A Snapshot of Day

Rain is falling and preventing me from going out to lay in my hammock. Laying on wet while being dripped on would not be the experience I was looking for. Also, I like taking paper books and notebooks with me. They would suffer from the wet. Interesting the damp barrier to stepping outside makes me feel cooped up. It probably explains my push to get a patio made. A patio could host a comfy chair with an umbrella to keep the rain off my pages. Also a patio can have a gas powered fire pit table to extend the outdoor season past the point where outside becomes chilly.

We need the rain. Utah’s annual allotment of wildfires have been blazing away, turning the daylight amber. Rain is rarely enough to extinguish a fire, but it helps. In my gardens the rain will revive dry patches of lawn that are missed by the sprinklers. It also enlivens the snails who are all out and about on the wet sidewalks. My flower beds and grape vines house a large and thriving colony of these snails. They mostly leave my flowers alone and they make my kid happy, so we co-exist.

Indoors the house feels quiet despite the occasional outburst from the two young adults playing games together. Howard is meandering through his day, finally free from the schedule pressure of the daily comic update. I’m sitting on my couch, looking out the window at the rain, grass, and snails. Writing thoughts about all of the above in a notebook for lack of sufficient focused attention to dive into working on my novel. Later this evening I’ll drive to go pick up a bag of farm share vegetables.

My afternoons and evenings are far slower than they were pre-pandemic. My mornings contrive to be efficient and productive. Sometimes I work to make afternoons productive too, but for today I’m just going to keep the rain company and know that not every day needs to be driven by checklists.