The weekend temperatures fluctuated as greatly as our plans. Our maybe that’s backwards – maybe our plans fluctuated as greatly as the weather. In either case things changed quickly. We started the weekend with no plans. I thought I’d keep working on weeding and chores. My brother-in-law suggested that the 4 of us “do something”, maybe a bbq. I said great. Then I remembered we’d talked about taking the Circle Line cruise around NYC. A perfect weekend to do that! Friday night around dinner time I booked us 4 tickets for Sunday. Saturday morning my sister emailed me to say that my brother-in-law had test positive for Covid that morning. Sigh. Because she mentioned getting someone to use their tickets, I never checked for a refund.
I thought it would be fun to have our friends Pam and Jerry go out with us. They like “doing things” and they were a week-recovered from covid. As they do not answer their phone or email on Shabbos, it’s not always easy to reach them. I drove over to their house and checked with Pam. They couldn’t go Sunday but they were available that night. Yes! Come for drinks & snacks on the deck. I kept trying to find someone to use the other 2 tickets. My friend Amy could use 1 but her son Joe didn’t want to sail. It finally occurred to me that maybe I could get a refund or reschedule. Yes, indeed both of those are possibilities. So while texting Amy I handled the refund request. I invited Amy & Joe for dinner on the deck on Sunday. 🙂
Well, Saturday night was clear and COLD. Cold is, of course, a relative term. Given the 90+ degrees and humidity we’ve been having, Saturday night was in the low 70s in the early evening and not humid. I had on long pants, as did Pam and Jerry. We had the firepit going and NOT the fans. It was cool and quiet and pleasant. Sunday morning dawned much the same. But by the time Amy & Joe came at 5pm, it was near 90, disgustingly humid, and I had THREE fans going on the deck to keep air moving. We were doing okay until the skies opened up and RAIN started around 7pm. We’ve been in a drought, remember???? I have no inside for entertaining – my dining room is set up as a major computer lab. But I have a front porch! We relocated to the porch, I set up 2 fans there, and we had our dessert. There was no rain yesterday during the day but it started again at night and is expected to continue today and tomorrow. Within 24 hours we swung from Autumn back to Summer, from drought to rainy season. 🙂
Yesterday as I languished in my chair under blankets, the sky darkened, the snow began falling. Then the snow began whirling and twirling and blowing sideways, and the house across the street vanished. It looked like the end of the world was nigh. 
We weren’t getting that forecast. But, the governor is a politician. If he was criticized for not declaring a state of emergency well by golly, THIS time he’ll get it right. 
I made sure the outdoor spigots were off, drained, and left open to drip. I double-tarped the hot tub. It does have an insulated lid but when it gets this cold, I look at the tub and see hot air escaping and it looks like little dollar bills flying up into the sky. So even though I can’t take a dip tonight now, at least I am giving the hot tub thermostat some assistance. My car is tucked inside the garage (I’m such a princess) and I put my husband’s car in the driveway. The big warning for tomorrow will be ice. If there is any water left on the roads tonight from the 12 hours of rain, the road might be quite tricky tomorrow. 
I walked out of the airport to wait for my ride and the air was the proverbial wall of heat. The first errand, before we even reached the hotel, was to buy gallons of water and a water bottle. The very next errand involved buying protection for the car: cloth seat covers and a leather steering wheel cover. We tried for Rx sunglasses for my son but we didn’t have the Rx so we ended up buying clip-on shades for his driving glasses. We became skilled at searching parking lots for nearly denuded trees that cast even a sliver of shade. We noted the position of the sun, east and west, rising and setting. The sunroof was closed and covered (my sunroof at home is open unless it’s raining). The car a/c was on full blast all the time. 
Even the birds in Tempe have the brains to shelter from the sun. We came out of one store the other day and started laughing. There was a flock of pigeons gathered UNDER the car next to us. No fool THEY!
We spent a good part of both Thursday and Friday parked in the Chandler Sunset public library – free wifi, a/c, water and bathrooms. 🙂 What a fantastic library! It is everything a modern library could be. I was so envious, because I live in a town with a much older library, which is also much more constrained in square feet. I’d be thrilled to have a library at home like the spacious, well-equipped Sunset library. We could spread out our maps and check room and apartment ads against the areas we’d been told to avoid and told to seek. 
Even so we would have to go out to the car and drive to view apartments, get lunch, meet prospective landlords and achieve other objectives (found a congregation so he’ll have some place to go for the upcoming holidays – even met someone from that congregation). Once we found living quarters, we were hunting for furnishings. We have also learned which phone gives the best directions. I regret to say that while my phone would get us to the right place, she’d often have us in the back of the building with no access. 🙂 We did quite well, however, figuring out how to circle about to get where we needed to be. 
Everyone assures me that Tempe during the “season” is idyllic – I’ll love it. I was quite willing to believe that until we spoke to Luisa (a native Arizonan) yesterday. SHE told me that in February, when I hope to return, the temperatures can range from 50 to 70. Fahrenheit. I’m sorry – that is NOT idyllic – that is COLD. *unhappy expression* I do hope she was exaggerating the low end of that, although 70 is not warm enough for me either. I guess I’ll find out for sure come February. There are also wonderful mountains on the horizon, and in some cases, right at the end of the street. 🙂 The one at the end of the street is at the other end of the street from ASU.
Apologies to 
My cats “swing” too. Great success with WC yesterday – she came out and ate breakfast in the doorway of the food room. She even sat in the blueberry box in the hallway – a favorite cat resting place apparently. All 3 cats loved the blueberry box (8 pints of blueberries came in that box) so I made sure to bring it upstairs to be part of The Great Incarceration. Today – WC scorned breakfast and never even came out from under the bed for dinner. 
The third surface was the charm but necessitated me reorganizing some of the dining room so that the cord would reach the outlet. 
There have been some minor successes and improvements. I ATE my first home-grown strawberry. 🙂 You can see it in the picture but it’s not there anymore. My new porch railings are up and they are GORGEOUS. My Rudbeckia Laciniata Hortensia arrived and got planted. I finally remembered to get the plant supports out of the garage and brace the spiderwort. I planted two canna lilies where the wretched weeds wandered in. I bought a plastic dish rack for sitting on top of the washing machine in the basement – our new dishwashing location. (Notice the preponderance of garden tasks as opposed to indoor tasks.)
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