Is it hot in here or is it me?

I'm hot. Not in the good, twenty-something-actress-of-the-moment-way, but oven hot. As in temperature.

I've been hot for over a week now, and it's only June.

Hot started in earnest the night before we left for vacation when I went upstairs to put the kids to bed. Since it's summer, we hadn't done the pre-bedtime ritual of bath and tooth brushing (cavities only happen during the school year, and besides, S only has baby teeth.)
Somewhere around the third-to-last step, it hit us. A wall of heat. Literally. Seriously, I do not exaggerate. Downstairs--pleasant 74. Upstairs--Hell.

92. That is not a civilized temperature for outside, much less my bedroom. Gross. I like sliding into cool sheets, not being suffocated by them. UNHOLY.
So, that last night before vacation, I waited until everyone else was tucked into their deathbeds, then I slunk downstairs into the guest bed. Sleep, thy name is coolness.
Departure day, and the upstairs temp had downgraded from Hell, Level 7 to Hell, Level 5. Only 83 upstairs. We trundled out to the car, and left everything in our bedrooms to roast.

On the plane(s) to Phoenix, we froze to death. The pilots up in their triple locked, windshielded cockpit had no idea that all of the passengers had turned into ice blocks. Maybe the flight attendants control the thermostat and think we'll be more complacent if they threaten us with climate agony. Once out of the tin ice box, though, we claimed our bags and stepped out into the early morning 90s of Phoenix.

But it's a dry heat.

Phoenix, presumably named for the mythical bird emerging from the desolation of the Sonora, is really a misnomer. The city should be named for raisins or prunes. One step into the sun, and you can feel yourself begin to evaporate. Imperceptibly, at first, but then, surely, your feet begin to adhere to the slightly softened asphalt while the rest of you is slowly inducted into the atmosphere. Your skin, never dampened by persperation, fails to cool. It's as though your face is doing that thing from Indiana Jones when the Nazis watched the Ark open. Eyeballs, parched, melting from your skull. And it's only June.

My sister, because she and her husband are a) economical and b) environmentally conscious and c) inured to the searing temps of the desert, have their thermostat set to 80 inside. While 80 is no great comfort, it is still TWENTY full degrees cooler in their house than outside it. Holy hell, Batman.

At night, though, even when I snuck out and turned the thermostat down to 78, it was still hot. I've been told that I radiate heat like a biscuit at night anyway, and in a guest bedroom, wearing pjs (can't go nude in some one else's house) in a queen sized bed (I'm used to the spacious, don't have to touch each other Tempurpedic King) with flannel sheets (is my sister sadistic?) we were like little sausages on a grill.

In Arizona, like in Alabama, businesses seem to think a cool interior will lure customers in. But, they OVERcool, so that an hour in a restaurant is decidedly uncomfortable at 65 degrees. Which, in my opinion, freaks out the body's internal calibration and makes the heat worse. Also, nothing makes you feel quite so stupid as carrying a sweatshirt around in 100+ temps, on the off chance that a lunch break is going to plunge you into Arctic cold.

So, like every other Phoenician, we dashed from our car (bun burning leather seats!) to the indoors (icehouse!) to the pool (comfort!) and back again. After a week of that, we hopped BACK onto freezing tin cans, flew back home to the swelter of Mobile in June.

Phoenix vs Mobile, is like the dry sauna and the steam room--you have to pick your pain. A week in Phoenix, my skin was all dry and flaky like the lizards who live there. Back in Mobile, it's like rehydrating a sun-dried tomato. I'm all water-retainy and puffy. But my skin is happy. It's a soggy melt here. Rather than shriveled and sere, we are more gooey and wilty like a candy bar in the sun. Home, where the humidity levels numbers are alarming, we slept for 2 nights in the steam rooms. Even poor Clooney who could sleep through anything, was restless and panting. He eyed us with accusation: "I thought you humans had this climate control thing in hand. What is this crap? What am, some wild animal?" We tossed and turned, and slept poorly.

But, this morning, an angel came to the door wearing coveralls and an Alabama hat. His visage glowed from the warped heat waves radiating from the blacktop. (At his 9 AM arrival, the temp was 89 already!) He strode in with confidence, tinkered, adjusted something I don't know about, and promised that in a few hours, our upstairs would be a civilized 76. All I had to do was write the check.

And in this heat, there's no way that check could have the energy to bounce.