So it is May 18 and it is — again — snowing. I’m pretty sure we’re all over the “we need the moisture” mantra, and I’m also pretty sure we don’t, at this moment, need the moisture. I am watching snowflakes drift down at a good clip with a cat ensconced on my lap and chili on the menu later today: this could be a lovely scene. In December.
Today, in May, the snow is landing on fresh little green leaves and the cat is potentially sick. No complaints about the chili, other than it’s not usually served in May, which generally is the cusp of potato salad season.
Yesterday started off overcast. By the time Oz and I went for our morning walk, it was raining enough that my new souvenir rain jacket from Scotland (a gift from world-traveler Kara) was drenched within 15 minutes (but it did keep my jacket underneath dry). Once at work the heavy rain turned to snain, and before noon it was snowing very wetly.
Then it stopped. And started. And stopped. Rain. Hail. Snain. Snow. The sun came out at 4:30, so I walked an order over to a downtown customer. She thanked me and said she hadn’t forgotten that she said she’d come get it, but every time she got ready to go the weather was so foul she just decided to get her order Monday.
Somewhere earlier in the day, after it had snowed and stopped three times in roughly 15 minutes, co-worker James announced, “This is why I have trust issues — I grew up in Colorado.” Let’s see you run that one by your psychologist.
Earlier in the week Dusty referred to this as our “Indian winter,” which made Lynn and I laugh at the time. It’s not as funny now, now that the sky is as gray as it could ever get and winter is Sheridan Whiteside (The Man Who Came to Dinner).
Well, just like channels, if you don’t like what you’re seeing outside, it can change. For you, we transitioned seamlessly from the last paragraph to this, but it has taken me an hour to get here — and in that hour, the sun has made a valiant effort to force clouds aside, and the snow has been replaced with wind.
I managed, in that hour, to find a video feed for the Giro d’Italia and watched my first 20 kilometers of a race that’s gone over 1,000 so far. It is raining off and on in Italy, for your world weather report.
I also doubled Ki’o’s prednisolone dose for his asthma, and put drops in his eyes for a ocular-nasal infection. He’s kind of like the weather, too: one minute under it, the next wandering alongside Marrakesh to see how much food he might score. But he’s definitely a bit sub-par. (When he doesn’t come on the run for a snack, something is clearly wrong.) If he’s like most of our animals, he will wait until Sunday evening (full emergency rates) to get really sick.
I have Big Plans in our new house for Ki’o. The forced air heat system will be gone, so I’m hoping that will help keep his asthma at bay, and he may find himself plunked into the steam shower to help his little lungs. I doubt he would be looking forward to that if he knew, but I am.
The moisture report coming from our new house is not what we might hope for. As of Tuesday, Dusty was still feeling quite confident in the dryness of his/our crawlspace. When Lynn saw him yesterday, he and Sam had just finished putting the round forms for our deck piers in place, because the holes were starting to get muddy. Dusty and the plumber will inspect the crawlspace early next week, but the sump pump he was certain we wouldn’t ever need may be going in after all.
Lynn did report that the ditch along the eastern and southern borders of our acre is running full stream ahead. I theorized this might be because the river is getting so big that every access point along the way is wide open to try to divert water where it ought to go rather than where it shouldn’t. She also reported lots of standing water in lots farther west of us in Riverwalk. People thought we had the least valued site because of its proximity to the highway, but I think we’re going to be better off than many of our neighbors when it comes to staying dry.
We also, I might add, seem to be winning the construction race among the three houses in progress in Riverwalk. Of the three, including the one that started months before ours, we are the only one with a roof in place.
After a not-particularly-useful meeting with Dusty on Tuesday, we had an impromptu one with him Thursday, when we took floor samples out and he came out to meet the truck from Western Lumber with our trim package. Unplanned, that went much better than the scheduled meeting.
Someone from the well drilling company has supposedly now put our pump in place, and the plumber, along with his crawlspace inspection, is supposed to hook the water from the well to the house. The boiler, which my mother asks about every week, may finally be going in next week. Dusty would like to get the heating system working before he installs the floors. (Although I’m not sure how that works when we don’t have a gas line in yet.)
On Thursday he thought we might not even need additional heat, but that was before Indian winter set in once again. At the rate we’re going, we might need our in-floor heat and our gas fireplace in July.
It’s not prom night, but high school graduation is tomorrow. Fortunately, it’s an inside ceremony. I don’t know about the two parties I’ve been invited to.
Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast 