The other night, I posted a note on Facebook about doing yard work that day, while it was overcast. My husband’s 16 year old nephew, who lives in Spokane, WA and has never been anywhere near Arizona posted a comment that really "burned me."  Here is the comment he postedhe following comment: "you can actually go outside and not burst into flames in Arizona????? LOL just kidding lol”  My response was, “You actually can, it's amazing! AND we actually have trees, and paved roads and we don't ride camels to work.”

It’s funny to me (well no, it's really not funny to me, which is why I am writing about it) how people hear desert and 105 degrees for a high temperature and they immediately think of the Sahara Desert, with the sand dunes and camels or the old west with tumble weeds blowing down a dirt road in the blazing sun.

One of the comments I hear often from people that have never even visited Arizona, "how do you guys handle that heat all day?”  I find myself defending my birthplace and trying to explain by saying, things like: "It’s not that bad" or "most of us do our outdoor stuff early in the morning and after sunset."  I mean really, we work and live in buildings that are equipped with air conditioning or swamp cooling, our cars have air conditioning.  Leaving the house or office during the hottest part of the day and getting into the car, is no more extreme than going outside in the dead of winter, heating up the car and then driving thru a snowstorm.  So, comments like that just makes me crazy.

There are so many areas of the country, let alone the world, I have yet to visit and I try not to make assumptions about a place I have never visited.  I wish everyone would subscribe to this way of thinking when it comes to our beautiful little piece of the world.