At least for today, Frank isn't fired.....

I had to smile this morning as I looked outside at the pouring rain. At least I don't have to water today, or tomorrow, or possibly even the next day from the looks of things. Rain now, sends me a mixed bag of emotions. Sometimes I look out and I see a big old Australian Shepherd hunkered down on the couch or some remote corner of the house refusing to step foot outside. That boy was not afraid of anything, except getting his paws wet. We were convinced that he believed for all its worth that he would melt if he were to get his paws wet. On the off chance that it was one of those days that he chose to run from us instead of allowing gravity to assume the full brunt of his 45 pounds and sticking to the floor like Velcro, when he was caught, he would be dragged to the back door and unceremoniously tossed out into the rain where he gingerly tip-toed to the least wet place in the yard, did his business and high-tailed it back to the door and the safety of the step where he balanced himself and dug on the door until we let him in. When Velcro mode set in, he was bodily picked up and shown the door where most of the time he balked but begrudgingly tip-toed out, peed, and ran back in before we could shut the door. I miss that old beast.

Then there was Angel who was small enough to balance on the one step into the house from the back, but was equally adverse to water. Now Angel, as opposed to Draco, had a reason to not like water; it's in her genes. Jindo Gae's do not like water. Its there in black and white in the personality description of the breed. She, however, was much more portable than Draco was albeit also much more squirmy than he was. She was a hoot to watch when it was raining. She would scope out the situation, find the least wet place and carefully walk to where she was to do her thing and then walk the exact same path as she had getting over there to return to the step.

Oh, and of course, there's Andrea. Andrea has disliked rain and thunderstorms ever since we lived in Denver. It all stems from a time that she, Beth and I were watching a thunderstorm outside of our dining room. We lived in a two story townhouse then that backed up to common areas that contained a park for the kids in the complex. It was a beautiful playground, lush and green with plenty of trees to have picnics under or to climb upon. That day, the lightening was pretty fierce and we were just sitting there enjoying the sound and smell of the rain and watching the lightening dance from cloud to cloud. Then from nowhere, a bolt split off and hit a tree that was within our line of vision. As half of it fell to the ground, I will never forget the wide eyed kiddo who decided that was enough rain watching. She's hated thunderstorms ever since.

Here in Texas, like everything else that is touted to be bigger than anywhere else in the world, the thunderstorms can be monsters. We have never had the experience of any of the trees on our property being hit, nor have we had (praise God) any lightening strikes near us that we are aware of, but hate the storms she does. When the news comes on, you can often hear her grumble that "Frank is so fired for this", she has come to believe that the weatherman on Channel two has the switch that turns off and on the rain. We keep telling her that if he did that we would not have had the drought that we had last year. She doesn't care, its all his fault that our backyard is rain soaked and that its raining so hard the satellite dish can't receive a signal so she can watch Days. The times that our power is knocked out either by power lines downed or transponders being blown, she goes off for hours about how insensitive he is that we have no lights, no power, no microwave and no t.v., and how it sucks coloring by candle light. One time I mentioned that Abraham Lincoln probably colored by candle light and she looked at me as if to say, "well, whoop-dee do for Abraham Lincoln". We have told her that the thunder was the Angels bowling and when it booms that one of them got a strike. For a while it worked, then she realized that Angels probably don't bowl, so that stopped working for us. Then we told her that God had to water the earth somehow. Nope, no sale. One time I told her that it was too much money for me to water the lawn so God was doing it for me. The look I got was, well, pretty much a raised eyebrow and a few grumbles, most likely stating that I needed to save my money so that I could pay my water bill. Yeah, we just can't get around the fact that she will forever hate the rain.

Now, she's in Arizona with my folks whilst I wait for the birth of my new granddaughter.Hopefully it won't rain there because they don't as a general rule watch news so there's no one to blame for the foul weather except Frank who is no where near Arizona. Maybe she can blame the coyotes that howl at night out there and at least, for now, Frank won't be fired. =o)