This will be, should be, the last of the series on preparing for, and living through, an Arizona summer. I hope you have been taking notes, putting them into a three-ringed binder you went to Target to specifically buy for this review and study, and tabbed the sections accordingly. If you did, I'm afraid you have more to worry about than the six months of suffocating heat you are about to enter.
Allergies in Arizona, especially the lowlands like Phoenix and Tuscon are terrible. According to some study somewhere, we are the third worse climate for allergy and allergy related symptoms. The Third!! People use to come from all over the world to recover from disease's like tuberculosis. Problem was, they brought their plants with them, you know, to remind them of the old country they would never want to see again. An Arizona Spring is the worse time of year for allergies.
I never remember having allergies growing up. Maybe I did and never knew it. You feel like you have a cold or flu all the time. You cough and hack and feel achy, and your face just leaks-constantly. You take one of those generic allergy relief meds, a case of those breathing strips you wear on your nose at night, and a bottle of Southern Comfort just to get you to the next day. I went to the doctor a couple of years ago with these symptoms that had lingered for two or three weeks. I was sure I needed something cut or lanced or something. She asked me three questions-"What trees do you have in your yard?" Mulberry and Olive. "Ah huh," she said and made a note. "What kind of grass do you have?" Bermuda was my answer. "Ah huh?" She made another note. "Any pets?" Two. She took a deep breath.
Come to find out we were lucky enough to have the first three plants on the Mother of All Allergy Lists with regard to plants not even mentioning the dogs. And everything was in bloom now-right now, in my front yard.
What does this have to do with summer? You see, once it starts to warm, I mean really warm, things in the desert begin to die-quickly. I guess we could be living somewhere like those sites depicted in Sunset Magazine. You know the images, those people who have back yards where you spit a seed out and it grows. Their yards are jungles of vegetation and neat places to hide when you and your kids are playing Army Rangers with broom sticks for guns (maybe that was a different generation?). Anyway, I think those people have faces that leak too.
At least I hope so. I want to share the good times. So, we gird our loins, and pop the salt tablets, and wear hats that frankly we make fun of people who don such attire any other time of year, just to survive. We shop at malls and see movies-all indoors with the thermostat set at 68. We switch to living more at night although temperatures posted at the 10:00 o'clock news is often well over 100 degrees. So we hunker down and take smaller steps and dream of Halloween.
We're always in a sweatshirt by Halloween.
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