Arizona Sunsets

Sometimes I'm a little bitter about living in Tucson. First of all, I always had this vision of myself living somewhere amazing like Paris or Prague. Then, I always swore that wherever I lived I'd never live here because I have approximately nine thousand relatives living here [ok only 34 or something like that, but I swear I'm always bumping into someone who can tell embarrassing stories from when I was six]. Plus in the summer it's about nine thousand degrees, which means that (a) I'm in a state of perpetual faint stickiness and (b) I avoid living my air conditioned house and (c) I'm kind of cranky about the whole thing.


But then there are those summer nights in the middle of July, when we've been getting the fantastic monsoon storms, and the air is clear and not quite so hot, and the sidewalks are less dusty, and there's that faint tangyness in the air that you only understand if you've smelled rain in the desert. And the bushes in my yard that are normally kinda scraggly and weedy suddenly produce these amazing purple flowers and the sweet smell of them blends in with the sharp rain smell, and then my house and the mountains behind us are bathed in a pinkish glow from the fabulous sunset that spreads miles across the sky. And then I feel happier about living in Tucson.