The Chili Effect

Habenero chili. Yep, that is a hot food. Makes your mouth burn, any part of your skin that it touches feel like a red hot poker of burning metal trying to cook its way through. That is the foundational history of the chili. It is also the history of an Arizona summer.

You know, it’s hotter here now than when it was when my grandfather use to swing from a rope hanging from one of the cottonwoods that lined the canals near his parents dairy, which, by the way, is now runway 8 left for Sky Harbor International. Arizona summers require planning. We move from winter to summer in about 72 hours. There is no gosh, wasn't this whole month wonderful-type talk. These summers require us to think about such things as air conditioning servicing, pool maintenance, swamp coolers, cooking outside or just eating salads, chaffing, and the new ones for the new-agers—tanning booths.

“Mark, whoa, slow down there. Tanning booths? Where did you come up with that? You won’t find any self-respecting man who has a XY chrome-pattern to even think about going to a tanning booth. Besides, it’s Arizona, just go outside, take your shirt off and cut the lawn, or change that bearing adapter on your swamp cooler along with the pump. That old deer gut will be red in 12 to 19 minutes according to the woman with the troweled on makeup doing the weather on the six-o’clock news. She should know, she just transferred down here from Minnesota and she fell asleep laying next to her condo's pool and her back is the color of a fire truck.”

Okay, look, I’m not some wing-nut from a French baking school. This is serious prepping for one of the harshest climates the Big Ten Cities have. Now, granted, I would much rather have Phoenix summers than a Buffalo winter. Shoveling FEET of snow off my driveway just to be stuck in the street every day is not my idea of good times, but every year that same weather gal, having believed what her colleagues have told her, tries to fry an egg on the sidewalk outside her studio. Of course it eventually works, after hours on the pavement and the flies reduce it to a small pool of goo, but she tried and was marginally successful. We need a plan. I’m just spit-balling here.

Here is the idea, if you go to a tanning place (do we really need to call them a salon?) and capitalize on their specials, like a week free or coupons and discounted stuff, get a little controlled UV roasting, then when we do go outside and mow the lawn, trim the hedge, or replace that flange adapter on the #2 control rod of the cooler’s squirrel cage, we shouldn't wind up in the burn unit at County General. Arizonans have some of the worst tans on the planet. ALL the health experts say you shouldn't have a tan; its bad for you, it will give you some cancer they have to remove the old fashion way—with a knife and Bondo.

Some of us might want to travel this summer to someplace with an ocean like Florida, San Diego, or the Caribbean. You don’t want to walk out on the beach with a tanned head and neck, forearms, and the rest of your body so white it’s translucent. After one day, you find yourself in a burn unit on an island where the doctor is in a tank top of woven Hyena skins and treating you by waving some chicken bones (you hope they are chicken bones) over your head, while humming some chant through an Ibex horn, and throwing some crushed coconut ash on your second degree wounds. The idea of strapping yourself up with a zip line harness that afternoon is the last thing you want to think about.

Look, we need to live wiser out here in the great southwest. Sir Lawrence adapted when he came from pasty-white England to the Middle-East. He wore a man dress and head cover. HOw he looked was not as important as staying alive. He drank water and stayed out of the sun. With the flat screen and Blue-Ray, that last part should be easy. But we are creatures who like the outdoors. We are creatures who fix stuff. If we are going to harvest the lawn and do so in our Speedo and flip-flops, we need to take precautions against things, like someone doing a drive-by harpooning of a Great White.

NEXT TIME: Sun block v. Baby oil-sauteed or fried.

To Live to my potential-According to my dog

Some wise person said once, they hoped to live up to the potential their dog thinks they have, or something like that. There is something magical about dogs and men. Sure, women love dogs just as much and have just as good a relationship and feelings, blah, blah, blah. But I'm not a woman, so I can't talk from that perspective.

Dogs and man go back to when we use to chase down mastodons together. Today, we herd sheep, stand guard at some remote airbase, pull a sled in a fifteen hundred mile competition, chase balls or Frisbees, or just sit and watch TV. All the dog wants to do, is please its master, whatever that looks like.

Some people spend thousands of dollars on their pets. They say, 'Hey, he/she is just like my kid.' Since I've had kids I know the difference. I know I wouldn't spend thousands of dollars for something like a kidney transplant or surgery from a car accident like I would on my own flesh and blood, but I can understand those who do and why they would. What's funny is, I would run back into a burning house to save either of my dogs.

They would try to do the same for me if they could. Funny.

So, today, this morning, I have to do the thing dad's have to do and take my sixteen year old dog to the humane society to have her put to sleep. I would rather run back into a burning house to save her. I have to live to that level my dog thinks of me and do what she wants me-expects me to do, make the pain stop. I curled up with her last night while she got sick and then this morning, realized it was time. She had been sick for a while.

It was surely time.

Funny thing about those times. Dogs (and I'm sure other pets for other people as well) become this thing in our lives. If we truly want to admit it, in a way, we want to be like them. Imagine knowing someone-anyone, who, when you came home, ran to the door and kissed you and welcomed you home like you had been away for years, instead of just to the corner store for a gallon of milk. Imagine knowing someone who only wants to please you, love you, play with you, listen to you and whatever dribble you have to say so attentively that you would swear they were listening. Another guy, probably the same one who said the first quote, said once "Don't you wish you had the heart for god, like a dog does for its master?" How about the heart for anything like a dog has for it's master?

That dog didn't care what we wore, how we smelled, how much money we made last quarter, or if we drove a new car. All she cared about was being around us. Where ever I was, she was within feet of me, laying down, taking the pressure off of her arthritic legs.

Yep, that dog taught me a lot over the years. She listened to stories and could sense heart ache and joy and at just the right time, she would drop some dog wisdom on the old man that made sense-perfect sense.

When it was time to go, I swear she smiled.

She knew something.

Yep, I want to live up to the image my dog thinks of me. It would only make me a better man.

Wave of Life

Sometimes, don't you wake up just wanting to go back to sleep again? Kind of like life-not everyday is a fun filled extravaganza run of frolic and joy.

Sometimes, its just work.

Sometimes, we just have to lower our head, tuck our shoulder, and prepare for impact. I remember as a kid swimming in the surf in San Diego, a wave would come and it was too shallow to dive under it, you did exactly that, leaning into this wave that you could see coming, ready to try to knock you over. Once it hit, it usually pushed you back on one leg where you found yourself hopping, trying to keep your balance.

You survive the impact only to find yourself in deeper water, trying to wipe your face free of the salt water and that long green grass like kelp that got stuck in your hair, not to mention what ever that stuff is wrapped around your ankles.

Sometimes, for days, weeks, months, whole seasons, we feel like we just have to tuck our shoulders, lower our heads, and brace for whatever is going to roll down the street at us, leaving whatever it brought, wrapped around our ankles and stuck in our hair. After a while, after one wave then another, we get use to the stuff in our hair and we don't even feel the goo around our ankles. It has become a part of our life.

But then it happens.

You don't even realize it, but finally you come to a point when you are in the perfect position to catch one of these waves that has been beating you for so long and ride that puppy to shore.

And the one you pick is huge!

You look up at it as it starts to curl and the top ridge of it starts to thin, allowing the sun light to come through. For a moment, you think about going under it, avoiding it because for a moment, you are feeling fear. Then it happens.

You lose your fear and replace it with courage of a paramount level-almost joyful, exuberant joy. You turn and start swimming as hard as you can to shore and quickly find yourself being picked up by this thing and pushed forward. You tuck your arms and try to form a bullet, going faster and faster and sliding down the curl that now, instead of beating you to death with its power, you are in full sinc with. You and the wave, for just a few seconds, are together.

Until your belly scrapes the sand.

Then, you stand up, pull the green grass out of your mouth, the kelp off your ankles, turn and walk back out to sea, only to be battered again for a season, before you get another chance to ride the Big Kahuna all over again.

Just like life.

Hmm.