June 25, 2013

• Much Ado About Nothing

  Vile and hostile threats are being issued right now. It is uncommonly dark for 9am and thunder is just rolling through the atmosphere as if 50 miles away Lake Michigan itself is under siege. (In this area of the woods, we blame all storms on Lake Michigan or South Bend.) Riley has gone outside to boof the storm into submission. I am having minor, minor technical challenges which are steadily becoming more problematic. The delete key took a vacation (always problematic for someone with my typing skills.) It appears things have restored themselves.

  I am sitting here in the near dark listening to the thunder and drinking my morning coffee. Nancy is not feeling well this morning, which is both uncommon and worrisome. So I got up this morning, released the hounds, freed the chickens, fed the hounds, laid out her mother’s breakfast array. Ilah is having her breakfast, Nancy is still in bed, Annie is napping on the couch and Riley is out in the back yard holding off the rain.

  We lost power last night in the storm. It went off, it came back on, it went off, it came back on…Ilah’s oxygen machine went into full screaming panic, all of the clocks reset themselves to midnight and Nancy and I raced like children around the house, closing all of the windows… The house is low to the ground and has a fairly wide roof over-hang, and it’s in the city, where low, ground-level breezes are blocked thirty different ways by the time they reach us. Closing the windows is not the panic it used to be when I lived in the country on a slight hill in  two story frame house. It’s really more of a ritual, now. And we hate to close the windows after three days of mid-eighties weather when the breezes are cool and exciting, as storm breezes tend to be.  We restored the oxygen machine, flipped the TV back on and went on with our evening.

  Cheryl, Riley alerted me, there’s bad weather outside. 

  “Then stay here inside with us.”

  Oh. Okay. Ill protect you, Cheryl.

  “Thanks, Rile.”

  I’ll be right here.

  “Good dog.”

  I’ll just touch you from time to time to make sure you’re okay.

  “Thank you, Riley.”

  I’ll do it, Annie offered, I’ll do something–what should I do? She ran around the inner track in the house three times, but in the end she piled on the couch and watched TV with Nancy. Giving her strength.

  For all of the threatening, there does not appear to be much of an actual storm right now, but I should probably not say that out loud until next Tuesday.

  I wonder what Neil Gaiman is doing right now. (He’s on the cover of this issue of Poets and Writers, which happens to be lying on my desk. I subscribe to it religiously, as if having the magazine around will automatically make me a better writer. I suppose it would be extreme dedication to actually read it.)

  The sun might actually come out.

  And somewhere I have received a text, facebook alert or some other telephonic communication, I can tell by the faint buzz in the background. Interestingly, the one thing my phone almost never does is ring.

  My father should be at home again, recovering. Hey, Pop. Love you. Say hi to Ella for me.

   

   

     

  • 9:32 am
  • 2 Comments