Later Summer.

Woke up to a wet street, wet yard. Not hugely so on either count: the street under the truck's still dry, the deck's dry where it meets the house. It might still be raining. It might not. Our gray is a high gray, a stormless gray, an unforecast morning shower gray. A don't-rush-out-right-now-for-the-drywall gray. The radar says all this came out of the north-northwest. Back up toward the hills and mountains it looks like it might be trying to organize into something a little stronger, a little throatier. The Toad is asleep upstairs. AMR is asleep upstairs. The cats, who I despise, and who got me up, are asleep upstairs. I do have a cup of coffee, though, and the house to myself but for the dog, who almost always lines up on the good side of the ledger, and I have the quiet smug satisfaction of a man who pulled three rolls of insulation out of the truck bed as an afterthought last night and put them in the shed. Where they are now. Dry. Undrizzled on. Ready for some kind of attention later on.

This is the week of insulation and drywall. And of my parents bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh up from the deeper south as they chase a star out of GA and across the SC desert to harken upon the newborn Toad. And as if on cue, friends and fans of later-day thunder, the sun has just broken out back there through the kitchen door and is lighting up the Dumpster edge of the catty-cornered apartments. If I didn't know any better, I'd call the back yard beautiful.

We've been hot, but not as hot. We've been knocked back down to livable. It rains a little bit again. Those three weeks of death and pestilence might be behind us. The Braves are below .500 since the All-Star break, but one still hopes, however blindly and foolishly. The Toad has new tricks, like looking at things and making wee noises. It's August. The puppet show looms out there in the near distance. The new half-dead novel looms out there in the shed, somewhere underneath all that insulation. The Toad looms. The Toad always looms. There's a damn lot of looming going on around here. We're mainly clouded over again, and now out that selfsame kitchen door it looks like it'd be cool enough to take a pair of jeans and a cup of coffee outside. Among other things, though, the cicadas say it just plain isn't. That and sticking half my body out to let the dog back in from her morning scratch and sniff. We're not as hot here at the looming close of summer, but if I had to say, and I guess I do, then I'd say we're still hot for sure.