Steady Rain.

This is not going to save us from a May shortfall, I don't think, but it's been raining all morning, and we've lost 13 or 14 degrees in the past two hours, such that we're holding right around 59 on the cat porch, and I haven't been outside to check the gauge yet, but the tone and tenor of the rain on the range hood makes me want to say another quarter-inch so far, bringing us almost to a half-inch out of this storm already, and there's plenty more coming. Let the dog out and when she — and I — finally got up around 10:30 — it's summer, and I'm not apologizing — and she stood under the overhang on the WeatherDeck with her ears slicked back and she pulled her lips back into her long, distrustful mouth, and she looked out into the rain and and the wind, and then she decided against all of that and turned around and came back in. Didn't even get her feet wet.

Today is a day for some kind of good lunch, the likes of which we surely don't have here. Maybe downtown to Cincy's, a little spaghetti-and-chili joint hidden away behind a couple of parking garages. Something like that is called for. The coffee pot's been off for more than an hour, but I'm still drinking the warm lees of what's left.

It's a fantastic, soaking, perfect rain. It is a rain for agricultural concerns. It is a rain that means I will have to weed the garden immediately. Mow the lawn. It is a rain that lengthens the list of tasks to be completed.

I'm reading, and I'm getting ready to be able to start to try to think about reading my own. I'm getting ready to take the rubber bands off one of the drafts stacked up on the desk back there. I'm getting ready to start trying to decide whether anybody would actually say a thing like that. Or that. Or that. I'm getting ready to make things a little less shy of heart. I'm getting ready to drag my characters back into rooms with each other. Like when we were little, and our parents wouldn't let us walk away until we'd shaken hands and apologized for whaling Bo Avery in the head with the yellow Tonka truck. I'm letting my characters walk away too soon. I've got to get them back in front of each other, make them apologize even when they really, really don't mean it, even as they're looking around for that truck, trying to decide if maybe they could get in another shot before anybody caught them or tried to make them quit. Now say you're sorry. Say it like you mean it. I'm sorry. There. Now isn't that better?