Help

Meg and I drove to Pinetop last weekend. Meg’s parents have a second house there now, a “cabin” in the woods, if you want to consider a three-bedroom fully furnished house as a cabin. It was a pleasant 70 degrees—unlike—well, more on the heat in a second. The smell of pine trees reminds me of Colorado, only with regular crazy people instead the biblethumper variety.
Case in point: Meg spotted a sign advertising burgers and brats at a place called Mr. B’s. Meg’s parents, Meg, and I decided that sounded good for lunch, and we entered what appeared to be a lounge airlifted from the 1970’s. The sole bartender/cook was missing most of his front teeth, and handed us the menus, which were papers encased by binder protectors, the three-hole punches still intact. The other three ordered burgers and I ordered a brat with sauerkraut.  We huddled at our small booth for a long-half hour while we observed a group of rednecks drinking beer at the bar.
One  redneck slapped another on the back. “Ow,” the slappee said. “I’m sunburned.”
“What have you been up to, bro?” the other asked.
“Workin’,” the sunburned redneck replied. “I’ve been workin’.”
I noted that, amidst the alleged work,  the redneck was working on his second pitcher of beer and it was barely noon on a Saturday.
More painful observations of the bar’s inhabitants ensued while we waited for our food, which was apparently being cooked outside on a grill. I felt like a fish out of water. Dread about the results of our food began to build.
Meg’s burger arrived minutes before the rest, a charred heap of former meat, possibly beef. “Medium-rare, right?” the bartender asked.
Meg poked at the beefy disc and didn’t mention that she was supposed to get onion rings instead of the handful of overcooked fries residing on the other side of her plate. She sat back and decided to wait until the rest of our food arrived.
Ten minutes later, my in-laws’ burgers arrived. “Medium,” grunted the bartender through his missing teeth. Another five minutes yielded my brat.
A bratwurst. Served on a tortilla.
Tortilla?
I started to laugh and was going to point out the state of my bratwurst holder to the bartender, but he had vanished in a cloud of stale beer stench and cigarettes, nowhere to be seen.
“A tortilla?” I squeaked incredulously. My tablemates looked at my plate and then their gazes drifted back to their own plates without much superiority.
We faced the food with as much gusto as we could muster. I was anxious to escape before the bartender decided to cook us anything else.
Traveling back home to Tucson on Sunday afternoon, we stopped in Globe for the traditional midpoint fast food adventure. Meg suggested Taco Bell. Nobody would ever suggest Taco Bell if Taco Bell didn’t lace its food with several grams of amnesia powder in every one of its food items. (Should I put “food” in quotes?)
The employees of said Taco Bell whipped up seven burrito-like concoctions in little less than twenty minutes. They looked very focused on their individual tasks on the assembly line. The end result was a sort of soupy bean filled tortilla thing garnished with warm tomatoes and even warmer cilantro. They reluctantly slid down my mouth. I suddenly felt full after one and a half of the abominations.
Inevitably, towards the end of the trip Meg and I alternated groaning an “Oh no…” and cracking the window while the Taco Bell tried to make its exit. I arrived in home just in time to make a powerful smell in the second bathroom.
And that’s when we discovered that our house was 92 degrees. I checked the thermostat, wishing I hadn’t just read that. I tried again and I think the number increased to 93 to spite me. “Oh no…” I repeated in a different context. “The AC’s not working?”
I called Meg this afternoon from work at 2 pm. She went to bed last night with me, so I figured she’d be up. Nope. I asked her if the AC started working yet. “I don’t know, I’m sleeping.” I did some mental calculations—carry the one, subtract an hour—she’d slept for 15 hours so far.
“How hot is it?” I insisted. Surely she could tell if the room temperature was oven temperature or not without much effort.
“I’m in bed—I don’t know, it feels fine.” She mumbled. “I’m going back to sleep.”
I said my goodbyes and hung up, wondering just how much sleep a person needs all in a row. Of course, when I came home she was just stepping out of the shower and gave me a foul look, the sheen of sweat on her forehead. I stated the obvious: “The AC’s still broken.”
She nodded at me miserably.
“You could have told me earlier,” I scolded her. I don’t know why this was a good idea. Scolding an overheated wife who just woke up and has an empty stomach is like trying to punch a badger in the face. I can’t think of a good reason to punch a badger in the face. Criticizing Meg when she’s tired, hot, and hungry is equally suicidal, and I barely escaped with my life.
I refocused my energy to cooing sympathetically at the dog and cat, who were both trying to lie on the coolest parts of the tile. Penny panted and Bentley licked unenthusiastically at his water dish. I dropped some ice cubes in the water and Meg got Penny some ice water.
Then I drove Meg to get fast food, since we didn’t have groceries and it was too hot to cook anyway. “I’m going to McDonald’s, unless you want something else,” I said authoritatively as we climbed in Rambo. (Note to self: this “hard sell” approach is great to get over Meg’s indecisiveness. Sometimes she can take hours to decide what she wants to eat when she’s hungry, and she gets crabbier and crabbier during the process.) The AC got turned to the “blast from orbit” setting and we drove in luxury to get a burger and chicken nuggets.
We scheduled an HVAC repair visit tomorrow and she left for work at six. Now I sit in front of my computer wondering if I could get any hotter. This is how I imagine a sweat lodge would feel like, minus the old guys covering their junk with towels.
Help.