Monday
I awoke this morning to marvelous rain. Rain, rain, glorious rain. We are in a drought here (R will want to argue with me on that point, but it is true). Everything is very droopy and the leaves on the cottonwood are turning yellow and falling to the ground. That tree is definitely a living "rain gauge" of sorts. I don't know when the rain started, but when I went downstairs at 5 a.m. to roll up the window of my car the seat was very wet.
The rain that started off as a slow, steady drizzle periodically became a torrential downpour as the storm moved through the area -- one such time occurred as I was driving from the aerobics class to the post office to get our mail. My wipers could not keep up with the rain. I parked and got out, and by the time I walked across the street and into the building, I was about half soaked. A woman standing in the door with an umbrella said “Well, I guess you don’t care about getting wet!” By the time I left the building and walked back to the car, I was soaked to the skin.
When I got back home, I squelched into the house, washed my hair, and hung my wet clothes on the line we still have stretching across the living room from when we used to dry clothes indoors during the winter when we heated with the wood stove. And then I got on with my day. I gave thanks for every blessed drop of rain that fell.
Tuesday
It is a very fortunate thing that we no longer have the doggy door in the bottom pane of the back door storm door, because had it still been there, we would have had at least two baby raccoons in the house and probably their mother and her other two babies as well. They woke me up at 1:30 am making this funny trilling sort of noise that they use to talk to each other. So I got up and turned on the porch light, and there were they were. A couple of them immediately ran off the porch, but two others were right there at the back door with their noses pressed against the storm door glass. It doesn't bear thinking about what it would have been like chasing wild baby raccoons around the house.
Wednesday
The pile of stuff that we think we need to bring with is us on our vacation is slowly spreading across the floor in Rs office. I think the stuff is breeding, or something. Every time I walk through there I want to giggle. R is standing in there scratching what little hair he has left on his head, wondering about it all. "Boy," he says, "as you get older the stuff you need to keep yourself going tends to increase." Now he is trying to figure out how to take the Certo for his knee pain. Is he going to cart 2-quart bottle of a grape juice across the country?
Thursday
Time is slip slip slipping into the future. Trying not to panic. I have no clue what I am going to wear on the trip. I’ve gotten too fat for most of my clothes. Well, I’ll figure something out. I usually do.
