Monthly Archives: April 2018

Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink

Posted in Whimsies by

As I have mentioned approximately 101 times in the recent past, there are things about living in AZ that I like, and things that I don’t particularly like. I like that I can sit outside on a sunny February afternoon and drink a martini on my patio because it’s warm enough and it’s 5 o’clock somewhere. I don’t like that I have to check my bed every night for scorpions. I like that I can open my front door almost every morning that we are here and listen to the mockingbirds go through their repertoire of songs. I don’t like that when it’s even slightly windy, there is so much dust in the air that the skies look gray instead of blue. I like to watch the road runner sprint across our back fence. I don’t like that I have to stop walking in the desert after March because I might run into a rattlesnake.

Perhaps the thing about which I grow most weary while living in AZ is that I can’t simply go to my kitchen or bathroom faucet and get a drink of water. It’s not that we live like Laura Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie fame and have to pull water out of a well. It’s just that the water in the Valley of the Sun is practically undrinkable. I’m not just being a diva. It tastes nasty and everyone who lives here will confirm that the water is foul. The ubiquitous lemon that you find in nearly every glass of water served in restaurants isn’t just for looks. The lemon is a desperate attempt to make the water drinkable. Mostly it makes it taste like lemony horribleness.

I’ve been told that the reason the water in this area tastes terrible is that it comes from the Colorado River, and as it makes its way down the mountain, it gathers minerals. Of course, I was also told as a teenager that it was a great idea to put baby oil on your skin in the summer so that I would turn a deep dark brown. That’s just a reminder to consider our sources.

At any rate, Phoenix’s hard water is the reason that you will see Water & Ice stores all over the place. The first time I saw one of these stores I was a young, wet-behind-the-ears woman coming from a place where Coors beer was brewed from Rocky Mountain spring water. I couldn’t imagine why there was a need for a store that sold water and ice. After all, in Colorado, I could get a glass out of my cupboard, get a few cubes of ice out of my refrigerator, go to the sink and get myself a glass of good-tasting water. Water that wouldn’t give you a stomach ache. It didn’t take me many visits to AZ before I realized why there were water and ice stores – because both water and ice must come from someplace other than your sink.

One of the first things Bill and I purchased when we moved into our AZ home was a water dispenser. So, every two or three weeks, we drive to the nearest Water & Ice store, fill up our three big jugs with water that has gone through reverse osmosis, pay the attendant, and drive home……

It’s frankly a pain in the neck, but it’s the price we pay to have drinkable water. Many people install reverse osmosis devices in their homes; we haven’t done that as of yet. The water is inexpensive and it’s not like our days are frantic. Likely some day we will revert to that option.

When I had my overnight stay at Hotel Banner Hospital in March, I mentioned to the nurse that I have had three small bowel obstructions, and they have all been while we have been in AZ. That seemed particularly unusual to me, I told her, since we spend less time here than in Denver. She looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Hmmm, could it be the water?”

I don’t know. Could it?

My family and friends who know me are laughing at this post right now because they know how hard I have to work to get eight glasses of water into my system each day. I’m rarely thirsty, and when I am, it’s not for water. But I dutifully fill my water jug each day – twice, in fact – and drink the water. So there!

But if the nurse – a highly-educated medical professional – thinks it might be the water, who am I to argue? I prefer gin over water any day of the week.

Not eight glasses, however, so don’t start planning an intervention.

Friday Book Whimsy: The Dry

Posted in Book Reviews, Whimsies by

The Dry, by Jane Harper, takes place in a small town in Australia, the kind of small town where everybody knows everyone else’s family and has their nose into who’s doing what. It’s from that small town that Australian Federal Agent Aaron Falk escapes after one of his friends is found dead decades before, and he was a suspect in her murder. Now, his childhood BFF Luke – who provided Aaron’s with an alibi that kept him from being arrested – has died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, after killing his wife and his young son.

So, after all this time, Falk returns home for the funeral, and to try and come to grips with how this friend could have possibly done something so uncharacteristic, so against his nature. Well, it turns out that Luke’s parents also don’t believe it, and they convince Falk – who isn’t a homicide investigator, but instead conducts financial investigations – to, well, investigate.

But here’s the thing: Falk knows that the alibi that Luke provided years ago was a lie; however, he also knows that he was innocent of the crime. Could the two murders be connected in some way? He reluctantly agrees to spend a few days looking into the deaths.

The author doles out the secrets of both crimes little by little, leaving the reader to suspect different people throughout the book. The plot is set against the worst drought in a century. The writing is so good that you can practically fill the heat and hear the crunch of the grass as the characters walk through the plot.

I found the solution unpredictable almost to the end of the book, though I will admit to figuring it out just a bit before the detective.

The Dry is the first in a series, and her second book – Force of Nature — was released this past February. I’m eager to see if it’s as good as The Dry.

Here is a link to the book.

Thursday Thoughts

Posted in Whimsies by

At Long Last
I finally got my rear end in gear yesterday and I started gathering together the things I’m going to be taking back to Denver. Mostly I went through my office area where I keep all of my files, crocheted goods, and other miscellaneous items. When I pack in my mind it always feels like it is going to be more things; when I pack in real life, I’m always surprised at how little we transport…..

I think Bill and I have both done a good job of figuring out what things we need to have here AND in Denver so that we aren’t hauling big items back and forth. This weekend I will begin packing our clothes. That is the one thing that we do take back with us since it will be summer soon. Yes Colorado friends and family: I promise, it really will be summer soon.

Last Bites
I mentioned that there are restaurants here in AZ that we particularly enjoy, so this week we are trying to have our so-called “last suppers” at these restaurants. Sometimes it’s not supper, but lunch. Day before yesterday, we had lunch at Fuddruckers, where I enjoyed the heck out of my hamburger. Yesterday, I had lunch with my sister Bec at our favorite pho restaurant near her house while Bill ate lunch at one of his favorite pizza restaurants near our house. Today we are having lunch with friends at a restaurant called Red White and Brew, where my niece Maggie serves food. The good news is we go home to good restaurants and food in Denver.

An Afternoon with Paul
Tuesday, Bill was busy doing legal work, and I was still looking at ways to avoid packing. I decided to go to the movies since there was a movie I have wanted to see in which Bill had little interest. Paul, Apostle of Christ, was making its final appearances at our nearby theater, and there was an afternoon showing. I thought I would be alone in the theater, but surprisingly, there were quite a few folks. People my age, of course. When I got my ticket, the young girl who took my money volunteered, “You’re going to like this movie. The story stays true to the Bible.” She also announced that St. Luke was being played by James Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. “He must like playing those kinds of roles,” she said, as the people behind me were tapping their feet, wishing that I would wrap up my ticket buying. I enjoyed the movie a great deal, despite the fact that the woman sitting next to me made me feel a bit like I was at a Baptist church service. Whenever St. Paul would say something meaningful, she would respond with an amen, or uh huh! Out loud. I was left with two thoughts: 1) The early followers of Jesus – and I’m not talking about the 12 apostles, but those in the first couple of hundred years – were fervent believers in Christ and such brave souls. They encountered so much persecution and martyrdom. People who now doubt their faith in Jesus today might consider these original followers’ faith and sacrifice as a sign of the truth of their beliefs. Just a thought. 2) The Acts of the Apostles has to be one of the most exciting and interesting books of all time. Catholics hear excerpts from Acts during the weeks following Easter, but I am going to re-read the entire Acts. St. Paul can get on my last nerve, but man, he was a strong believer.

Continuous Loop
I mentioned the other day that Luke Bryan’s Most People Are Good tends to run through my mind during the night in that way that songs do. Last night, Luke Bryan was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I sang When Someone Stops Loving You, by Little Big Town, throughout the night. Oy vey. Country singers: Just let me get some sleep!

Ciao.

It’s Comin’ Down the Street

Posted in Whimsies by

O-ho the Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin’ down the street
Oh please let it be for me.
O-ho the Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin’ down the street
I wish I wish I knew what it could be.

One of the catchiest tunes from the play (and subsequent movie) Music Man is the delightful ditty the townfolk – along with an adorable (and lisping) Ronnie Howard — sing when they see a Wells Fargo truck coming to deliver a package. Apparently Wells Fargo was to the 1900s what Amazon is to us today.

While I don’t find myself singing when I am expecting an Amazon package to be delivered, I do look forward to the delivery with great anticipation, if only because I don’t want it to be stolen from my front porch.

O-ho my Amazon delivery is a-comin’ down the street
I hope it’s full of lots of toys and books.
O-ho my Amazon delivery is a-comin’ down the street
I hope I hope that I can beat the crooks.

Amazon’s endless efforts to figure out more ways that they can become the one-and-only remaining retail business on earth result in all sorts of new and unexpected ideas.  You might have heard of the recent idea of giving Amazon drivers access to our homes so that they can walk right in and leave our packages where we will trip over them when we come home. Amazon promises delivery people most likely won’t walk off with our iPads and pain killers as they leave.

Apparently that idea isn’t going over so well, partly because people are a bit uncomfortable with allowing strangers into their homes when they aren’t there, but more so because of the $200 plus cost to even Prime members. But neither rain nor snow nor reluctance to allow Amazon delivery people to check out our abodes prevents them from coming up with more new delivery options. Now, apparently Amazon is testing the notion of giving delivery people access to the trunk of certain compatible cars, at no cost to Prime members. I guess that’s better, unless one of them decides to hide his murdered mother-in-law in a stranger’s trunk.

Yesterday, I was eagerly awaiting a delivery from Amazon. I had made sure to stay home to get the package because I have given Amazon access to neither my house nor my car. Since it’s a birthday gift for my youngest grandson, I didn’t want it stolen.  But lo, and behold, I wouldn’t have had to stay home, at least as long as I stayed close. Why? Early in the afternoon, as I’m reading my e-book on my iPad, suddenly a message pops up.

Your delivery will be there shortly. There are only seven stops before your package will be delivered.

I have never seen a message like that before, and I order A LOT from Amazon. There was a link to an interactive map from which I could follow the green dot (my package) as it made its way to the red dot (my house). I got nearly as excited as I do when I order an Uber car.  I love to follow the little car as it makes its way to my house. Similarly, as my package drew closer and closer, I couldn’t take my eyes off the little green dot. I found myself even getting frustrated when the dot wouldn’t move quickly enough.

“What? Did you stop for a cup of coffee?” I crankily asked my iPad.

Yep. I got crabby over a technology that I didn’t even know existed a half hour before my delivery.

 There are only six stops before your package will be delivered. There are only three stops before your package will be delivered.

The messages kept popping up, until finally, Almost there! The driver is on the way to you.

And it was true. Within a few minutes, there was my package on my porch…..

 

Within seconds, I got a message indicating the package had been delivered, and it included a photo of my little package leaning up against my door.

O-ho, my Amazon delivery is sitting on my porch;
I didn’t have to give a stranger my key.
O-ho, my Amazon delivery is sitting on my porch;
They left a photo so that I could see.

First and Ten, Do It Again

Posted in Whimsies by

I believe most people are good
And most mama’s oughta qualify for sainthood.
I believe most Friday nights look better under neon or stadium lights.
I believe you love who you love;
Ain’t nothing you should ever be ashamed of.
I believe this world ain’t half as bad as it looks.
I believe most people are good.  – David Frasier / Ed Hill / Josh Kear

The other day I was cleaning the house, and began listening to the new song from Luke Bryan called Most People are Good. Playing that song wasn’t perhaps the smartest thing in the world to do, because that happens to be one of those songs that runs endlessly through my brain at night, beginning just as soon as I wake up, even if it’s just to turn over. I then lay awake for two hours, perhaps because some of the words won’t come to me; it might be because I can’t remember who sings the song; I could be wondering if there is any living human being with whiter teeth than Luke Bryan’s; it might simply be because I’m trying to figure out if it’s true that most people are good. I hope he’s right.

I love the verse for many reasons, not the least being the line about Friday nights looking better under neon or stadium lights. As I listened to the song that day, it suddenly struck me that there are likely many people, most who have never lived in the south or the midwest, who don’t understand why Friday nights should be under stadium lights.

My husband, for example. Bill grew up in Chicago. Not in a suburb of Chicago but right in the city itself, on the south side, along with Leroy Brown. He went to his neighborhood public high school, where they didn’t play football on Friday nights. There was a reason that Leroy Brown had a razor in his shoe. So, while he can conceptually understand about Friday night football games, he can’t understand with his heart what high school football means to people throughout middle America.

Because my Catholic high school shared a stadium with the public high school, our football games weren’t always on Friday nights; sometimes they were on Saturday nights. It didn’t matter, because Friday afternoons during football season, the entire school was focused on the weekend football game. The Pep Club decorated the halls and the gym. In the late afternoon, classes were suspended because the entire school attended the pep rally. The players were recognized and the coach gave his pep talk to the school body. The cheerleaders led the crowd in school spirit calls. Go Shamrocks!

The night of the game, it wasn’t just the parents of those playing on the field who looked on, but much of the town. The parking lot filled up early. There were announcers and sponsors and concessions and excitement. Though our school was small, our football team was always mighty.  We were like an episode of Friday Night Lights, without the horrible injury in the first game, thank you God.

And something similar was happening on Friday nights all over Nebraska, and Oklahoma, and Texas, and Wyoming, and Kansas, and Iowa, and all over the south and southeast. Young men were playing their hearts out on the football field, dreaming of playing for the state university, while their family and friends and school pals watched.

I don’t know if it’s still that way in my hometown. Back in those days, football was everything. Now I suspect there are soccer games and baseball games and girls’ volleyball games that capture people’s attention. Still, as I think back to my teenaged years, it was much as it is in this tune that country singer Scotty McCreery sings….

Friday night football is king.
Sweet tea goes good with anything.
Fireflies come out when the sun goes down.
Nobody eats till you say Amen
And everybody knows your mama’s name.
You can see who loves who from miles around
In a water tower town – Swindell Cole / David Lynn Hutton / Tammi Lynn Kidd

You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman

Posted in Whimsies by

Each day it gets a little bit closer to when we see our AZ house in our rear view mirror. We haven’t started packing yet, but to quote an acquaintance, we’ve begun packing in our minds.

What we’ve been focusing on (probably to avoid packing with our bodies) is doing some things we haven’t done before during our last few days before we leave. Last week, on a day when the temperature was going to be in the semi-reasonable range, we decided to embark on an adventure that was a mere 30 minutes from our front door – the Bryce Thompson Arboretum.

According to the dictionary, an arboretum is a botanical garden that contains collections of living plants and is intended at least in part for scientific study. Maybe that’s why it took so long for us to visit this nature center that is only a stone’s throw away. Scientific study = Study of scientific things. Since I flunked geology in college, science is clearly not my friend. Still, the day looked to be beautiful and anything was better than packing.

Not only did I flunk geology in college, I’m not particularly a nature lover. When one of my grandkids (and when I say “one of my grandkids” I’m generally talking about either Dagny or Maggie Faith) brings forth a worm or some sort of beetle to share with me, I quickly dispel the notion with a loud ewwwww. (By the way, I passed off my feelings about nature to my son Court, who, when he was about 14 or 15 years old, responded with an emphatic  “I hate nature” when I invited him to enjoy a nature hike with me.) My sister Bec, on the other hand, is a nature lover. In fact, she volunteers as a docent at the Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. She knows the names of birds and plants; I know the names of candy bars and potato chips.

Before we even got into our car, we decided we would take the free tour they offer at the Arboretum. That way, we wouldn’t be tempted to run through the park at break-neck speed so that we could go to lunch. It was a very wise choice. The man who led the group tour is a retired geology professor from Michigan. He and his wife now volunteer at the Arboretum, and actually live on site. He provided the most interesting tour – one that even a non-nature lover such as me could understand and enjoy.

We saw many varieties of trees and cacti and flowery shrubs. We saw bird nests and pack rat nests and hummingbird and butterfly habitats. We learned everything we did (or didn’t) want to know about snakes and scorpions and tarantulas and something called a tarantula wasp. Don’t ask, but suffice it to say if you see a gigantic orange wasp, run for the hills. Our guide can tell me the wasp is more interested than tarantulas than me, but I’m not taking any chances. I hate nature.

I learned that Arizona is currently experiencing a drought. One would have thought that the fact that we haven’t had any moisture would have tipped me off. The dry conditions are causing the cacti to not blossom as they should. That explains why the prickly pear in our front yard that normally is sporting yellow blossoms by now looks non-blossomy.

In perhaps my most daring move of the day (aside from our dreadful lunch later on in Superior) was sitting under something called the Red Gum tree…..

Our guide said the natives call it the Widow Maker as it apparently drops huge limbs at a whim, which potentially fall on anyone standing under the tree. Bill seemed surprisingly eager to take this photo…..

One of my favorite AZ native plants is the ocotillo, a spindly-looking tree that looks dead until it begins to bloom, when it looks beautiful…..

The ocotillo has a cousin called the boojum tree. It is, as you can see, considerably taller…..

Cacti are hardy plants. They have to be, given where they grow. Here is a prickly pear that grows right out of the trunk of a tree. I love nature…..

Aside from the horrible lunch we had later that afternoon, our day was perfect…..

Perhaps I won’t let the word arboretum scare me any longer…..

This post linked to the GRAND Social.

Saturday Smile: Is It Really That Bad?

Posted in Whimsies by

I mentioned on Thursday a rather unpleasant visit we had to a restaurant in a less than picturesque small town about 30 miles east of our Mesa home named Superior. I had no sooner published the blog post when I got a text message from my brother Dave. Here’s what he said: As Dad would say, “If God was going to give the world an enema, he would stick the hose in Superior.” Dave went on to explain that Dad had used those exact words to describe Craig, Colorado.

My dad wasn’t one to mince words. And he clearly didn’t think highly of the Colorado town located in the northwest corner of the state. I have never been there, so I can’t confirm or deny his description.

The same could be said of my mother. On more than one occasion, I heard her say that the town of Holbrook, AZ, reminded her of a town that had just been hit by a nuclear bomb. Suffice it to say that neither of my parents would ever have been asked to serve on the board of a chamber of commerce.

But when I read the words that Dave wrote, I laughed out loud. Not only could I hear my Dad’s voice saying those exact words, but he might not have been wrong, at least when it came to Superior…..

 

It looks like I will also not be serving on a Chamber board.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: The Great Alone

Posted in Book Reviews by

If an author has done his or her job right, there’s something in their novel that drives the story. Something that makes people continue to turn the page. Something that the reader thinks about long after they’ve closed the book.

In The Great Alone, the latest offering from Kristin Hannah (who has written such bestsellers as The Nightingale and Firefly Lane) the “something” is Alaska. Even when Hannah’s latest storyline was so depressing that I wasn’t always sure if I wanted to continue, the Alaskan wilderness kept calling me back.

It’s 1974, and Ernt Allbright returns home from Vietnam after living in a POW camp for a few years. His wife Cora, the daughter of wealthy parents who married Ernt against their will, recognizes immediately that he is a changed man. The man with whom she fell in love and for whom she defied her parents is now sullen,unstable, and dangerously volatile. Their 13-year-old daughter Leni, can’t remember the father who wasn’t so unpredictable.

Feeling the need for a change, Ernt moves his family to a remote area of Alaska, where he hopes to homestead and live off the land. Cora agrees, optimistic that a change is necessary to save the family. It works for a while, but eventually Ernt’s mental instability takes over and things take a nosedive.

The Great Alone is a story of neediness, friendship, and dysfunctional love. It is taut with tension and anger. The incredibly difficult living conditions in this small Alaskan town create a dependence on each other that can benefit or wreck someone as emotionally fragile as Ernt Allbright.

I’ve never been to Alaska. I don’t know if a small town in remote Alaska today would look like it did in this book. While the story is unendingly depressing –ironically, nearly laughingly so – I found myself continuing to turn the pages because I was intrigued by the notion of living in such a wilderness. People relied on one another because, particularly during the winter, there were no others on whom to rely. It’s an intriguing background story for a novel.

I find Hannah’s novels to be somewhat predictable and her characters fairly one dimensional; nevertheless, I will give The Great Alone a weak huzzah for its important topic and setting. If you like Hannah’s other novels, you are likely to enjoy this one as well.

Here is a link to the book.

 

Thursday Thoughts

Posted in Whimsies by

Cheers
Whenever it’s time to go either direction (to AZ in December or to Denver in May), I feel sad. There are things I miss from both places. Family, of course, but other specific things as well. In AZ, I miss the lovely spring weather during which we don’t have to worry about snow the next day, my charming manageably-sized ranch home, Fuddruckers, my garbage disposal (which not only doesn’t back up regularly as does ours in Denver, but is big enough to actually grind up an elephant should that need arise, given that Bill installed it), and our wonderful church. But perhaps most of all, I miss the fancy Fry’s Supermarkets that have sushi bars where you can sit down and enjoy your meal, beautiful delis with seating, and an actual wine and beer bar where you can sit and enjoy a selection of adult beverages…..

I took this photo while sitting at the bar at Fry’s Supermarket.

I support small businesses. I really do. But I will tell you that I wish with all of my heart that you could buy wine in grocery stores in Colorado. Having a beer and wine bar would only be the icing on the cake.

You Call This Food?
Bill and I took a field trip yesterday to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a state park that, despite only being about 30 miles away from our front door, we have never visited. In fact, we had never heard of it, and only learned about it from friends. I will tell you about our visit next week. But let me quickly tell you that afterwards, we stopped in the nearest town – called Superior – for lunch. The town is optimistically named, as it certainly isn’t superior to much of anything. The restaurant we chose out of the few that didn’t have boarded-up windows was called Buckboard City Café. It was the “café” that sold us – that, and the fact that all of the other restaurants were boarded up. I am not fussy about food; truly, I’m not. While some restaurants are better than others, I can tolerate most any of them. The Buckboard Café was simply awful. The highlight might have been when a man came in to return the burritos that he had purchased earlier. I don’t know why, and frankly, don’t want to know why. What was disturbing, however, was that the server who was helping him literally yelled from the front of the restaurant into the kitchen, “Sue, there’s a man here who wants to return his burritos. What should I do?” What you should do my friend is not holler at the top of your lungs that people are actually returning your retched food. They did, however, boast the world’s smallest museum which we didn’t bother to visit….

We couldn’t help but enjoy the so-called artwork outside in the parking lot…..

Home is Where the Pocketbook Is
I wish I could remember where I come across these things because it would make me so much more believable. But here is an image I found most remarkable, and most troubling. It showed what income was necessary to be able to afford the AVERAGE home in each state. If I read the map correctly, Colorado is fifth highest behind only Hawaii, California, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts. I’m happy that all of our Colorado children (and we) already own our home, because homebuying would be much more difficult these days. Yoiks.

 

Ciao.