Posted on 08/20/2022 9:14:31 PM PDT by rlmorel
Somewhere I have a photo of my son and his neighborhood pals playing side-yard football in the rain and mud, probably around 9-10 and all with big happy smiles. They got so filthy but they had so much fun, I couldn’t tell them no. They wouldn’t have listened anyway. Better to enjoy the moment with them. The photo shows them all in a pile on each other. Good times. I’m glad I was the stay at home mom who was there when they got home from school. I have some priceless moments that the other moms never saw. (Of course, I saw some of the bad ones, too. The fights. Ugh. Kids like to one up each other, and that doesn’t always change, no matter how old we get.)
I remember hearing “shower!” yelled out by a “flusher” when I would walk by the boys’ community bathroom/showers in the dorm. My husband, then boyfriend, explained to me exactly what that meant, and as you’ve described so eloquently. I guess it’s a common experience.
By the way, thank you for the nice compliment. I am somewhat traditional in these things. I don’t use social media, and while I do text, I have difficulty reconciling the use of very abbreviated syntax, so...I am long-winded and wordy.
Too late in life to change, though!
I was driving down Poverty Hill Road in Newtown this morning and the waterfalls just before it turns into Stepney Road were all dried up. First time I remember the waterfalls being dry like that. Also, many of the cornfields around here are parched.
You know, in this day and age of Twitter and that type of thing, your “wordiness” is a breath of fresh air. Don’t try to change that! It’s a gift, and I thank you for sharing it with us!
LOL, two different things, no doubt. I wouldn’t expect the same reaction from roofers who might be out in the burning sun or volunteers filling sandbags in a driving rain near a flooded river.
I have done various jobs in my life, but my outdoor work was largely confined to my military service, where working outside was part of the job, and often unpleasantly so.
When I was in the Navy, I worked in an attack squadron that deployed on aircraft carriers, and there were times I did not relish working in the elements at all.
We did a deployment up above the Arctic Circle for a while in October/December time frame, and I recall having to change a Constant Speed Drive on one of our planes as it sat on the flight deck, and my hands were frozen. The wrench slipped, and I put a pretty good gash on one of my knuckles, and it just wouldn’t bleed. The wound remained a stark white color. No blood was going there! When I went below and warmed up, I began to bleed like stuck pig, and it began to really sting.
I recall one time in the Southern Mediterranean in July, it got so damned hot on that flight deck covered in that black non-skid that I felt like I was being roasted from both above and below, never mind the hot jet exhaust that played over you on top of it.
My feet got so desperately uncomfortable (felt to me like they were getting blistered, but they weren’t) that I ripped off my boondockers and cut rectangular holes in each side of them right around the instep.
LOL, didn’t help a bit. I saw someone else do it, so I figured it worked, but...it didn’t.
Point is, I love NOT being required to work in the elements. I can do it if I have to, and I feel that I am knowledgable enough to prepare myself to function in most environments by wearing appropriate garb.
I am just glad I don’t.
But I enjoy feeling what the environment is. When it is cold, I enjoy being able to dress and go out in it, no matter how cold. I just treated myself to a new woolen peacoat. The thing is the heaviest coat I have ever owned, and it isn’t even close. It is also the most expensive I have ever purchased. My Navy peacoat lasted me for years, until it was destroyed during a trip to Buffalo, NY in a bitter February a few years back.
So I bought another one, and it totally sucked. Nowhere near as warm or well built as my Navy peacoat, even though it somewhat looked like it. The new one? The first time we encountered sub-zero weather that winter and it got down to about ten below zero, I had to go out for a walk to see how it held up. It was magnificent! My legs were freezing after a while, but if I had decided to really dress, I have thick woolen pants that have some kind of plastic liner in between the layers that interrupts the wind.
But with all that...no. I enjoy working in an office, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And it isn’t something I will take for granted, ever.
We are finally getting some VERY much needed rain, in SE TX!
It is glorious! Trees are stressed, yards are brown....we are so thankful for these beautiful rains.
Love your OP story, rlmorel!
Glad you made it home safe, though the WONDERFUL rainy TX weather, DallasGal.
Indeed!
Thanks, Jane. It was glorious in Ruidoso. It rained in the afternoons the first week. The 2nd week was fabulous other than the all day rains that started on Thursday. Squashed the hiking plans.
So happy to have rain in N Fort Worth tonight. 12:10 am and it’s quiet at the moment. Here is hoping for more although I can do without flood warnings.
I read your reply while lying on my couch enjoying an enforced day off…due to rain. Now that I think of it there is an association with rain I have always found soothing… the sound of it. It is, like the sound of the sea or the wind, an ancient sound. That is, time and technology have not altered it in any way. What a person heard in their dwelling or in a forest ten thousand or a hundred years ago when it rained is what we hear today. It’s not for nothing that they include the sound of rain as an option in those sound generators that are popular today.
Read ‘State of Fear‘
By the late great Michael Crichton MD. author of andromeda strain and Jurassic Park
No picture for me.
It was Dropbox. They temporarily shut my account down due to “high traffic”. It appears to allow images to be accessed now. I can’t figure out what the traffic parameters are. It says 20 GB, but...is that a day, a week, a month...I don’t know. (I assume a month but cannot verify when that month would begin or end)
I am a huge fan of Michael Crichton, and State of Fear is one of his best!
Interesting guy-his book “Andromeda Strain” which was made into a movie leveraged the extent of knowledge of the day, and when they filmed the movie, he was insistent on purchasing real state-of-the-art equipment of the day (1971?) even though the film people were resistant.
As for “State of Fear”, boy, did he ever hit the nail on the head with that one, it is one of my favorites! How can you criticize a book where the bad guys, instead of driving black SUV’s or Cadillacs, are enviro-weenies who drive Toyota Prius’ and instead of machine guns in violin cases, use Blue Ringed Octopi in zip lock bags!
Brilliant! I wish they made THAT into a movie!
LOL, I will freely admit that rain sounds quite different when laying in a hammock smoking a pipe, than it does when you are laying under a car trying to fix the brakes as the rain runs though your clothes in its journey down the driveway past you!
Thank you for saying so, kind words!
I love this part of the country, as much as I despise, with a white hot burning passion, the corrupt and stupid politics up here.
My wife and I went out to San Diego to a conference a few years back in early June (Her work, I was tagging along to make a vacation out of it for myself)
It is hard to find fault with the wonderfully comfortable weather there, and I fully get why people like it. No contest.
But the downside is...everything vegetation-wise out there seemed to my eyes to be varying shades of scruffy drab brown and tan. Adding to the profusion of trash and debris of various kinds on the side of the roads, it gave it a generally unkempt look.
When we went home, we took a red-eye, arriving in Boston around 5 AM. We had a limo taking us back through Waltham heading east on route 117, and the difference was astonishing.
Everything was lush and green along that rural route. There was mist rising up from the most ground, and the brilliant morning sun expressed itself in beautiful crepuscular rays as it rose and shone through. I saw a deer standing by the side of the road.
Just beautiful. The contrast with San Diego was striking.
As much as I despise the politics here, I sure do love the countryside and history here.
Glad you liked it-I know there are a lot of people like me who just love the rain for what it is. My wife loves it for her yard and garden, but is loathe to go out in it.
Me?
I love it for the fresh water it supplies for drinking, showering, and washing cars, and I adore the simple sound and all the effects that go along with it!
LOL, no...heh, ‘subversive’ for sure...it was a Dropbox bandwidth limitation that turned them off temporarily. I think they turned my account back on now.
Isn’t it great? My grandparents lived near someone with a trellis of concord grapes, and as kids who felt chronically underfed in our family of six kids (with four boys) my parents had to put a lock on the kitchen!
When visiting my grandparents, we would gorge ourselves on our neighbor’s grapes, hiding inside there, until we were nearly sick from eating them!
I was always hungry. As a kid, living in the Philippines, they had mango trees, which once I realized how delicious they were, took advantage of that “unlimited” food source. The downside was, in the eating.
I am a pretty fastidiously clean eater now, and if I have a mango now, I peel it, slice it carefully to obtain the optimum slice dimensions, and eat those slices with chili powder on them.
Back then, I would take them right off the tree and eat them from my hands, right through the peel on the outside! The lush juice would run from my hands to my elbows, and would also run freely from my mouth, down my chin, over my neck and onto my chest.
It wasn’t a pretty sight-I should have had a sign that said “WHEN MANGOES ARE BEING EATEN-KEEP HANDS AND FEET CLEAR!”
Then, my skin would turn crimson and break terribly out.
I am violently allergic to poison ivy, and it turns out mangoes are somehow related in some way, and while it didn’t have the long term effect poison ivy has on me, it sure was unpleasant.
But I couldn’t stop eating them, they were so good!
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