What's the story?

I dreamed I picked up a newspaper and saw my name in a byline and this was the first sentence I had written:

Dear reader: this is one helluva story.

And then I woke up.

Deluge

The real life story around here continues to be RAIN. Torrential downpours and a high near 61 degrees today. Did I mention the thunderstorms, patchy fog and flash flood watch?

Yesterday, our first truly sunny day was forecast to be Saturday but this morning I discovered, with a deep feeling of misery, the Natty Weather Service has changed it to Sunday. Chance of showers and thunderstorms Independence Day, with a patriotic high of 76.

It's just one of those moments in life where you say, "I can't take it any more," but then you do take more of it because you don't have a choice. Your endurance is limitless. It ends only when you do. You can and will take it, probably for a lot longer.

And anyway, it's the weather. Weather is one of those very few things you really absolutely can't do anything about. Which is why it's okay to bitch about it. If you bitch about stuff you can do something about, then you're just bitching.

I spy

Last night in bed before sleep I was reading news and essays on my laptop while keeping an eye on my daughter Anna's flight from Boston to Toronto via FlightAware.com. That is really fun, to watch little planes creeping across the virtual sky, except for when there is a glitch in the software and the plane icon disappears for a few minutes, in an area of thunderstorms near Buffalo.

Her little American Eagle flight reappeared and landed safely in Toronto, just in time to finish celebrating Canada Day with her boyfriend. Presumably. We haven't heard from her yet. But she'll get around to waking up and checking in with Facebook or her mom's blog and give us a call.

With you is where you can't take it

Yesterday, across the street, a house and all its contents were auctioned off.

Our neighbor, old Ed - the guy who taught us when we moved here 11 years ago to "Ed" our windows in summer by opening not just the bottom sash but the top to let the hot air out - died suddenly one night a few days after Christmas.

Three wives, divorced or dead, and no kids, and no relatives he got along with, and plenty of people he decided to dislike for one reason or another, my husband and another guy neighbor were really the only people he associated with on a semi-regular basis (except for those three years Ed refused to talk to all of us), including watching every New England Patriots' football game at his house, over cheese and crackers.

Ed was a curmudgeon and a misogynist and he left his estate - a small house chock full of idiosyncratic odds and ends - to several non-profits including, reportedly, a battered women's shelter.

We all process our feelings differently (I process by writing, and bitching) and my husband's way was to come home yesterday with boxes full of Ed's old crap. But I know: one woman's crap is another man's interesting and possibly useful old tools, gadgets, block and tackle, antique lanterns, and pilsener glasses with a Polish eagle crest. At least most of it went out to his man cave, the old garage/ shop by the pond.

"They just auctioned off a guy's whole life over there," said my husband, maudlinly, after I said something irritable about the new (old) candle holders now haunting our mantlepiece.

Yes. If stuff is a life.

Comments

[Chris]

Sad,really. I think we all know our own Eds... and fight hard not to become them! Really when it comes down to it, people are all you have and more people is definitely better than NO people. Enjoy your new junk...er, treasure.

[Amy]

This rain is making me a little Ed-ish.

[Chris]

The 5pm scream helped though.