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.
