Tuesday, April 27, 2010

It's raining it's pouring, Tank the dog is snoring...

As I write this, Tank is curled up next to me on the couch, snoring away. When I took this picture however, he was giving me the look. The look that says, "c'mon, can't a guy just get FIVE minutes of uninterrupted sleep around here?"

When "the look" didn't work like he thought it should, he pulled this maneuver. If he'd been able to pull the pillow over himself, I think he just might have:

Until this morning, our April had been relatively free of rain - a little snow sure - but rain? Nope, not anything of significance. Not good for May flowers, but such is life in a high desert. We don't expect heavy spring rains. We plant accordingly - and are grateful that our water supplier views everyone the same - as agricultural - making it possible to maintain green landscapes throughout the summer. Well as of today, Mother Nature has more than made up for her lack of precipitation this month.

She started her havoc early this morning - somewhere between midnight and 3:30am with howling winds. These are the kind of winds that make you think you may just be taking a trip to Oz to visit the wizard. You wonder if the roof is going to fly off. It rattled the windows, it screamed through the eaves, made the roof & ceiling creak, made loud thudding noises, and it woke us up several times in the middle of the early morning hours. Often, you forget just how dark it is at night until all the little electronic gizmos are turned off. With no red power light from the tv, no digital clocks, etc, it's incredibly dark - particularly when you're trying to make your way to the restroom that has no window.

We're estimating the peak winds hit somewhere in the neighborhood of 80+ mph to do the kind of damage they did. Mother Nature proceeded to take out the power with her first gusts during the wee hours of the morning. She moved on from there knocking over a heavy metal patio chair. She tore the tarp off our wood pile (the second time since November), moving several heavy concrete blocks in the process. She blew the lid off the trash can and the dog house was flung across the patio and separated into two parts (luckily at the seam). And the rain.... big, heavy FAT drops - the kind that hurt when they hit you. Not even the dogs wanted to go outside today.

By 9:45am the power was back on and I started thinking of what I was going to make for lunch. Sandwiches just wouldn't do today.. it was cold! We'd been drowning  in lots of very heavy rain for several hours. There was a break in the clouds around 2pm and even though it kept raining, I darted outside to survey the yard... and I found this:

Welcome to my lake. As the sky clouded over again and the rain started falling even harder, I started to wonder, "perhaps I should be considering an in-ground pool?"

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