I've always liked the rain. Especially in the spring and summer. Everything looks so green, and smells so fresh.
My late Grandfather always said that the sound of thunder was God driving the 'tater wagon. I've heard others say that thunder was God bowling and lightning was God getting a strike. Occasionally I let my mind drift to bittersweet memories of my youth:


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It's raining again today. A soft cascade that makes me feel mellow inside my mind.

Ahhhh...

Rain is pattering down on my rooftop today. The sound has me remembering summer visits to my Grandparent's farm as a child.

My Grandparents were both born in the 1890's ('94 and '9 and married in the 1910's. My Grandfather built the farmhouse on the 100 acres he received as a dowry from my Grandmother's parents in the hills of Tennessee.

Visiting the farm was like going back in time: Electricity, but no running water or indoor 'facilities'. A wood burning stove for cooking. We carried water up from the artesian well for cooking, cleaning and bathing. Part of the daily chores were feeding the chickens and the mule, plus milking the cow.

The house itself was made of wood. It had a tin roof and a front porch that ran the length of the house. A swing was at one end, close by the front door. In the evenings, after supper, my grandparents would sit there and tell stories. Sometimes my Dad (who played in a bluegrass band) would play his guitar and we'd all sing.

At bedtime, you crawled into a feather bed, sinking down and getting snug. When it rained, the patter of the rain on the tin roof lulled you to sleep quickly.

The house and the farm are long gone now, as are my Grandparents and my parents. The rain today reminds me of those simple times of my childhood and makes me smile.

~

... the Good Friday holiday is renamed Spring Holiday.

But the Christmas Holiday is still called Christmas Holiday.

Why not call it Winter Holiday, if you're going to make religious holidays non secular?

~

My dreams are generally realistic, but sometimes they are so spot on that when I wake up I feel as though they've just happened in reality. Last night was another one:

I met a petite, short haired blonde with blue eyes at an outdoor concert in my town. The band was playing music from my time, about 40 years ago. I asked her where her grandparents were, surely she didn't come here on her own. She laughed and said this was her music, that she had always felt like she was born in the wrong time period. I scoffed at her and asked her if she were talking to me on some sort of a dare. No, she replied, she had always liked older people in general and older men specifically. Maybe it was the wine that made me do it, but I took her hand and danced with her for a while. I know it's an old man's fantasy, this May December thing, but it seemed so real and genuine. After a bit, she abruptly started to walk away. I asked her where she was going. She said that if I truly wanted her I would find her. I stood there watching her walk away, internally trying to decide if this was a fool's errand, this desire to be with her. My heart was racing. When she was a block away I followed quickly after her, almost running to catch up. She turned a corner and was gone from view. In a near panic I began to run, looking every which way until I saw her off in the distance with a group of friends her own age. I finally caught up with them and one of the guys with her asked why it took me so long to find her. I touched her shoulder. She turned, smiled at me and asked why it had taken so long to find her. Then she softly kissed me... and I woke up.

I swear I could still taste her lips.

~

Yep, it's that time again here in the United States. Some people dread it. I file my taxes in January. A year ago, I had to pay the IRS almost $4,000.00. I had been on Health Care, what most people here in the States call Obama Care. When I turned 65 in August, I switched to Medicare, which was cheaper and had better coverage than Health Care. The IRS sent me a letter and a form to fill out after I had filed my taxes. I've been filing my own taxes since I was 16 and it was THE most confusing form I've ever seen. It didn't help that I had the flu while I was (pun intended) feverishly trying to complete the form to get it turned in on time. It all boiled down to this: Since I had switched insurance before the end of the year, I had to pay back the subsidies I received to keep my insurance lower. I know, didn't make any sense to me, either. The subsidies came from my own tax dollars, so I had to pay back my own money? I could have fought it, but if I lost (which, going up against the IRS I figured I would lose) I would have to pay penalties and late fees on top of what I owed. So I wrote a check to the IRS, but put a note inside the envelope with the check telling them they should have told people if they were going to switch insurance that penalties would be involved. Of course, I never heard back from them. Lesson learned. As my late Father used to say: You can't fight city hall (or the government, in my case). Believe me, I've told everyone I can when the subject of income taxes comes up, especially for people my age, to wait until January to switch your insurance. So, here's my contribution to Tax Day:


All the best to my fellow taxpayers.

~

Saturday - 61 degrees and sunny

Sunday - 46 degrees and almost an inch of rain

By this coming Tuesday it will be lower 70's.

Spring in Indiana. Not bad at all, compared to Colorado right now!

~

What a beautiful day today. Sunny and 61 degrees (F), I spent the day outdoors.

If not for the news carrier leaving me Friday's newspaper on Saturday and my Red Sox losing 9-5, it would have been perfect.

Well, you can't expect perfection, no?

~

Last Sunday I dropped and shattered my favorite glass. It was over 60 years old and I had been using it since I was a boy. Originally it had been for jelly. Back in the 1950's and 1960's and into the 1970's, peanut butter and jelly often came in collectible glasses. You can google it if you want to see how many different types there were.

Mine was a 16 ounce clear glass with images in white on both sides of a riverboat on the Mississippi. My Mother gave it to me, along with dishes, pots and pans when I first moved away from home. I had taken that glass everywhere I've lived over the years. It survived good times, bad times, marriage and divorce.

As time wore on, I drew comfort from drinking from this glass at meals, or any random time. It held more than liquids. It held memories.

And now it's gone forever. It might seem foolish to lament the loss of something as trivial as a glass, but I feel as though I've lost an old friend. The memories we shared.

Now the search to find another like it begins.

Funny how an inanimate thing can trigger such strong feelings in an old guy like me.

~

I kid you not:

It is so windy today, I was almost knocked over walking out to the mailbox.

~

I struck a nerve on my blog, blog.

I never said anyone HAD to adhere to a strict guideline.

Do as you wish, don't wish that you did.