But My Pants Stayed Dry

Last night the wind came in and rattled the house. For several hours it rained, pitting and melting last week's big snow. It was 37° at 11:00 am. Then the wind went dead and pellets of snow started to fall straight down like little white balls of lead. I could hear them whacking on the roof. The wind whipped up again and the snow danced like a mad dervish. It completely covered the wet ground within a couple of minutes.

I had a noon hair cut appointment. As I was leaving at 11:45 the temperature had fallen to 21° and there was about two inches of snow on the ground. I pulled out of the dread car-eating driveway and headed down the hill.

Two-thirds of the way to my destination, I took a corner at a crawl. My tires decided not to grip and the car went into free fall.

I chanted my mantra, "Expletive Deleted! Oh Evil Language! Oh Holy Expletive Deleted!" as I tried to get my car sideways enough to the curb to bounce off of it instead of over and down the embankment into the yard of the trampoline house.

Whump-bump. I was up over the curb. My mind's eye and viscera saw my car tumbling down the embankment, landing on its crushed top by the trampoline frame.

The car slid across the sidewalk and a tire caught on something at the edge of the lawn that gave enough purchase to send the car back towards the street.

Adrenaline continued to pump through my blood like a flash flood, but my pants stayed dry.

Deciding my haircut could wait for another day, I took the shortest route home.

I am not going out again today. And maybe not tomorrow.

Heading to Idaho - Wednesday 8-15

Pencil and paper blogging - so much less flexible than composing on the computer. I write more slowly than I type. I can't cut and paste or rearrange things on a whim. Nor do I have a spell checker.

I bought my first computer for the spell checker. I had delusions of being a writer, but my typing was execrable and my spelling was worse. I figured a computer could compensate for a multitude of sins. I now type and spell better than I ever thought I would, but I'm still not published.

Ah well, keep working at it and maybe one of these days...

The drive from Salt Lake City to Boise takes about five hours. The Engineer insisted we leave at 6:00 a.m. He is insane.

We drove up I-84, what my Beloved calls "The Empty Corridor." For the most part, that description's pretty accurate. I nod off a whole lot, the vibration of the truck makes my head fuzzy. I did look out the windows (bug spattered though they were) a good bit of the time. As the sun was rising, I was fascinated by the pink virga and, a little later in the day, the angel staircases.

I first noticed angel staircases when I was a little kid. I never asked my parents about them, I simply saw them and, with the faith of a child, knew what they were. I guess most people simply call them sunbeams, but to me that does not do them poetic justice.
Someday I hope to take a truly fine photo of the phenomenon.

Transcribed from my pretty green notebook.