Rain

Finally, it's raining. The weather has been godawful dry for months, making conditions ideal for grass fires along highways, in pastures, and in empty fields. Dry winters are dangerous winters in north Texas, where vast expanses of grasslands have lost their moisture as they have gone dormant and which can, with drought, become highly flammable. Quite a few houses and barns have burned throughout the area. It's very common to see black, scortched spots along the roadside, some half a mile long or more, where someone probably discarded a cigarette from their car window, resulting in a fire. The roadside fires result in fire departments being called out to quench the blazes, which stretches the departments thin when fire rescue is needed somewhere else. Back to my point, though. It's raining.

The rain is soft and steady, exactly what we need to replenish the moisture in the soil. As welcome as the rain is, the weather makes uninviting any trek outside the house. The temperature is on the lower side of cool and, coupled with the high humidity, venturing outdoors is uncomfortable. I wear eye glasses, so even a quick dash to the mailbox or running from the car to the front door of the dry cleaners results in beads of water collecting on my glasses, distorting my vision. Because of the special coatings on my glasses, I can't use just any cloth to wipe the water off of them...I have to use an extremely soft piece of cotton to avoid scraping the very, very costly coating. Would that I had perfect vision without glasses!

Birds do not stop chirping when it rains, at least not when the rain is gentle. I hear them now. I wonder what messages they are sending? It could be "this fucking rain is making my life a living nightmare," but probably not, since birds probably do not comprehend their world in the same way we comprehend ours...but maybe they do.

I do have one objection to light, gentle rain: it will not wash away the masses of leaves in the gutter in front of my house. A strong, flood-potential rain would please me by leaving my sidewalk and street pristine, washing the leaves away into the storm drains, where the accumulated detritis from the thousands and thousands of homes and businesses in the city is dumped into the waterways, spoiling wildlife habitat and creating noxious eyesores. There are pros and cons to everything.

It's almost 9:00 am (I did sleep in, until 8:00 am today) and it's time to awaken my wife, who told me she wanted to sleep in until 9:00 am. Then, I'll just see what we'll do...clean house, kick back, or confront the rain.