Some Like it Hot

This article in the AZ Republic talks to some folks who are experiencing our summer temperatures for the first time:

The day before Dennis and Donna Eck left Allentown, Pa., in May, they had the heater on in the house.

So they couldn't have been happier to be out of the cold when they hit Mesa.

"I don't miss it one bit," said Donna, 48.

Summer is here. For some new Valley residents, that can be daunting.

If they've been here since the first of the year, they have endured more than 50 days above 90 degrees, 28 of those over 100.

Yet many transplants to the East Valley are embracing their ovenlike environs. It's a good thing. History indicates there will be about 80 more days this year with temperatures of at least 100 degrees.

Count me in as one who has embraced the oven! I consider myself a transplant even though I'm approaching my 30th year in Arizona; when you are married to someone who was born and raised here, you can't help but consider yourself a transplant. But I enjoy/accept the heat like a native.

I spent most of my younger years in Wyoming - the beautiful part of the state - where we had two seasons: winter (9 months) and spring (3 months). My kids have heard my stories - all TRUE, I assure you - of walking the half mile to school in a dress (girls couldn't wear pants to school in those days) through the snow, carrying my saxophone. Upon arriving at school, the girls found it fun to slap each other's legs right above the knee, where the kneesocks had offered no protection against the chill, and the slap on the chapped legs was like a hot knife. We were easily entertained.

After the Mister and I were married, he dutifully took me to Wyoming for Christmas with my family. It just so happened that was the year of an especially severe coldsnap - 48 degrees below zero - and my desert rat husband was nearly apoplectic when he found frost on the windows. On the INSIDE of the windows.

I'm not the only one in the Valley of the Sun with a plethora of freezing stories; sometimes I run into someone of kindred spirit in a store. We'll be standing in the checkout line listening to folks groan about the heat, and will it ever end? it seems to get hot earlier every year and stay hot longer each fall, and it is nearly unbearable; and then someone will pipe up with "I don't really mind the heat; I'm from Minnesota and I prefer the heat to the cold and the snow." I'll nod in agreement and chip in with my assessment that the really bad heat is only 2 months long, and the other 10 months are so wonderful, how could I complain? I figure I have enough cold stored up in my bones to last me a lifetime.

So I may be a transplant in fact, but I am an Arizonan at heart. Hot? What hot?