Rambling Thoughts

I will keep the football comments brief, I promise!

High school team lost their first playoff game, so that's that. If they hadn't lost this week, they certainly would have lost next week. I have a new team to root for though...the team that just beat us, Desert Vista. They were a very classy outfit, and a much-improved team from earlier in the season. I hope they do well!

ASU, my gosh. They beat UCLA, but just barely! The BCS bowl hopes stay alive with a 9-1 record. Ohio State goes down (sorry Lish!) and Kansas remains the lone unbeaten team! (woohoo Fannie Mae!) Ok, so I think Hawaii is still unbeaten too, but they're getting no respect in the polls. The Cardinals today...oh, who really gives a rat's ass, they'll lose, as usual.

I walked into the grocery store the day after Halloween, and was hit squarely in the face with Christmas. Figuratively speaking. I'm not ready for this. How do you get into the spirit when it still feels like summer? I think my friend Jen's post from Wordless Wednesday on November 7th just about said it all.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother this morning. She saw this headline in this morning's paper. Skeptics Raise Doubts on Global Warming, and was like "Ah ha! This is what we've been saying all along!" We, meaning she and my dad. Of course, she didn't bother to read the article, part of which says,

"Most climate scientists cringe at the question. Why not just ask whether you believe in gravity, they argue. The planet has warmed, and evidence points, at least in part, to human activities. The debate among these scientists ended years ago."

She just read the headline. Plus, if it's in print, it has to be true, right? Kind of like those emails about "In God We Trust" being left off the new dollar coin (not true), and Christian Broadcasting being taken off the air (also not true). But if it's on the internet, it must be true, right? I've given up sending her back the Snopes links...it's just not worth it. But it frustrates the hell out of me. I love my parents dearly, and they are the best grandparents ever. But I often wonder how two people who seem to move farther to the political right every day they age, raised...well, me. A bleeding-heart liberal. As long as we don't talk politics, everything's fine. I made the mistake one morning of joking around and asking my mom how she felt about President Hillary? That didn't go over too well.

Speaking of older people (my parents are in their early 70s), when does the filter go off? I think most of us have this little filter in our brains, and the things that we think go through this filter and the brain says "That's acceptable to say out loud", or "Better keep that one to yourself." Not everyone has it, but I think most people do. However, at some point, aging wears this filter away. At some point, it becomes acceptable to say anything that pops into your head out loud, no matter how offensive, racist, bigoted, or insensitive it may be. Why does that happen? What is it about aging that makes people feel that it's ok to just blurt out anything you might happen to be thinking? My mother seems to have lost this filter completely. This reminds me of a Frank Caliendo bit about inside words and outside words. It's at about 2:30 into this clip. The whole thing is really funny though, and it's only about three minutes:



Ok, I feel a little better now.

On the bright side, it is beginning to "cool off" here a little bit. Still above normal, but at least there are no longer any high temperatures in the forecast that start with 9. Do you know what's so tiring about the heat here? It's that it lasts so long. We have two seasons, and I'll refer to them as "Summer" and "Comfort." Summer lasts from about the middle of April until the middle of November, normally. This year, summer seems to be stretching beyond that. But usually, that's about the length of it. So, Comfort lasts from mid to late November, to around the beginning or middle of April. Maybe a bit longer if we're lucky. Basically 8 months of Summer, and 4 months of Comfort.

Have I mentioned that I really, really hate being hot? The logical question would be, "Shelley, if you hate the heat so much, why do you live in Phoenix?" Well, I've wondered that many times myself. I was born here, so the first 18 years of my life I didn't really have much choice. Besides, I don't remember the heat bothering me when I was a kid. Then I went to Arizona State, because it was cheaper to go in state and I've been a Sun Devil my whole life, basically, since my parents also went to ASU. By the time I finally graduated, I had already met my future husband, was engaged and planning a wedding. We did move to Denver once, in December of 1998. That didn't work out so well, except I LOVED the weather there. If I could take everyone and everything I know here (family, friends, job, etc) and move them all to Denver, I'd go in a heartbeat. If I could somehow magically make the weather here equal to Denver's, I'd do that too. It's really beautiful there...green and mountains and sometimes it even *gasp* snowed! I remember every time, I'd sit at the window and just watch the snow fall, because it was just so awesome to me. We didn't have a garage, so scraping the windshield in the morning kind of sucked, but other than that...mmmm.

If I could live anywhere, I'd pick the Pacific Northwest. It's so...green. And to live in a place where it's cloudy more than it's sunny? Sounds like heaven to me. My roots are so very deep here, and now my kids' are too, it's really hard to imagine trying to pull them up. And of course, we won't. But my dreams are of rain, snow, clouds and wind. Christmas looks like snowmen and sleigh rides and little kids with red cheeks from the cold. Wait...never mind, that's a sunburn.

People who live where it's cold and snowy sometimes get something called SAD, or Seasonal Affective(?) Disorder. I sometimes wonder if the heat has the same effect on me. Anytime during Comfort when the temperature threatens to climb out of the 70s (and it does happen), I get mad. I feel like I'm being cheated out of the small amount of Comfort I am allowed each year. I want to wear jeans and sweatshirts without sweating. I know most people don't understand this, especially those who live where it does get really cold, but this is really bothering me. I think about how happy I would be if I walked outside today and it was cloudy with swirling winds and leaves blowing around, and the sky looked as if it was threatening rain. Am I nuts?

And while we're pondering the "Is Shelley nuts?" question, here's another one: How do you get into the Christmas spirit in your shorts and your SPF 30? I'd really like to know.