Phoenix and I are having a falling out

I hadn't gotten around to posting this yet, but I have actually quite enjoyed living here in the Valley of the Sun, far more than I ever thought possible.  The weather from December to May was so lovely that we could go outside every single day.  And the sunshine!  Oh, the sunshine!  Growing up in Portland, OR, I never thought that I was impacted by the seasons, but my one winter there as a stay-at-home mom was probably one of the more depressing times in my life.  So the contrast of the sun shining every day was very welcome.  I was beginning to think that I could live in Phoenix forever.

Now, I'm not so naive that I wasn't expecting the summer to be extremely hot, perhaps even unbearable at times.  But I had prepared myself for days exceeding 110 degrees, and I was pretty sure I could handle that for a few months, in exchange, of course, for the other 9 months of the year being lovely.  I had been warned of these high temperatures, but everyone always qualified it with "but it's a dry heat, so it's more tolerable".  Having experienced some ridiculous levels of humidity in New York, New Jersey and South Africa, I figured I could handle an extra 20-25 degrees of heat if that humidity stayed away.


I was not, then, prepared for high temperatures coupled with humidity levels above 20%!  But this past week, we've had temperatures over 100 degrees, and humidity in the 40-50% range.  In case you are wondering, that is disgusting.  It has been made worse by the fact that my body has adjusted to very low humidity, so really, any level of humidity feels worse than it might somewhere else.

I was still clinging to a love of this place, despite it's flaws, until last night.  I came down at about 7:45pm last night after putting Cy down to bed and it was pitch black outside.  I thought that was a little early, but I didn't pay much attention until I heard a raucous outside.  I thought it was the rain that had been threatening to come (hence the humidity) so I ran outside to cover the barbecue and put the jogging stroller under cover.  Rain would have been celebrated compared to what greeted me when I opened the door.  The wind was intense, and I immediately had dust in my hair, clothes and teeth.  I tried to wrestle with the barbecue cover, and gave up after I was attacked by a particularly nasty gust of wind-dust.  I was trying to gather our swim stuff from the patio when another gust of wind threw things in my eyes and at my face.  I abandoned my efforts and ran inside for cover.

It turns out we had a little something called a dust storm.  Dust storm!  These were not part of the deal when I agreed to come to this desert land.  I was unprepared for the 60 mph winds, and, oh yeah, the dust!

This is what it looked like as it descended on the city.  Jason was driving home from work last night and briefly thought the world might be ending.

This morning, we woke up to this:

 A section of fence blown over by the 60mph winds.  I think that tree may have reached it's end.

Dust accumulation on our patio table. 

My abandoned barbecue cover.  No, it hasn't been sitting, crumpled up like this for days.  This is the result of just 45 minutes. 

Too bad that cover didn't make it on... 

Our cat's water bowl, freshened just an hour before the storm hit.

In case you were wondering, the honeymoon is officially over.  Phoenix has some serious sucking up to do to make up for this one!