Hey, Lady! Let me ruin your day!

Do you ever get the feeling that something bad is about to happen? You don’t know what it is but all of a sudden there is an air of foreboding? That happened to me today, and it happened way to quick for me to backtrack.

The day was going well enough. I was lucky enough to be able to meet Hubby for lunch. We had to wait about 10 minutes for a table but that was OK. He told me work was slow, he was the only one in the office because everyone was taking advantage of the 3 day weekend. He says he will lock up early and come home, his boss is gone and everyone that reports to him is gone too, so why stay? YAY! So far my day is going pretty good!

Next I stop at Target. I just need to pick up a few things and this Target has a Starbucks inside…double YAY! I pull into the parking lot and park next to a large size SUV (this was really a poor choice on my part because I drive a full-size SUV too). I look over and see through their tinted windows that there is a baby standing in the front passenger seat. She is probably 10 months old and she really is pretty cute with a big ol’ grin showing her 2 top teeth. I smile to myself thinking of the days when KK was so little.

I turned off the motor and there it was…that feeling. Something is not right. I take the key out of the ignition I open my door and then it happens…I slip out of my seat, and I mean I literally slipped out of the seat! As I am falling I bang my knee and hit the SUV with my door. I get up, turn around to scan both vehicles and there are no marks. Phew! I begin to walk away when the woman in the SUV slides down her window and yells at me, “Hey Lady! Thanks for banging my car with your door!”

Oh great, I hate confrontation! I knew someone was in the car and I was so busy being upset at myself for my clumsiness that I didn’t stop to think I should yell “Sorry!”

Now I tell her I am sorry, I looked and saw no marks. “Thats not the point!” She yells…snidely I might add.

“Really? What is the point? Would it make you feel better to know I fell on the scorching pavement, that I bruised my knee and it hurts like hell? (I don’t wait for her answers, I just keep talking because thats what I do when someone puts me on the defensive.) If I were you, I would be more worried about putting that precious baby into her carseat rather than trying to ruin someone’s day by giving them grief about something so trivial as tapping your car. You would think you have never, in your entire life, accidentally hit someone’s car with your car door!” (The added punctuation is for clarity…this was more like a run-on sentence when I was saying it.)

At this point I thought it would be good if I just walked away because I was seriously getting a little too upset. But as I did I couldn’t resist, I turned back and yelled to her “Have a nice day!”

Now, of course, I spent my whole time in Target worried about her keying my car. Or maybe she would just be sitting there waiting for me to come out so she could berate me for having the gall to park next to her. I was kinda hoping she would be so I could make her look at my knee, and I could show her my broken fingernail to boot. That would cheer her up! She would be happy to know I am a bona fide klutz, wouldn’t it?

I just don’t understand it. Would you yell at someone for hitting your car with their car door? It was obvious I was not being malicious seeing how I had to pick myself up off the ground. Maybe she was too busy thinking about her precious auto that she didn’t see me disappear under the window? If your vehicle is more important to you than your fellow humankind, maybe you need to park further out in the parking lot. Away from all of us people that might be having a good day.

And she did bang my car with her car door…there were three little marks on my car that were not there before. No worries though, they rubbed right off, just like her attempt to ruin my day!

Global Warming? No. Its Summer.

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to see another heat record broken: 29 days of temperatures over 110 degrees F. The previous record of 28 days was set in 1979. We only tied the record for the date’s high: 113.

Have no fear! That high is no where near our highest recorded day here in the metropolitan Phoenix area, also known as the “Valley of the Sun”. Lucky me, I was around here for that day back in 1990. The “official high”, recorded at the Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport was 122. The temperature on the thermometer I had on my back patio said 127. The heat really isn’t all that bad…wouldn’t you love to have your clothes dry before you can finish hanging the whole basket? It was a pretty awesome experience, even the airport had to be shut down because of the heat! We may have felt mighty special that day but that record didn’t break the world record of 136, the honor belongs to Libya and it occurred in 1922. A little closer to home, the highest temperature on record belongs to Death Valley, California. They hit a whopping 134 way back in 1913.

Of course, we are no where near the record of consecutive days of 100 degrees or higher…that belongs to a place down south in Australia: 162 days! That event didn’t occur this year or last year. Nope. That happened back in 1923. We only had 41 days of 100+ weather this year. Our record is from 1993 when we had 76 straight 100+ days. (Thats funny, I took racquetball lessons at an outdoor court (evening of course!) and I don’t remember it being that hot that summer). I take these numbers in stride. Our miles and miles of blacktop add what we call “Heat Islands”. For me, the drive from downtown to the suburbs will bring a drop in temperature by as much as 8 degrees.

I am not buying into the Global Warming argument that we are causing our planet to melt. Our Earth (and Solar System) is 4 billion years old, the weather is cyclical and those are facts.  Earth gets warm, Earth cools down, Earth gets warm again.  Earth has had 4 major ice ages in its history. Our last big Ice Age spread glaciers way down through North America and carved out the Great Lakes. Did you know that we had a Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago? If you have seen the picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River then you may have noticed the chucks of ice he had to navigate. It is not normal for the Delaware River to freeze!

Answers.com says the definition of “Ice Age” is : A cold period marked by episodes of extensive glaciation alternating with episodes of relative warmth. With that, some people say Earth’s warming means we may still be in an ice age, that this is just the warming period before the next glacial advance. I don’t know about that, but I do know that I enjoy the heat a lot more than I enjoy the cold. Believe or not, in the winter I can drive 1 hour north and get this:

The kids make a snowman, throw some snowballs, slide down the hill a few times, complain they are cold and wet, we hop in the car and come home to the low desert. Thats about as much as we can handle of temps below 65. If we are going to be breaking records from 100 years ago, I’d rather be it a little warmer than a little cooler.

Of course, that is, as long as its a dry heat!