So, this is hell?

It's been a hell of a couple of weeks. For several days, the temperature reached 110 degrees, as recorded by official readings halfway up a tower at the airport. Here, on the ground surrounded by concrete and pavement, it was 114-117 according to my car. I have never been so homesick for Minnesota in my life.

I could have survived the heat, if the air conditioner in our house hadn't decided to shit the bed at the first prime opportunity of summer. It took four days to repair it. In the meantime, we had a portable air conditioner in the kitchen and a portable swamp cooler in the living room. We camped with the dogs and cats in the living room, snarling at each other like a pack of starving wolves.

On Saturday, I went grocery shopping while John waited at home for the technician to assess our issues. I shopped in air conditioning like a princess. After three hours, I get a text:

"Are you coming home?"

"Do we have air yet?"

"I am not telling, you have to come home and see."

"You just want me to crawl out of the frozen seafood display, put my clothes on, and drive home to a hot house."

On Sunday, I made my car payment online for next month. I noticed that 25 out of 72 payments were still outstanding. I did the math and calculated that six years of payments remain. I had a temper tantrum. In my defense, the house was 88.9 degrees and 80% humidity in the living room with the swamp cooler. My brain no longer functioned. "Look at this shit! I'm going to be paying on this fucking car until I go to the nursing home!" John took my phone away and calmly pointed out I had two years left out of the six. "Never mind. My brain is not working in the heat."

It was Tuesday afternoon before the AC was repaired. In the meantime, I got to go to work and lounge in air conditioning for two days. I considered doing double shifts. I fantasized about Minnesota in December and January. I could adjust to blizzards, snow, and ice again.

Minnesota may feel like home, but it's no longer my home. I have been gone for twenty-eight years now. But in my memory, the people and places are frozen in time. Living in Nevada, there still exists a place far away where my parents are still alive, I'm still thirty, the tragedies and heartbreaks of loss have never occurred.

I never considered myself a city girl. I knew every back road and gravel shortcut in three counties. The idea of living in a city of strangers was laughable. If the cows stand with their back to the wind, a storm is coming. Now, I drive past city parks and see homeless people putting on garbage bags for slickers.

We adjust and adapt to our environment. Humans are an amazingly resilient species. We fight Mother Nature with air conditioning and build a city in the desert. However, in the most trying moments, when Mother Nature attempts to fight back, the mind returns to memories. Memories that are admittedly glamorized by time and distance.