Heavy Rain.

The airport says they got 3.2 inches last night. We have no rain gauge here at the world headquarters of increasingly occasional weather-watching and increasingly frequent Toad-watching, so we cannot offer corollary proof. The dog got up on the sofa between storms, though, and so did the one cat, and the Toad was on the other sofa with AMR, and it opened up to the tune, the airport says, of 1.75 inches in one hour alone at one point—if that new bathroom out back ain't proven yet, friends and fans of per-hour rainfall rate, of flash flooding, of overworked basement sump pumps, of newly caulked seams and edges, then I don't know what could prove it now. We have raised from the swamp a 9'x9' room, and it has kept the swamp at bay. Let's score this one if not for the good guys, then at least for level and plumb and true, for asphalted shingles, for house wrap, for windows and doors stuck on and in as per the manufacturer's suggested methods. We are dry in the low spot in the yard. This must be how the Egyptians felt once they got those first few courses laid in the first pyramid. Let's us go find something to send on up to the observing gods.

Three o'clock p.m. in the Gate City brings cooler weather relatively, but it's hot and humid all the same. It is high July. We're greening back up from the three-week disaster, however, and we're in spotty bloom here and there and full bloom all other places. There are volunteer tomatoes coming through the crabgrass in the back garden. The Toad is not smiling at us yet, but he is smiling, as if, occasionally, he looks off at a wall or a ceiling light and remembers that one hilarious time when— maybe when it did not rain for three weeks and at least one of us over here at DroughtWatch2010 was ready to stab himself to death with a shiv made from a wooden spoon, except then, at the very last possible moment, the pattern shifted yet again, and we got a little rain for a few days, and all seemed, if not possible or even probable, then at least not utterly lost.