THIS MORNING IT RAINED

There must be good things that come with all this rain, there must be! I took a walk to Owen Woods soon after YET ANOTHER torrential morning downpour. Owen Woods are close to where I live (5 minute walk from my house), but I need the right mindset to venture out there. It is a brooding kind of forest…



…though it opens up onto lovely prairie fields, the one place where the omnipresent phlox are very welcome…



But all that rain! After five minutes, the wind unleashed water from wet leaves, leaving me looking like I had a very unfortunate experience in the bathroom or at the very least spent a productive morning chasing my shadow through the sprinkler.

Still, there must be something worth reveling in as a result of the rains.
Sure enough, a slightly modified by me sign says it all:



…Because if you look at all the wet puddles around you, you will see this:



...and this:



and this:



When I was a kid at my grandparents’ place in the Polish village, I’d go out after heavy rains and look for puddles to bike through, just for that spray of muddy wetness (especially onto mean mortal enemies passing at the side). And always, always we’d take baskets into the forests in search of mushrooms (Poles are obsessively committed to sautéing, frying and generally cooking with mushrooms). My walk today didn’t bring me any closer to what I’d put in a frying pan, but these were certainly pretty to look at. -->

But I have to say, the singular beauty of wet things notwithstanding, I HAVE HAD IT WITH THE RAIN!! Even the pine trees look depressed with all that moisture weighing them down.

A GAGGLE OF BLOGGERS

Say there are four people: A, B, C and F. (Not to be confused with the grading chart. A, B and C are stand-in names put forth by blogger F - see post here - with or without great awareness of his own brilliance as they do indeed correspond to the first initials of last names, forcing me, therefore, to resort to the failing mark ‘F’ as a label for him, at it corresponds to his own name).

Say A knows B and C, B knows A and C, F knows C, but only C knows A, B and F. Though all do read each others’ blogs religiously (corresponding to blogs A, B, C and F). What power to have been the only one in possession of knowledge about all, the translator of blog innuendo, the purveyor of important information (‘yes, his RV does come with a patio large enough to hold a set of patio furniture’ and ‘no, she does NOT have DM posters up and down her office walls’ and ‘she does indeed blog her way through faculty meetings’)!

To be privy to insider-information is, of course, something that many long for and some are now sitting in jail for and I must admit I enjoyed the elevated status that it accorded me for a short period of time (while I can’t say that such insider information was in great demand, I would occasionally be able to show off with an off-hand, person-in-the-know type comment here and there).

All that is in the past. Last night’s dinner brought together all four and any remaining curiosities (Q: ‘is his face really as round as the drawing implies?’) were clarified and put to rest (A: ‘No.’). I must now step down and rejoin the peanut gallery, switch from first class to sardine economy, tear up my ‘informer’ business cards, lose all privilege and become one of the populace.