Rained Out

Last night seemed to be a typical night around here.  At first. 

I was working in my office, which is really our living room.  This means that, in addition to my desk and computer and about a thousand books, my so-called office has two couches in it.

Then Husband decided that he'd come and join me since occasionally he likes to see me and I tend to write late at night.  So there goes one couch with Husband stretched out from end to end.

And then it started raining.

I don't know what it is about the desert but rain is never normal here.  This is what it's like:  first it never rains, like for six months.  It's so dry that, just like in the old Westerns where there are tumbleweeds rolling down the street, we actually have tumbleweeds rolling down our street.  It's so dry that even the cactus are thirsty. 

Then suddenly it rains.  And it doesn't rain just a  little bit, like a splash to give everything a nourishing sip of water, turn the desert green and move on.  No, it's a torrential torrent.  Like all the trees break off like twigs in our neighborhood.  We wake up to a scene from a nuclear holocaust - debris everywhere, tree strewn across roads, powerlines down, houses crushed.  From a rainstorm.  What if we really had weather?

So I was sitting at my desk listening to the thunder cracking overhead, the rain sluicing down, and the wind shaking the house and I thought it didn't sound good.  Best case scenario would be that the power would go out.  The worst case scenario would be that the house would crack a million tiny shards, I would search for Husband, Bar Mitzvahzilla and Daughter in the shards, and we'd float away to safety on the river of our street.

None of this happened.  Though I looked up and who was there?  Daughter.  Of course.  Because who would you want to be with in a torrential rain but a mom who needs a snorkel and mask just to swim in a pool?  I got her settled in on the empty couch and she began to drift off.

The, after a particularly loud crack of thunder, Bar Mitzvahzilla showed up.  And now we had a math problem:  two couches, three people.  So I decided to let the kids share, one head at each end. 

Turned out this didn't work too well.  Of course, there was a certain amount of entertainment value to Bar Mitzvahzilla in having his feet splayed out in Daughter's face - now this was a comedy routine he could enjoy endlessly. He could also pretend to stretch and smash her nose, over and over again.  Daughter fought back in her own way, laying like a piece of beef on the couch, immobile.  Both kids wide awake.

My writing for the night?  Rained out.