We have lived in Arizona for three weeks now and I have
some observations:
1.
I cannot
imagine why anyone back in the 1800’s when Arizona was being settled would have
even considered living here after experiencing a summer. I cannot even think how it must have been to
live here without any electricity to power a fan, a swamp cooler, or an air
conditioner
2.
Arizona tries REALLY HARD to make living here
visually appealing because, goodness knows, natural growth is pretty boring
(except for the saguaro cactus which are really cool looking). They landscape every piece of open public
space with heat-loving, low-water needing plants and it is truly lovely. They also grow patches of low-maintenance
(meaning it doesn’t need to be mowed every week) grass wherever they can. Because, you know, the eye can only tolerate
only so much brown and tan. We need
green in our lives to promote sanity – especially in the intense heat.
3.
Arizona is the land of retired people and they
actually have “Silver Alerts” that are
sort of like “Amber Alerts”. Warning…..
a senior person has wandered off or a senior person is driving their car and here is the license
plate. They had one of those on the 4th
of July and it was plastered on all the freeway notification signs. I guess they have many incidents of seniors
driving the wrong way on freeways.
Yikes.
4.
Arizona also has their own special kinds of
weather alerts – severe dust storms. We
had one tonight. Stay in your homes was
what we were told. NO PROBLEM! Too dang hot to be outside anyway.
Speaking
of 4th of July, it seems like it was WEEKS ago instead of just five
days ago. The local scout troop plants flags in front of homes that subscribe to the service and this greeted us early on the 4th.
The Johnson's are subscribers, I guess. We started our day with a
breakfast / flag ceremony at the church.
It was potluck with people encouraged to bring breads and fruit. WELL,
on the two long banquet tables, I saw two tiny bowls of fruit and the
rest was carbohydrate city – cinnamon rolls, muffins, donuts, donut holes, my
small plate of gluten-free muffins. Just
two gallons of milk and two gallons of juice for the masses completed the “breakfast”. I KNOW all the kids buzzed around the rest
of the day on all that sugar. We had
lunch with a long-time friend, Evelyn Kerr, from my MU hospital days who now
lives in Tempe.
We visited my sister
Jerri in her new rehab facility in Mesa.
She had just returned from an overnight stay at the hospital where they
had to debride the dead skin off her burned forearms. Not sure how long it will take until she gets
to return back to her home. So sad. And,
afterwards, we had dinner and a small backyard fireworks display at my niece’s –
Amy and Cory Ellsworth – home also in Mesa.
Here is Colby. His twin, Cade, was not up to much as he had just had surgery to insert a rod to help his scoliosis (from the muscular distrophy) Colby had his inserted a couple of years ago. Their dad, Cory, grew up on a dairy farm so his "mid-life crisis" was to buy a dairy cow and here is her calf.
setting up for the fireworks
As we drove back to Surprise (taking literally a full hour to go from
the east end of Phoenix valley to the west end), we admired larger firework
displays on either side of the freeway
I got to help Steve drive a brand-new (less than 5 miles on the odometer) Chevy Malibu from a downtown Phoenix dealership back to the mission office on Thursday. Nice car - TERRIFYING ride. All I could think was "DON'T WRECK THIS CAR"
We have a new mission president
as of July 1st and this week he hit the ground running. He toured the office on Monday the 3rd
and on the 4th, he had a leadership meeting at a stake center in
Peoria. We actually went there after the
breakfast so Steve could meet a fellow to replace three TIWI’s on cars that
were going to be at that meeting. A TIWI
stands for “teenage independent witness” and it is literally “Big Brother” in
your car. Which is a good thing for 19
and 20 year-old drivers. It monitors seatbelt
wearing, speed, and reckless driving.
Anyway, back to the new mission president – he then spent the rest of
the week – Wednesday through yesterday – at zone conferences throughout the
mission. The first two were down here in
Phoenix. On Friday, he was in Flagstaff
and on Saturday he was in Prescott.
Steve attends all these meetings.
Flagstaff is a 3 hour drive away – Prescott is 1.5 hours away so, rather
than come all the way back to Phoenix Friday night, everyone just stayed up in
Prescott. I drove up to meet Steve and
on both the drive up and back, I saw evidence of recent and current fires! Saturday morning, before the zone conference
started, I found the house where my grandma and grandpa Fraedrich lived back in
the 70’s.
I complain about the heat and
the barrenness but, being here in Phoenix is wonderful because I have so much
family and we have so many friends who live here. While in Prescott, I learned of two former-Missouri church families who live up there!
My sister Juli had doctor appointments down in
Phoenix on Friday so she came for an early dinner before she headed back up to
Payson and I headed to Prescott. And, we
had dinner this evening with friends we have known since we were in Woodbridge,
Virginia back in the late 70’s! Fred and
Nancy Richardson – a wonderful, wonderful couple
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