The Weather Outside is Frightful

First we didn't really have a spring. After two hot weeks back in April we had two dreary, cool months. It rained nearly every day in June. July and August were spring-like but not summery. I think I turned on my air conditioning exactly once, which was great on the pocketbook but felt unseasonable. Then a few weeks ago the leaves began dying on the trees without turning, and last night was so cold I considered putting on my heat. In other words, we didn't have a spring or a summer, and now it looks like we might not have much of a fall.

Weather is the most ridiculous thing to talk about yet we can't stop talking about it, probably because it's the only thing besides taxes and death that effects all of us and yet is completely beyond our control. I hate talking about weather but after four straight days of not wanting to get out of bed because it's the warmest place in the house, four straight days of cloud cover, four straight days of wearing a sweater when I don't want to be wearing a sweater, it feels like the only conversational game in town.

I got my hair cut yesterday. My stylist is one of those people who always sees apocalypse around the corner. For a year now I've spent 45 minutes every six weeks hearing about bread lines and how utility companies and banks are the undoing of civilization as we know it, and about how before too long we're all going to be bartering for scraps of meat. I once offered him some meat rather than a check as payment for my haircut but he somehow was not amused. At any rate, the conversation yesterday did not once touch on banks or economic calamity. It was all about the weather. He claims we're going to have the worst winter ever in the history of humankind, featuring such historic cold that it won't even be able to snow. We're going to spend five months huddled under Snuggies, breaking apart furniture in order to feed the fire because the utility companies will be in possession of all our money by December at the latest. Apocalypse will be the fault not of capitalism but of Willard Scott.

I understand the feeling. It's a cruel enough world out there, but at least we can ordinarily count on some warmth and sunlight and the maple trees turning orange and crimson. There is one distinct advantage to all this gloomy weather, though: going back to bed feels like an offensive rather than a defensive measure.

While I Slept

I'm usually a relatively light sleeper, prone to bouts of insomnia. For several reasons, including a couple of cocktails before bed and two hours spent clearing away unwanted prickly bushes from my yard, I slept soundly last night. So soundly, in fact, that I've spent most of the morning dealing with the ramifications of all that I slept through. To wit:

1. A thunderstorm severe enough to knock out my electricity and throw branches all over my property.

2. My cat throwing up hairballs the entire length of my (carpeted) hallway.

3. The ice maker in my new refrigerator deciding of its own volition to spew ice cubes all over my kitchen floor. Said refrigerator is either defective or possessed. I'm looking forward to watching the repairman either replace it or perform an exorcism.

4. Both of my neighbor's cars being broken into in the middle of the thunderstorm, violent weather being the perfect cover for non-violent crime. Rumor has it that every dog on the block was barking like crazy first at the miscreant and then at the cops who rushed to the scene; I missed this because while I slept I also missed

5. My dog sleeping through a robber prowling the streets while my refrigerator spewed ice cubes and a thunderstorm raged.

No more bedtime cocktails for me.

On Writing

The blank page is always before me. Some mornings it's white with hope and opportunity and I rush to fill it. More often its whiteness is a reprimand, a symbol of thoughts that I don't have, ideas that never occur to me, sentences I haven't constructed. This is one such morning.

Tomorrow the sun will shine, and I will leap from bed flush with the desire to narrate. Today my main desire is to crawl back into bed with a book and spend the hours caught up in someone else's narration. Tomorrow the excitement of my own words will spill from the keyboard and emanate from the screen. Tomorrow the laundry will be done, the groceries purchased, the paperwork filed, the distractions shoved aside. Tomorrow I will command the letters of the alphabet into paragraphs, each perfectly constructed.

Writing is always for, and about, tomorrow.

Bring It On

I don't have any particular feelings about snow. It's pretty when it falls, you move it out of your way, life goes on. Snow happens, or it doesn't, and then eventually spring arrives. End of story. It would appear, however, that the forecast of snow engenders a type of hysteria in everyone else. Naturally, I blame the media. Snowfall cannot simply be predicted. Instead, we must "brace" for winter storms that "bear" down on us.

We "brace" for snow events by madly stocking up on toilet paper and canned goods, if the mad rush I experienced yesterday at the Farmer's Market and grocery store serves as an indication. I know, it's the week before Christmas, but I wasn't surrounded by a mob stocking up on fattened goose. The mob was buying milk, water, and other staples. And of course toilet paper. Americans seem to have an ingrained fear that apocalypse will bring with it a shortage of toilet paper. We might be snowed in for a day! How will we wipe ourselves! The horror!

It's as if the prediction of snow causes a mass forgetting of what a glance at the empirical evidence makes clear: we are not 19th century homesteaders in the rural midwest. We live in the 21st century in the densely populated mid-Atlantic. No matter how many inches fall, we will not be snowed in for the winter. The chances of being snowed in for even a day are slim. Yes, we had a blizzard in January, 1996, and it took two days for my streets to be cleared, but that was almost 13 years ago. Four inches of snow will not render anyone helpless.

Despite a complete lack of meteorological training, years of observation allow me to point out the fact that nearly all of our significant precipitation comes to us from one direction: south. That's why they're called "nor-easters" in the winter, "tropical storms" other times of year. Storms that come from the north, the west, or the northwest don't flood us or blanket us with snow. Today's storm is coming from Missouri. It's now 8 AM, and the "overnight" snow has yet to begin to fall. I don't feel at all silly, though. After all, I'm not the one who rushed out yesterday to buy batteries and a case of toilet paper.

Biblical Proportions

I was spending a peaceful evening relaxing in my air conditioning, watching the Mad Men marathon, when I heard the sounds of a storm blowing through. I went out on my back porch to check it out, and to enjoy some breeze after a stultifying weekend. I enjoyed the thunder and lightning and wind for about 15 minutes when suddenly something went terribly wrong.

If I didn't live on a small mountain I'd be prone to think a tornado tore through. What used to be my backyard certainly displays signs of the aftereffects of a tornado. I bought this house because it's surrounded by partially wooded lots. As it turns out, the downside of partially wooded lots is what happens when 60 mile an hour winds blow. As I sat on the porch, the top 2/3 of a very old tree crashed down through the screen and almost took out my cat. At that point, we moved back to the side of the house but continued watching; it's hard to turn away from a trainwreck, after all.

The top half of a 50 year-old pine tree blew past and landed in a pile on top of the remains of the first tree. What looked like an entire maple tree blew by next, coming to rest on top of what was my birch tree. Next, a large branch flew out of nowhere and landed on one of my Adirondack chairs, smashing it to pieces. An oak tree fell from the sky, adding itself to the growing pile beyond my porch door.

At that point I retreated into the house entirely. Within 10 minutes, it was all over. Even now, in the light of day, I'm not sure what the damage is, because so many trees and parts of trees fell into my yard I have no access. As far as I can tell, my house and porch are structurally fine; my only loss, beyond damage to my birch, is one screen panel and one expensive chair. The only good news is that each and every tree and branch that landed in my yard came from the neighboring property, which means it's his insurance that will be paying.

The cat will suffer most from this; with a square-foot hole in the screen, he won't be allowed on the porch until I can get it repaired. With trees piled up floor to ceiling along the porch, it literally feels like I live in a treehouse, so at least the view is pretty. One of Brody's hobbies is chewing on sticks, and today is his birthday. The best news is that he can spend the day in the yard, making mulch.

UPDATE: All insurance companies involved feel this was an act of God. They'll pay for damage to my house, and my chair, but not for the removal of the yard-full of trees. God did it, God can clean it up, I guess. And here I thought God and I were getting along so well...

5 Things I've Learned This Summer

Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, which means that summer starts fading away beginning Sunday. I've always thought that the Fourth of July marks the end of summer; it's the point at which growing season ends and flowers and trees start losing their luster, the days begin to noticeably shorten, all the promise of spring is heat-blasted off. Not that there aren't some nice months ahead - there are. Already, though, I've learned some valuable lessons this summer:

1) No one thinks my dog is as adorable as do I. Some people actively don't appreciate my dog, in fact, particularly those dogless neighbors he insists on running off to visit on a daily basis. In the spirit of neighborhood peace I've fenced off part of my yard, but even so the notion that human beings who don't love my dog exist is something I've had to learn the hard way.

2) It doesn't matter if you've been immune to poison ivy for 44 years. That immunity can be lost at any time, and once you lose it you will have poison continually for the rest of the summer, if not for the rest of your life.

3) I no longer have to imagine what my neighborhood looked like thousands of years ago. It was a solid forest of oak trees, and oak trees are not benign. They've been waging war with me all spring, sending seedlings everywhere, and overnight those seedlings turn into impossibly rooted little trees. Overnight, I tell you. This is my own miniature War on Drugs in that I lose it on a daily basis.

4) Target sells something called "Peach Pear Italian Soda" under their Archer Farms label. Said Italian soda tastes really, really, dangerously good with Grey Goose. Hangover good, I'm telling you.

5) There are many fashion dos and don'ts, but only one universal rule: never wear a belt with shorts. Please, guys, it just looks stupid.

Today's Weather

"They" were convinced it would be raining right now, so convinced that the homepage of my local paper's website not two minutes ago stated that it's currently "Rain/47 degrees F." A simple look out the window indicates nearly full sun. A simple walk onto my back porch indicates a temperature in the mid-50s.

I haven't even finished my coffee and have already learned today's lesson. When you wake up in the morning knowing that sun will shine and birds will chirp you think nothing of it. When you wake up in the morning ready for gloom and instead find sun shining, birds chirping, trees pollenating, and flowers budding, the day feels as if it's been given to you for free.