Easy Days.

It's been eighty degrees so many days now that it feels like May. We're supposed to fix all of that in a flash-bang line of storms later on this evening that'll probably rattle the Toad from his sleep and us from our Toadsleeping couchbound stupors, but still: even the tulips are blooming. Too much, too soon, and I'll take it anyway, especially knowing that next week's forecast looks more like last week's should have—that cold winter set in for the long flight, somehow, inside my head, inside my knees, and I was in need of some kind of blazing weekend of hopeful too-hot weather. All the trees are budded over. The dogwood's about to bloom. The new cherry tree is on the edge of blooming, and the old one's right behind it. The lawn needs mowing. The flowerbeds need more weeding. All this fuss and work and still it does not matter up against the memory of the Toad sitting happily outside yesterday for lunch at the bar, in the breeze, banging his hands on the wrought-iron table like he'd rather do nothing else. In that moment neither springbreaked AMR nor I would have rather been doing anything else, either. Good weather and a nearly cold lunchtime beer will do that for you.

Sorry for the absence, friends and fans of weather, but that is how it goes mid-to-late novel and post-Toad over here at the forecast. If something important had happened—if we'd needed to tie down the porch furniture or drag the animals toward the cellar—I would have let you know. You can still count on the forecast in an emergency. And though you can still count on everybody over here at other times, too, you just can't count quite so fiercely or immediately any more. Sometimes we get to the end of a day that tops out around 81 degrees and full of songbirds, and it turns out that the whole staff—the interns on up to the managing editors—can't do anything but sit on the front porch and try to keep the dog from heading off on her own up the block. Sometimes that's what we've got left over here. Sometimes, I get the feeling, that's how it's going to be.

Do keep an eye to the skies out there tonight and overnight. If the forecast owes you one thing it is a forecast, and so: there seems a good shot at storms worthy of your attention, which is itself worthy of your attention. Here endeth the forecast.