Rainy Thoughts Meandering Minds

The rainy season is here again. It has come to help douse the fires from the dry season.

For that reason alone, I welcome it. But there are other reasons, too.

The sky here is always beautiful to me. I have said that many times and will probably continue repeating it, because it is something I feel very deeply.

When the rainy season comes, the sky becomes a constant study in nearly every possible cloud formation you can imagine. Often, there are dozens of different types of formation all combined to make a tapestry of shapes in varying shades of blue, grey, and white.

Even though rainy weather makes me sleepy, the sky will always send me to a different place in my mind. Somehow, it manages to avoid becoming gloomy about 80% of the time. It’s only during the very most dreary moments of a heavy downpour that I feel the melancholy that rain always brought me at home in Virginia.

And it seems more common here than in Virginia that you have a steady downpour happening even while you are shading your eyes from bright sunlight. I saw that happen maybe once a year in Virginia, but here in Florida it seems to happen once a day. It happened just the other day when Deb and I were driving to the brand new Sonic for lunch. Of course, we had to break out in a chorus “I wanna know; have you ever seen the rain; coming down on sunny days?” It’s a rule. You have to sing that line whenever you see rain on a sunny day.

Not everyone who migrates here from Virginia feels the same way as I do. Up until Saturday, I had a neighbor across the way who moved here from just 30 minutes away from where I grew up. He lived here for several months, and I tried several times to catch up with him when we were home at the same time, but it never worked out. Then, Saturday, Johanna from downstairs called me while I was washing McD’s off my skin. She said that Aaron was moving out and leaving his furniture.

So I went over to look at a couple of things and finally got the chance to talk to him. Life and its silly ways. What are ya’ gonna do?

Anyway, I did like the furniture, so I kept the futon and entertainment center and moved them into my spare room. Actually, I didn’t move them. Louis and Mike moved them for me. Aaron did enough just taking the big pieces of the entertainment center apart in such a way that I could reassemble it. It took him about and hour to dismantle it. It took me about 20 minutes to put it back together. But then, I had an Alan wrench. Girls with tools: watch out!

The other benefit of taking this furniture, which by the way is practically brand new and FREE, is that I finally did something to that spare room. I never really unpacked my towels and linens and such because there is absolutely no storage in this apartment. So I have kept out the primary pieces I use, but the rest has been in a huge box back there. Now I unpacked that box, plus several boxes of books, music, etc., and loaded up the entertainment center with it all. Hey, no one said I HAD to put a TV on it. It’s mine; I can use it how I see fit. So now, the mattress and box spring that were taking up the floor in hopes of me EVER having company are on the walkway, leaning against my front window with a great big tarp over them.

Louis and his wife (whose name starts with an “E” and that’s all I can be sure of) are going to try to take Aaron’s apartment and will probably take the mattress and box spring off my hands when they do. Right now they are in a one-bedroom, which is about 2/3 the size of my place with even less storage per square foot. They want to move into Aaron’s place and have a guest bedroom. I think Louis’ wife will probably make him sleep there with his great big TV so she can have some peace and quiet in her room. But that’s their business.

Binks and Mr. Bond are totally enjoying having another room to wander in again. Their little world had gotten much smaller because I was so fed up with Binks knocking down the closet doors in my bedroom. And they weren’t allowed in the spare room because I couldn’t get to them once they were in there. So now, as long as Binks doesn’t become the bane of the closet in that room, they have a slightly less constricted world. Don’t worry; I’ve already covered the futon with a sheet to reduce the shedding effects.

There’s another shuttle launch scheduled this weekend. Right now there’s a big to-do about it because the two top safety people at NASA said they didn’t want another launch to happen until the foam ramps are made more secure. But the top officials above them said, “Oh, it’s OK little scaredie-cats. If the ramps cause a problem, we’ll just strand the astronauts on the space station while we argue about the rescue shuttle that has the same exact problem.” Of course, there’s also the issue of “What happens if the foam ramp causes AN EXPLOSION, you big dumb jerks?! What will you do for the astronauts then?” Oy!

I do still look forward to the launch though. It should be interesting (if it actually goes up on Saturday) to watch from whatever bar in Melbourne I happen to be paused at. My hash group is having a pub crawl on Saturday; sort of a pre-July 4th event.

There’s also the fun of watching the tourists in RV’s, SUV’s, vans and tents get in trouble because they parked right next to one of the thousands of signs posted along US 1 that say “ABSOLUTELY NO PARKING ANY TIME.” I think there is an addendum in invisible ink that says “ESPECIALLY DURING A SHUTTLE LAUNCH.” And what’s more fun is guessing how much the locals will ask for parking in their lawns. The Towers where I used to live put a sign up that said “$20 for the day.” I didn’t care as long as no one parked in my spot. That won’t be a problem where I am now. You can’t see the cape from this place, and it’s gated anyway.

But you can see launches once they’re up in the air from here. Last Friday a rocket launched at about 6:15 pm. All the neighbors were out in the parking lot or on the walkways watching for it, drinking beer and barbequeing. It was great. I was out on my walkway with a glass of wine and some oriental left-overs. The cats were very confused and anxious when I came back inside. Their little eyes were as big as saucers. It was very cute.

I hate the walls in my apartment. I hate apartment walls anyway. They are always bland, some horribly neutral color with no warmth or imagination, and they are always covered with at least a dozen layers of paint from all the past tenants. In trying to think of what would make them more bearable to me, the future of said walls has morphed through many phases. First, I was going to paint them pale shades of colors like Moss, Heather, Sun Gold, etc. Then I thought that if I painted them an actual color, I was going to have to UNPAINT them whenever it came time for me to move. (This is because I am cheap and want my entire deposit back. If I didn't care about the deposit, I would just not repaint the walls.) Then, I said, OK, I just do a hi-lite sort of thing using the same dry-brush tecniques I use when I paint ceramics. The walls are all textured, so I could just touch the tops of the bumps and ridges with the color of choice. The same issue came back to haunt me—I’d have to unpaint it before moving. Then I said, “Oh! I can paint a pattern onto the wall, like a big Celtic Knot or something! That would be really nifty.” Then the other little voice in my head (the one that takes all the fun out of everything) said “Dummy, if you do that, not only will you have to cover it up when you leave; but you’ll also have to match the covered up area to the original color. Way worse than just repainting the whole wall!” So, the newest plan is this: I have purchased one long canvas, and two tiny canvases. I need to purchase two more tiny canvases for the current incarnation of my plan. The long canvas will be painted with a symbol of eternity from one of my books on Celtic lore and traditions. Above this will be hung my Beech walking stick (the one I call my Druid Staff) stretched out the length of the canvas and mounted on decorative long nails (or just regular long nails, which I will paint to be less obvious). This arrangement will be above the love seat on the longer wall in the living room. The (soon to be) four tiny canvases will contain various designs from nature and/or Celtic or Native American culture. Above these will be mounted my shorter walking stick, which I believe is Oak, that my father found and whittled into smoothness for me. This arrangement will reside above the long sofa on the smaller wall in the living room. Yes, I know the long sofa is on the short wall and the love seat is on the long wall. It’s my home; leave me alone.

So that’s my big plan to make the walls less annoying here. Of course I still don’t know what to do with the walls in the other two rooms, but I have all the way until I decide to move out to worry about that. No big hurry; it doesn’t look like I will be receiving any windfalls any time soon, and I’m not going anywhere until I can afford something better. My palm tree house has its plusses, but I really would like to work my way up into a higher income neighborhood one day.