Morning started out normal enough. Get up, eat, futz around for a while, load the boys in the Jeep, go to J&H’s, prepare to shovel shit.
But before I ever got started, J asked me if I wanted to go to town. I wanted to go to town in the worst way: I had a pocket full of money and I was out of everything including yeast for my bread. So I put the horses aside for a while and climbed into his ’69 Le Mans. Looking at the sky, it looked like today’s rain was hours away.
Heh. Yeah. We got his chores done, and I stopped at the dollar store and gorged on canned goods. Then I crossed the street for eggs, potatoes, onions, yeast, and of course cheese for the boys. As I was checking out I noticed that there was water running in the parking lot. Those clouds that had looked so far away were now on top of us and dumping approximately 17% of all the water on the planet right on top of us.
I was wondering how a ’69 Le Mans handled mud as I climbed in, and that was when J informed me his car didn’t have windshield wipers. We couldn’t see a DAMNED thing. But that was okay, because such downpours tend to be very local and things might be completely different out in the boonies. They’d better be, because the lower wash has already run twice this summer and we had to cross it four times to get home. We were in kind of a hurry.
Turns out the washes were still fine, and in fact hardly any rain had fallen in our territory at all. Yet. But that was certainly going to change, and I still had the horses to deal with. Transfer all my groceries into the Jeep. Run through the horse enclosures with my fork and shitwagon.
Alexandra the foal chose this inauspicious moment to escape into the bigger horse pasture. I caught her halter and she gave me a rearing fight but I got her under control. Then when I led her back into her space, Comet and Belle the new mare decided to follow. Now I had a situation: I couldn’t let go of Alexandra, so how the hell was I going to chase the other two out? Fortunately J saw what was going on, came out and helped.
Finish the job, run for the Jeep. Clouds are very threatening now. I’m on the wrong side of the upper wash to get the boys back from Gitmo, but before I can do that I have to go to the Lair and unload the Jeep. There’s no room for Little Bear.
I didn’t quite make it. Big fat drops were falling as I screeched up to the Lair, grabbed two armloads of groceries, and ran inside. The sky opened. Water rushed around the cabin as all the little gullies channeled their water to the wash. I sat out the downpour, then finished emptying the Jeep and hurried back to Gitmo before the next squall. For a mercy the upper wash STILL hasn’t let go, but as I drove along M’s ridge I saw that the lower wash, which we had had to cross to get home, was now bank-to-bank water. I gather a lot of rain fell to the south of us.
But the good news is that St. Famine’s Day is over. My pockets are empty again, but the Lair’s larder is about half-full. John Venlet of Improved Clinch sent me a care package that Landlady brought up last weekend: Most of that money went back to the city with her and I owe her a shopping list for staples. I’m still good for beans and (sigh) rice, but I’m about to open my very last 50-pound sack of flour and that won’t do.
Monsoon is a pain in the ass, but I suppose we need the moisture.
