Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I looked forward to storms more than the Disney Sunday night movies. When the leaves were ripping off the trees and branches could be heard snapping, my family didn’t make a nest in the basement. We made coffee. My parents’ front porch is sunken into the front façade of the house and made the perfect amphitheater for a good light show. My Dad and I logged quite a few hours during my childhood just sitting: me curled up on the porch bench, my Dad on the top step with one of his many hideous coffee mugs. (these storms always seemed to happen during Wheel of Fortune which, for my Mom, trumped even this.) Dad and I didn’t have life changing conversations or even metrology lessons, just an occasional comment on the timing. Those moments were amazingly calm in a swaddle of chaos. Whenever that rare electric producing storm travels to these parts, it’s a mixture of excitement and a sadness that my Dad is too far away to sit on my porch with one of my hideous coffee mugs.
Today I was defrosting my freezer (I know it’s a glamorous life I lead) when the window light I was working by dimmed. I brewed a pot unable to keep the grin from my face. I filled my “Vegas” mug with the first filtered six ounces and went downstairs for the show. The only disappointment was, it was over too soon. The lightning was pretty, but the thunder was like listening to my favorite song. It’s like anything I guess. It wouldn’t be quite as special if it happened all time. Unpredictability is part of the beauty herein. Besides, it was getting on to school pick up time, and well, that is a bit easier without a storm.
After school Rutabaga and Rex do judo. It’s about a seventy minute class and it’s right by our city’s wall so it’s the perfect opportunity to go for a jog. What else am I going to do? Today, surprising as this may seem, the trail was a bit wet…having been preceded by the storm and all. I’m wash and wear so what evs. I’m off with the rest of the crazies logging their mad puddle dashes. I’m sure I have mentioned this before, but I am not graceful. I take off down the mud vein formally known as a course whilst listening to Steel Panther’s second album, Balls Out. Holy hilarious. I’m spraying mud everywhere. I can feel my pants getting heavier as the dirty water wicks up through my super awesome blue terry cloth pants. I laugh out loud when I feel a splat against the back of my Adidas windy. Could have been the thunderstorm that had my mood so high…could have been the music…could have been the hilarity of picturing what I looked like at this moment. Who cares? I was having a mud pie fight with myself and enjoying every moment.
After an hour of footie mud wrestling, I go back to get my kiddos at the gym ditching my splattered jacket in the back of my car. I have to walk my soaked, filthy self through a funnel of perfectly coifed and carefully fashioned Italian parents also waiting for their offspring. Looking down at my pants, it strikes me that it looks like I pulled soggy black leg warmers over my already fabous pants and I laugh despite myself.
Back at the car I crawl in carefully, taking the towel from under Rex’s car seat for my own seat. When we got home we all took off our soaked shoes and added them to the ones we soaked through yesterday. My kids were off for some adventure upstairs. Alone I stood, water bombed and starting to chill and I realize a bath is in order. That, being one of my favorite activities, makes me smile. And yet still I stood, not quite sure how to get from the entry on the first floor to my tub on the third floor without destroying the house I had spent the day cleaning. I decide that the best course of action would be to remove my awesome blue terry cloth pants, ball them up with my socks and jacket, and carry the mess straight to the washer…also on the third floor. The only possible kink in my otherwise perfect plan is the window. It faces into the alley that we share with a convent, monastery and one other house. Really, it hardly gets used this time of the year sans a few folks walking their dog. Calculated risk. I’m going for it. Pleased with my plan, I strip down to my Hello Kitty boy shorts and tee-shirt, grab my grimy getup and head for the tub. Of course I wouldn’t be telling you all this if it had gone off as planned. No. I get to the stairs and there is someone staring in my window as their dog takes, what I can only assume, is the most epic K-9 piss in the history of all dog kind. I’m frozen, in my Hello Kitties for the longest two seconds. I’m way past the point of no return so I take off in a sprint up the stairs realizing full well that I maybe should have given “the plan” a bit more thought. My feet are wet despite having removed my saturated sock and they don’t pair well with the wood steps. I fumble the ball; glance back as I pick it up, just to see the dude still standing there…still staring through my window…his dog still whizzing on my wall. Well, he now has a storey to tell too.
