In an unrelated note: happy birthday to my sister!

There's an honest-to-goodness thunderstorm raging mostly outside my window. There's the flashing and clapping and dripping and whooshing. I should close my widow but then I banish that scent. That glorious mixture of laundry hung drying and all the town's dust being gathered together and splattered back down on the pavement where it belongs. And the sounds. The usual percussion of stilettos getting caught between the bricks quickened some time ago to a panicked pace, and has now died away altogether making way for the gentler sound of my FLOOR GETTING WET... excuse me while I go protect my hardwood floor and easy chair.
To resume. These are the days I love. The green has been sprouting for weeks now, and the winds have already blown the stinkyblossoms from many of the trees. We are thick into spring with all the moodiness April promises. Last Saturday I didn't bronze so much as rubied (which I realize is no proper verb) my shoulders and am still paying the painful price for my lack of sunscreen, yet it is an evening for Galoshes even by Oregonian standards. Which brings my to the bragging point of this entire post; after several years of ooohing and drooling, I finally bought myself a pair of very bright yellow Wellingtons. With a blue buckle on the side and my pants tucked into the tops, I find myself again at age four eagerly timing my steps for a pounce into the biggest of puddles. It is moments such as this when the best I would wish the world is a "pair of yelli wellies and a puddle to use them in."

And then came the winds

"I blinked my way home through the wind today...
...with leanings and sneezes and cold through my clothes."

-Lauren Feste
The last few nights I have been awakened long before my alarm by the conviction that my panes will be blown out of my windows and onto my bedroom floor. The windswept look, while not necessarily fashionable, is certainly everywhere to be seen. My calves are only just adapting to the extra work involved in maintaining a posture at right angles with the pavement.
It has been rather blustery here.

Winter on the water

It was nearly a week ago today that I feared for my life on the way to work. The setting is dark. There is no one on the street (because most sane people are cozy in their houses at 5:25 am), and it is cold outside. It had snowed enough the day before to last through the night. The continued cold and nocturnal precipitation had layered a dangerous sheet of ice over the crunchy snow so that when I placed my foot on the top step I found, for the first time, that our handrail is intended as a stabilizing feature, and not merely a leaning post. What is generally a three minute walk was drawn out to ten, as I gingerly slid from step to step with a growing certainty of an immanent fall which would cause me to break my wrist. Fortunately, however, I made it to work with nothing worse than a mark in the tardy column in my personnel file.

...Of Untamed Weather

Did I forget to mention that I got my very first "tropical storm day off" from work last week? Well, I did. They thought the town might flood, so Phillips told me to stay in bed, and I got some of my shopping done instead. I'm telling you: things are different here. There are fireflies, tropical storms, and unbelievably muggy days.