#SoCS: In which your intrepid blogger whines about the Arizona heat

This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “hat/het/hit/hot/hut.”

Me, about an hour ago: I haven’t participated in SoCS for awhile. I’m tired and sleep-deprived, and I really don’t feel like revising my novel, so I’ll hop over to Linda Hill’s blog and see what today’s prompt is. Maybe it’ll be something I can relate to.

It includes the word, “hot.” There’s a massive heat wave in the Western U.S.

And I live in Arizona.

Yeah, I can relate.

We’re on about day 6 of temperatures over 110. It was 113 yesterday here in Tucson, and it’s supposed to be that hot again tomorrow. My computer tells me it’s currently 92–at 8:35 AM. I walked Maddie the greyhound at 7 this morning for less than 15 minutes and came back soaked in sweat.

If you’ve never been here, it’s hard to explain what summer heat feels like. We had a breeze a couple of afternoons, and every time I went outside, it literally felt like I was being chased by a giant hair dryer. Opening the front door feels like opening the oven door after it’s been running at 400 degrees for an hour. Well, OK, that last one was a bit of an exaggeration, but the hair dryer thing? That’s real (and hot) as hell.

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in California, where triple-digit heat was as common as manure and pesticides (It’s amazing I didn’t grow a second head living there, but I digress). Yet Arizona heat is a whole different beast. A scaly, fire-breathing beast with no mercy. And our temperatures this week are breaking records for this early in the year.

Even the cacti are stressed. Last year was the driest year on record for Tucson, and this year our famous saguaros bloomed more profusely than usual. They normally bloom just on top, but this year the sides had blooms too. They’re pretty, but the experts say it’s a stress response. It’s seriously too hot and dry for a cactus.

Since I am not a cactus, I don’t even try to go outside after 8 AM. I exercise during the day by pacing between the living room and my home office, because I’m too cheap to buy a treadmill. And honestly, despite all my whining in this post, I don’t mind all that much. Everywhere I’ve ever lived had an indoor season. In Portland, it was the rainy season, September through May (kidding, more like December through February and off and on before and after that). In Flagstaff it was December through February (colder than a well-driller’s a** in the Yukon) and March-June (windy enough to blow you into the next county). In SoCal it was the summer heat (July-September), kind of like here, except here the hot season is a bit longer and a lot hotter.

All that is to say that every place has good and bad. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as I settle into my desert home and, despite the heat, find more and more to appreciate about living here (mild winters, cacti, desert sunsets, urban wildlife, and enough restaurant food to destroy my arteries in a month). I’m a firm believer in blooming where I’m planted, because that’s how to be happy. Appreciate where you are and what you have. Aspire to more, sure, but don’t get so focused on flaws or aspirations that you can’t enjoy the present, right here, right now.

And be grateful for your air conditioner, because damn…