My trip home was amazing (thanks for asking), and I have so many stories to share, which I will doodle eventually, but for now I would like to share a short doodle about what is on my mind today, which will hopefully let you know that I am still alive and doodling and ensure that you haven't forgotten about me.
School has started here in Arizona, and, though I am excited to kick off my last year of undergrad, it is really effing hot. So hot, in fact, that there has been an “Excessive Heat Warning” every day that I have been back. Yes, that’s right; it is so hot outside that the weathermen feel the need to warn everyone about it. That is really cool of them to show that they care about us as we all sweat our ways from one side of campus to the other, but the warning doesn’t really do anything but remind us all of how effing hot it is. It's like Al Gore preaching from the Doomsday pulpit.
It has been proposed by some native Arizonans, with whom I have been forced to roam the desert, that an “Excessive Heat Warning Day” for Arizonans should be the equivalent of a “Snow Day” for everyone else. Granted, where I’m from it snows most of the year so there has to be at least a few feet of snow/ice/death on the ground, making it impossible (not just difficult) for a school bus to make its rounds, before they will even consider cancelling school, and even then sometimes they don’t cancel it and just laugh at us all as we slip and slide around the freeways avoiding casualties at every curve. In fact, my first driver's ed experience was on a freeway in the middle of an ice storm and I couldn't see three feet ahead of my front bumper, but my instructor insisted that I keep driving at a speed that felt close to mach from where I was sitting, my white knuckles hidden by a pair of fuzzy gloves.
Still, I can see where these Arizonans are coming from. In many states, a few inches of snow results in panic and school closings, and around here no one even knows what snow looks like or how it feels to open their mouths wide and sing “If all the rain drops were lemon drops and gum drops, oh what a rain that would be” while catching snowflakes on the tip of their tongues. I think that they have a good point about cancelling school as if it were a snow day, and here’s why:
When the winter is so god-awfully cold that the sun can barely even be found in the sky of gray and every single object outside (inanimate or not) is covered in a frozen white blanket, no one wants to even think about moving away from the fireplace, let alone navigating through the harsh weather. If someone is so willing to go out into the cold, after first layering their clothing to include thermal underwear at the base and a frumpy, far from form fitting, goose down coat on the top, they will most likely experience an atmosphere so cruel that any exposed skin will immediately feel as though it is bathing in acid, and birds are frozen to death in mid-air.
Similarly,
when the sun is all that can be seen in the bright blue Arizona sky, the heat that results is so hot that every single object outside (inanimate or not) is dripping with sweat and anyone who is forced to be outside is left dreaming of the next time they’ll get to feel a breeze from an air conditioner. They will wear as little clothing as possible, in the hopes that doing so will result in a lower body temperature, but are instead faced with intense sunburn on any skin left exposed by lack of clothing. The environment is so unforgiving that people without enough water can die of heat exhaustion while doing even simple activities such as waiting at a bus stop, and birds are cooked from the inside out.
So, I guess, if you haven't gotten my point yet, it's this: it is really effing hot outside and I wanna stay in my air conditioned apartment.
