I thought that living in the southwest desert region would be different than what it turned out to be.
I wanted dry air and hot temperatures, but the high elevation in my city often means cooler summers and moist conditions whenever there are precipitous clouds rolling through the mountains.
I wasn’t expecting the dust storms and cold temperatures in the winter and autumn seasons either. We have to use a furnace here or we would all freeze to death from November until early March every single year. I have tried to stockpile firewood for our wood stove but we always run out before we get to February. If there are no long dead trees on our property for me to cut, I have to drive into town and purchase firewood at whatever insane price it’s being sold for at the given time. And once we get to summer, the air is much more wet than I expected from the southwest. Our air conditioner alone isn’t good enough at dehumidification; in fact, it’s not as capable at dehumidification as our last air conditioner. Having to use a dehumidifier in a region that is typically considered “dry” is a level of irony I never expect in my otherwise boring and uneventful life. Perhaps when we go to buy our next air conditioner we will talk to the heating and cooling company about getting a machine that is better at keeping the indoor climate as dry as possible. It’s our fault for not researching this region more before we picked up our life and moved here permanently.