And the Rains Came ...

Somewhere around 5 a.m. Friday, Ms. Packratty was awakened by the thunderous drumming of rain on the roof. No thunder - just a torrential blast of rain that apparently dropped about 2-3 inches of rain in the space of 90 minutes to 2 hours. That amount is estimated after emptying the plant trays outside the front door and looking at the level of the pool in the condo complex, where the water was close to the top of the tile coping. It was still wet enough at Charlie walking time for him to get quite drenched - he's so smart - he knows that when he's wet, he's supposed to go into the travel crate with the nice clean dry towels.

For a brief moment, Ms. Packratty actually thought she was back in her tiny cinderblock rental house that she lived in as a young reporter in Beaufort SC — the back side of the house had a tin roof and a good rainstorm was an event. That house, sadly, was soon after her departure from Beaufort, torn down to make way for an anonymously ugly apartment complex.

The temperatures took a plunge too - it is about 10 degrees cooler hour-by-hour today, than it was on Thursday. Marvelous. And it is payday, as well. All told, the ingredients for a better than decent day.

It followed on the heels of a delightful evening with Ms. Basketcasecafe, a classmate from the bookbinding class last winter. We have been meeting once a week to catch up and we're making friends ... Ms. B is exceedingly talented in the webpage area of the world, a skill Ms. P envies terribly but suspects she does not have the patience to master.

With the weekend at hand and the fact that Ms. P is the Officer of the Day, so to speak, and has to stick close to home and access to the internet connection, there are high hopes of a productive weekend. But heavens, after last weekend's baked bean frenzy, there is plenty of the cleaning still to do - so rather than make ambitious plans, Ms. P is going to be conservative and just take it as it comes - the library, picking up the veg co-op and possibly going to the farmer's market for tomatoes are about all of the hard and fast plans, although she hopes to get the kitchen recovered completely from the Beans Of Hell.

The sad thing that Ms. Packratty does not understand is seeing people - many of whom have more creative and remunerative jobs than she - spend their weeks counting the days until the weekend arrives. While Ms. P hardly sails into work singing, she does not dread the workweek very often, except when she ill enough to feel dreadful, but not ill enough to use a precious sick or vacation day. Oh well, they have to live their lives as best they can and Ms. P has to live hers - but she feels slightly sorry for them somehow - spending 40 hours of your life - or more - focused on the 48 in the weekend seems a bit starved.