Overheard At Our House Today

Today I was sitting on the bench swing with Catherine and Everett, and suddenly something cool and wet fell on my foot.  I thought, "Did a bird just poop on my foot?  Or maybe a bug?"  I looked down and saw a drop of water.  "But the sprinklers are off,"  I thought.  "Where did that come from?  The roof?"  While I was thinking about it, another drop landed on the same foot.  "What is going on?" I thought.  And then the following words were emitted from my mouth, in honest bewilderment and great indignation:

"What is going on?!  DROPS OF WATER ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY!"

Everett cocked his head and just looked at me.  Then it dawned on me.  Oh!  It's raining!  

I think I've been here too long and my brain has been cooked.

In my defense, though, it was devil's rain - rain from a blue sky.  There were no dark clouds, and in fact, while there were some sparse clouds around, there were absolutely no clouds directly over our heads.  It must have been coming in at an angle.

Weather here is weird because it is virtually nonexistent.  There is almost never any rain, and we never ever get any puffy or billowy clouds.  It's only high, icy, cirrus clouds for us.  That and dust.  The temperature is either cool, or warm, or hot, or way too hot, but never cold or damp.  There's no weather report to be had, either.  No radar screen or satellite imagery or jet stream or cold fronts.

It took some getting used to to start ignoring the weather.  In the beginning it really bothered me, because I wanted to know when we might be getting more high clouds or more dust or hotter or cooler temperatures. What was going on up there in the sky?  Is there a system coming out of Egypt that we should be concerned about?  Will the winds change this afternoon to be blowing in from the Gulf?  But after 16 months of no information, I've learned to accept my daily weather ignorance.  So much so that I seem to have forgotten about rain.

Some days I really would love a humongous, dark, electric, prolonged thunderstorm.  You know, the kind they get in Florida or Texas.  Something really exciting.  Something to prepare for and watch.  Something different than hot, dry, and dusty.  But to get that, I'll either have to idle my car engine in an effort to increase global climate change or wait for repat.  Because those two drops I got on my foot today?  That's was it.  Our total annual rainfall just fell on my foot.

Sorry, plants.  You don't get any this year.