finely tuned to the high desert and cannot possibly be expected to properly function in this humidity.
Then I bite into a ripe, juicy apricot and I think, “Hey, all that rain is not so bad!”
