Rainy cabin-fevered rambling

I am so grateful right now that Gillen is eagerly being Jesse's audience in this, the sixtieth showing of Jesse's new magic trick. The worse the trick goes, the more Gillen laughs and falls down in joy, and then they both end up hysterical, and then it starts all over, again. Gillen has given himself the hick-ups from so much laughing. I have been part of the weather-induced goofiness all day. At the end of last week (and at that point the dark clouds had only been around for a few days) I found myself alone in my car singing Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again" at the top of my lungs, my tears mirroring the lines of rain on the window. Sometimes a big storm is a great excuse for a melt-down.

We are very lucky. Even after a week of mostly on (sometimes off) rain, there has been no big damage at the farm. A slight layer of mildew has started forming over some of our furniture, and over certain badly-situated books (the air conditioner is out - hopefully the rain's attempt to turn everything a whiter shade of pale will be killed with a working air conditioner).

Last Wednesday, Nicolas and I spent our first date-night in months emptying the basement of water. But, again, I do feel grateful that we were only at it for an hour or so. After only fifteen minutes, I imagined that we were Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek in "The River". Unlike them, we had several breaks to go inside where we drank wine and watched "Mad Men" to give us sustenance for the next round of hard bucket lifting.

I feel a bit like this much drenched rose.Cleansed, rusty and ready for some drying out.