Summer in the Southwest
My flopping, spindly sunflowers, like teenagers who grew too fast, and the mysteriously non-flowering morning glories (last summer they were a profusion of pinks and blues), whose leaves are wilted-by-day’s-end, are a sure sign of how hot this summer in Albuquerque, NM has been. Even the tomatoes are growing at a snail’s pace; much more slowly than last year. Alicia and I take turns watering our small back garden after the sun has gone down, thinking if we don’t, it’ll just be a day or two before all the greenery turns brown, dries up and blows away, leaving only the hardier weeds to take over.
Thankfully you can still find a shady spot under a tree and catch a breeze or two. I am amazed at how the temperature can climb into the triple digits some days but it isn’t the kind of sweat-producing humidity that I’ve experienced as a child and adult in places like New York. At the moment it’s 91 degrees and sunny here in Albuquerque.
It’s our second summer in this part of the Southwest and Alicia and I are enjoying it as much as the first. Our swamp cooler seems to be running 24/7 helping, not always succeeding, to cool down our small two bedroom apartment. For those of you unfamiliar with the workings of a swamp cooler (I never heard of one until I moved to the southwest!), it is a fan-like machine that blows on a screen filled with cold water. Under ideal conditions it’s supposed to blow cool air into your interior space, but some days, when the outside temperature is at its hottest, it just seems to blow more hot air our way. It’s not an air conditioner for sure, but for now it’s the best we have.
I’ve been working extra ARCA (my second part-time job) shifts with the developmentally disabled this summer. I don’t get to collect unemployment when my substitute teaching with APS dries up for more than a few weeks during summer break. Alicia’s been catching up on her reading (she can read a book in a few hours and I’m a bit jealous of that!), while getting ready for her fall semester at University of New Mexico, where she’ll be taking five classes come the end of August.
Back in June, we left town for a few days, traveling south to Las Cruces and then onto El Paso, TX, a big concrete-filled metropolis with far too little greenery, sporting yucky smoggy brown skies. We celebrated Alicia’s birthday and our anniversary (June 15) there and twice were chauffeured across the border to Juarez, Mexico, to Rio Dental (www.riodental.com; 1-800-886-8023) so I could be fitted for my new crown ($300) at a huge savings compared to US dental prices. By the way, you can now call me King Joseph; only kidding!
Upon our return from El Paso, TX (just crossing the border back into New Mexico from Texas was like a breath of fresh air with wide open desert spaces and vast blues skies overhead), our first priority was getting a new muffler for our Toyota 4-Runner. Since buying the vehicle, we’d gone a year with a rusty one that seemed like it’d crumble and fall off any minute. We found a great mechanic named Polo, who we’ll return to again and again for our car’s mechanical needs.
Alicia’s sister, Sybille, visited us from Southern California in the last week of July. We took her around to the usual tourist sights, including Old Town (for great Native American jewelry and souvenirs) here in Albuquerque and up to Santa Fe (for lunch and window shopping), which is about an hour north of us. A Wal-Mart employee, Sybille visited some Wal-Marts here in Albuquerque and was impressed with their operations. She even got to go to the Botanical Gardens and spend time with the butterflies.
Now that it’s August, I’m going to camp next week, which is located east of the Sandia Mountains, which border Albuquerque. It’s a work assignment from ARCA. I’ll be one of the staff there for three days, going up each morning and returning home with the day campers a few hours before dusk. It’s a wonderful location, bordered by fruit farms, with lots of evergreens and a big splashy pool, small pond, huge meeting hall and gym, and dozens of happy campers involved in a variety of fun activities.
Then it’s back to school for me at Albuquerque Public Schools, which officially starts on August 18. Some all-year round schools in the district have already begun and I’ve been getting calls from the automated sub-finder system, but I’ve ignored them, wanting to let summer linger just a little longer.
Soon Alicia and I will be back into the hustle and bustle of the school year. There’ll still be warm/hot days, but much cooler nights, the mercury dropping down to the teens. I’m looking forward to that, but Alicia isn’t due to a correlation between colder weather and seasonal hip pain.
We made some new friends this summer, Louis and Rosemary, both from New York. They visited Albuquerque and we had them over for dinner. Alicia cooked homemade Chili that had a little kick to it. They were under the impression that it stayed warm all year long in Albuquerque. We explained to them that it gets downright chilly here in the winter, especially during the nights when some places in and outside of the city get snow. "It’s because we’re at over 5,000 feet elevation," Alicia explained.
After seeing Rosemary (she had to get back to work in NYC) off at the Albuquerque International Sunport (our airport), Louis wanted to check out an alpaca ranch, so he, my friend, Daniel, and I drove to Albuquerque Alpacas ( www.albuquerquealpacas.com ), a ranch run by a retired teacher, Leslie Stoddard. At one point we were surrounded by dozens of female Alpacas inside a penned in area. It was otherworldly, having these Dr. Seuss-like, recently-shaved alpacas milling around us so quietly (more about this in my "Adventure with Alpacas" story). Just as our tour was winding down, it started to pour. The rain was refreshingly cool and we lingered with Ms. Stoddard in chairs on a covered veranda by a small rock pool, while her two lovely Labradors lay by our sides.
We’ve gotten more rain this summer than last. It’s been a wet July, preceded by a dry June, with the last day of the month getting a National Weather Service warning about a flash flood for a section of the Albuquerque metropolitan area. The storm, which started that Saturday (July 31) afternoon, dumped about an inch of rain in the foothills that surround Albuquerque. That night, Alicia and I were out driving in the downpour and were grateful that we own a Toyota 4-Runner that sits up higher (compared to most cars) off the road. We drove through lake-size, wet puddles with relative ease.
A few days/nights in July felt like we were back in Seattle. It’d be sunny in the morning and then the dark clouds would begin to congregate and eventually, by late afternoon, big drops of water would drop from a leaden sky. I must admit that the rain was quite lovely and I rejoiced in it. We go such long periods without it here in this part of the southwest that one wonders if it’ll ever rain again. Now that it’s August, more rain, in the form of isolated showers, is predicted in Albuquerque, at least for the next week and into the middle of this month. Yesterday afternoon (just before 5 pm) I was out driving and got caught in a rain storm that pelted my car with icy hail. They weren’t golf size pieces, but large enough to make me worry about my windshield cracking.
I’ve taken a few days off this past week and on Monday; Alicia invited me to tour her University of New Mexico campus. Only summer classes are in session, so there were relatively few students. I was impressed with the adobe-style architecture and vegetation on the campus, which had heated up by the middle of the day. I got to see the two buildings that Alicia will be taking her classes in. One is a brand-spanking new Education Building with cool classrooms. We also got to tour the air-conditioned SUB (Student Union Building) where I stepped into a barber shop and got a haircut lickety split.
Even though I won’t be in class with her, it’s nice to know where my wife will be spending her days this fall. Her return to college last fall was a dream come true. This year she’ll be a junior at University of New Mexico, paying resident tuition rates. I’m so proud of her hard work and A-student status. I don’t know if I could return to school in the role of student at this point in my life. But then I said that more than a decade ago, just before I returned to school to get my masters degree (it’s all about timing, I guess).
Meanwhile, I hope to become a designated substitute teacher at just one elementary school at APS (Albuquerque Public Schools). I interviewed for that job this past Wednesday. It’d be one step closer to getting a fulltime teaching job with the district.
Hope you’re enjoying summer wherever you are in the world, including Venezuela, where we recently got an email from friends we haven’t heard from in a long time. "Hola Mariana and Manolo!" Of course, keep in mind that just because it’s summer here in Albuquerque, NM, doesn’t mean it’s summer everywhere. Our Kiwi friends, Michelle and Tony, are enjoying winter in New Zealand, where life is always right as rain!
Written by Joseph Haviland
Edited by Alicia Haviland
Copyright 2010