Dragging up on Arizona

The temperature is rising in Southern Arizona. In a month, nobody without air conditioning would choose to stay here, if they could leave. Even many who do have AC and could stay if they wanted to choose to leave if they can. They pack up their Sprinter vans, gas up their giant mobile homes, attach their 5th-wheels to their diesel pickups, and head north for the summer. Snowbirds. 

Southern Arizona summer is hell. I don't believe in heaven or hell, on a normal day, so I can only speculate on the temperature in hell, but I know this: You don't have to die to experience it, if you are curious. The whole burning flaming dumpster fire mess can be yours right now. Come on down. Today it was a pleasant 83 F. In a few days, it will be over 90 F. We're just getting started.

Timing is the hard part when you move with the weather. If the heat wave only lasts a few days, maybe I can ride it out at a higher elevation. The highest elevation near Tucson is Mt. Lemmon. I tried that last summer. It was definitely cooler up there in the mountain town of dry pines, but there's no place to park overnight unless you have a serious off-road vehicle, and the road up and back is no fun. Tried it, won't do it again. Those pine trees are a blaze waiting to happen, just saying. It would take a helicopter to evacuate residents of the little town of Summerhaven.

South of here is Sierra Vista, a slightly higher elevation. They have a decent Walmart parking lot. About two hours away is Globe, higher still. Never been to Globe. To the east is New Mexico, places like Silver City, or even Albuquerque, if I get a hankering for an eight-hour drive. To the West is the Promised Land, also known as California, but to get there, you have to make a frantic dash across terrain that is known to be hotter than Southern Arizona. You've heard of Death Valley. 

If I choose to stay, my only option (besides die) is the mall. 

What's really fun is monsoon, the fifth season nobody warned me about because all the people I knew in Tucson packed up and left before the rains came. I'm from Oregon. I know rain. Nothing prepared me for monsoon. Rain doesn't begin to cover it. Lightning, thunder, haboobs, downbursts, flash floods . . . It's noisy, violent, and shocking. Experiencing monsoon season really makes you feel alive. I'm glad I had the experience. I do not want to be here for monsoon when I'm living in my car.

I can live here for a while in the heat, but it's not pleasant. It's also not healthy. I touched it out last year because I had medical appointments. This time, I have no reason to linger. 

Using the mall as a cooling shelter is a time-tested tradition in Tucson. I don't mind charging up my phone at the power bar with all the unhoused. On some level I can relate, but honestly, I feel like a fraud. I am a snob with a car. 

The prospect of cooling down in the mall day after day, though, is demoralizing. The Tucson mall is cold, noisy, and exhausting. Does spending three months at the mall sound like fun to you? I know what you are going to say: Carol, malls are dead. You should be grateful! You are right, of course. You might be one of those shoppers I've heard about. Condolences on the loss of all your favorite anchor stores.

Based on last summer's experience at the mall, I won't make it through April, let alone May and June. Sure there's covered parking. There are also car alarms, monster trucks, and security guards who drive by and look askance at me if I leave my door ajar for some air. And it's a lot of work to pack my power stations into the mall just to keep my fridge running and my tech powered up. 

Being a nomad is challenging at times.

No, the choice is clear. It's time to drag up on Arizona, for the summer, for sure, and maybe for good. 

Where will I go? I don't know. I think I'll move what's left of my stuff into cheap storage in some obscure town in Oregon, and then take off for parts unknown. There's a lot of road still left to see. 

Time to stop making sense

In my fledgling career as an amateur dogsitter, I can now claim to have cared for three dogs. Juno is the biggest dog, so far. She's an 11-year-old, slow-moving Rhodesian Ridgeback whose head is bigger than mine. She's old and arthritic, which means she doesn't go for walks and she sleeps most of the time. Except during the night, of course, when her bladder or bowels say it's time to go outside (rarely at the same time). 

My schedule is out the window when it comes to taking care of Juno. The dog's 5 am and 5 pm feeding schedule drives the entire show. The feeding schedule drives the poop and pee schedule. I have no choice, unless I want to experience the consequences, which I don't want to do, so I have my alarm set for 5 am. 

It's still dark here at 5 am but dogs' stomachs have their own internal driving force, and I live to serve, so I stagger off the couch and head for the fancy open-concept kitchen and the stainless steel fridge, where I rummage for the frozen veggies that make up one third of this dog's meal. The veggies go into the microwave to thaw. While that is happening, I put my head lamp on my head, click it to the dim setting, and grab a couple training treats, which I use to bribe Juno to go pee. She does, thankfully—like most of us, she'll do anything for treats. I admire the tepid air and the amazing array of stars overhead while she squats in the grass. Then we rush back inside for the main event. 

I get the other two elements of her meal out of the fridge: a huge round flat slab of raw hamburger and a raw chicken drumstick. These two things go into a big metal bowl.

By this point, Juno is going insane. Oh, have I mentioned, I am currently adhering to a vegan lifestyle? 

The thawed veggies get dumped into the metal bowl with the two hunks of raw meat. After a dousing of water from the reverse osmosis filtered water spigot, I feed Juno her two arthritis meds (wondering if they would do anything for my hip arthritis), and then we go outside onto the patio. 

Juno knows to sit, and I've learned to hold the dish high over my head so she doesn't knock it out of my hand. I set the dish on the Mexican tile flagstones, and Juno goes to town. It's a little disturbing to watch her polish off an entire chicken leg in two crunchy bites. She could probably do that to my hand, if she got a hankering for old lady bones. While she eats, I put the raw stuff back in the fridge. I make sure I have enough meat thawed for the next several meals. Finally, I clean up the dark granite countertops with antiseptic wipes, hoping none of that raw meat juice got on anything I care about. 

Juno returns in about 30 seconds. Her dish is licked clean. Juno goes back to bed on her 4-foot wide round cushion, and I wash out the metal bowl, wondering if it's worth going back to bed myself, or if I should just stay up for the sunrise. Usually I just lay there in the dark and listen to the AC system clicking on and ramping up as if we are about to be shot into orbit. 

Speaking of AC, I don't understand how it works, if it's me (residual hot flashes), or if the house is trying to kill me. Sometimes it seems hot in here, and sometimes it seems cold. Yesterday, I couldn't take having freezing feet when it's 108°F outside, so I nudged the thermostat from 78°F to 80°F. It seems better today.

In the evening, at 5 pm, we repeat the entire meal preparation process, sans the pills, and sans me going back to bed to try to catch a few more hours of shut-eye. By evening I'm in a bleary daze, wondering how I got here and where I'm going to end up next. I know that around 1 am, Juno, the pony-sized dog, is going to shake herself and head to the patio door, where she will poke at the glass with one huge black claw. I'm right behind with my head lamp, the beck and call girl for the creature temporarily at the center of my existence. 

I think back sometimes to the arc of this blog. Few of you are around anymore to reflect with me on the vagaries of this journey. This blog started out as a place to rant about the travesties of earning my PhD, oh woe is me, alas, alackaday. After some wandering aimlessly, the blog centered on the decline of my mother into dementia, and eventually her death. After that, what was there to talk about but me, as usual: downsizing, moving, searching for home, healthcare, and hoping to find my balance. It's hard to look back and see not an arc but a line. It all depends on what label I put on the y-axis, though, doesn't it? If I put financial success on that axis, the line descends into negative territory. Danger, Will Robinson! But if I put freedom on that axis, the line shoots out the top of the chart. 

The question remains: Would you rather be safe or would you rather be happy? It's really hard to find the intersection of both.