Tomato Sauce.

Two batches. Two skillets. The first working Monday of 08-09. The sauce is right now cooling on the stove. Salmon for supper. Okra, too. Warm outside. We're out of dog food, and the dog won the lottery: leftover rotisserie chicken and brown rice for her dinner. Art Blakey on the stereo. Rain in the forecast. That part of the shed known to have standing water in it is now dry. The last novel revision before the next one starts tomorrow. A nightcap now while the sauce cools enough to go into the freezer. The crickets and cicadas go on apace. Art Blakey. Cocktails and appetizers with AMR in the library out in front of dinner. On a Monday. Who'd have thunk it?

Sunday Chores.

Fifteen dollars out 40 at the Farmers Market for nearly a full banker's box of Cherokee Purples and well more than half a box of Mountain Prides ought to make for so much tomato sauce that we'll have to give it away. Add that on to a solid pot of coffee, a visit to an open house where the house had already been sold, a backyard cleanup, and the removal of every other floorboard in the entryway of the rancid shed — and the discovery, finally, of the standing water that we hope is making the rancid shed rancid — and let's us call this a full and thorough Sunday.

We're still hot here, and the tropics are still roiling south, but the 10-day is starting to perhaps maybe show hints of fall. It's surely not time for the yearly ordering of winter watchcaps, but that time's edging nearer. What do you want out of an early fall? Final revisions of a first book. Fits and starts of a second. Hints of the kind of weather that would make you think about jeans, about wearing socks. The kind of light we got one more time today as the afternoon cooked off into evening.

Do you want highs and lows? The official ANYLF guess lands us mid-80s and mid-60s, and though the outside afternoon ablutions ended up hot as hell, it still feels like we're on the waning side of summer, the waxing side of what comes next. Maintenance may be the way to go in the coming months: priming and painting anything that moves, scouring gutters, reclaiming the landscaping, sweeping, scraping, brush removal, and the replacing of those removed floorboards. Tarp's still on the roof. Other storms are coming, but Fay's still here. We've got all manner of things to do. Somebody ought to make a list. Somebody get me a pen.

Tarp Nails.

Well, WeatherDog, we came through all right. We only got about an inch, so I'm not sure what kind of test that is, but the creeks didn't rise and the tarp held on. Only about an inch. Not sure that phrase has ever appeared here at ANYLF. And now it's September-yellow out there, the sun breaking through more often than not, and the light's the kind of way where you want to open up the front door and discover it isn't even seventy degrees out there, except that it's well more than that, a kind of muggy warmth, and we continue to ride right along the line between seasons.

Spent the morning reading TLK's so often lovely poems and I'm still in my robe at 1:43 in the p.m. and I'm battle-weary from having gotten up to check the ceiling at 4:30 and again at 7:45, but I've had some coffee and some breakfast and TLK and I have big plans to spend the afternoon at a local fried-food-and-cheap-beer purveyor watching the Georgias play the Central Michigans on the satellite, and then tonight I get to make some avocados and tomatoes into something good to eat, and so even though I've sent several J.Crew U-related emails today, thus violating in most ways my work-life balance, there's not that much against which to lodge complaint.

The cicadas are cranking up out there. They don't know what time of the day or year it is, either.

Sentimental Value.

Yeah. About that whole Hannah sliding by thing: This morning the track had shifted back west, and this noon it shifted a little more west, and now the fancies are saying, Yes, it's going to rain, and Oh, we don't know, maybe an inch or two, or maybe five. I've been on the phone with the good folks at Insure-You-Lots and they said OK, go ahead and nail the tarp down on your roof. So I feel (a) safe and sound and pretty sure that the tarp won't blow off, but (b) a little nervous re: the holes that I made in the roof nailing it down. The nails have these little semi-confidence-inspiring rubber washers on them. That'll be me up at three in the morning, then, checking to see if we still have a ceiling. It's an odd, odd day here at the ANYLF TropicsWatch WeatherDesk. I mean, we do love a good hurricane, but we also like knowing things for sure about the roof.

Bonus coverage: Ike'll probably be here next week, so I've got two good chances to get this wrong.

It's a pretty little rain out there in 27244, and I hope the same back home. Good for flowers, and for the okra I'm completely ignoring. Good for the colony of seven trillion black ants I found in the shed gutter this morning. Hopefully they've moved into the shed by now, where it smells like there still must be water. Fay is the gift that keeps on mouldering.

You know what, friends and fans of weather? You should all go up onto your roofs and drive a few nails in. It's fun, it's educational, and it's good for folks with paralytic fears of heights and slopes. The adjuster dude circled everywhere we had hail damage. It's a wonder he had any chalk left. We're right circly up there. I'm just hoping we're all buttoned up and mainly watertight, too. Tune in to this same spot tomorrow, then, when we might just hear ANYLF say: Gee, WeatherDog, it looks like we came through just fine. Or we'll hear him saying something else, in which case maybe don't let the kiddies near the screen. Viewer discretion is, I reckon, advised.

Finally, in other news, there's a sign at the end of a driveway right here by J. Crew U that reads PLEASE RETURN PLANT. Underneath that, it says, SENTIMENTAL VALUE. That's not the weather, I know, but it seemed like part of the forecast.

Right Hot.

Fall's coming, I guess, but we're getting one last terrific example of summer. Hasn't rained in a week. Hot as hell. I'm all but sure the shed leaks now, and even so, I'm ready for rain. The drive to 27244 is back as a regular part of my day, and so too are the dead geese, dogs, cats, raccoons, possums, hawks and crows, all run over, all rotting and cooking and bloating off into ruin. What an odd drive 70 can be. No odder than a room full of twenty kids wanting something, but odd all the same.

Hannah looks like she may slide by. Ike's something else altogether. Y'all keep an eye to the Floridian Atlantic coast. That thing's headed there, and then it may eventually be headed here. The weather's coming. One way or the other, I think we can be sure of that.

Shorter Nights.

The light's gotten all long and thick in the evenings. Surely you've noticed, friends and fans of the coming autumnal equinox. Fall's looming, even as the tropics threaten to submerge your writing shed and mine. It's hot. It's humid. Still, on the drive home from 27244, there was a yellowness, a liquidness, to the failing evening, and I had that sure feeling of flannel and hats and dogwalks and boots. Hell yes, jeans and shirts. The tomatoes are already slowing. I'm ready. Hell yes, scotch and roasted pork.

I drove the truck around town tonight, windows down and dog riding sidesaddle. We were hot. It's August hot in September. We're the both of us ready for our fur to be useful. We're panting. We're ready for those 79-degree highs and 49-degree lows. I'm ready to see my breath. I'm ready for the dog to be ready.

Today was a day of thinking about novels and thinking about teaching writing to 19-year-olds. Today, finally, on balance, was a good day. Came home and the damned beagles were barking across the street. But then they stopped. I had a cocktail and cooked potatoes. Don't know that I could ask for much more than that. Don't know that I should.

More Storms.

Many more: Hannah, Ike and Josephine. Sounds like a 60's protest band. Hannah wants to protest by dropping, so the fancies think right now anyway, five more inches of rain on us after hitting, perhaps, Jacksonville, Savannah, and maybe Myrtle. Ike might be headed for the Gulf via Cuba and Miami, and Josephine could go just about anywhere. Gustav's in Arkansas, or nearly so, and may eventually slide some moisture our way. For those of you keeping score, the roof still leaks and the shed's still a rank mystery. Should be a fun weekend. I'm thinking a lot about flashing right now. Oh, the clear and obvious fallacy that is climate change. And, for that matter, slab foundations.

I wore my back-to-school outfit today.

A question from one of my 2:20-4:00ers: So, um, what should we write our poem about?
Me: I have no idea, but it better be good.

Then I told them that what was most likely the truth was that I had no real ability or promise in terms of teaching them how to write. Maybe I can show them what to read, I said, and maybe I can show them how to read it. Maybe I can show them how not to write. Maybe I can just have them all come over and dig in a huge French drain around the shed. Whatever the truth is, I see them again on Thursday, and need to think up something new to tell them by then.

Hot and sunny here, friends and fans of weather, but not, I don't think, for long.

Labor Day.

Maybe here's what happens: Maybe it slides by and hits somebody besides New Orleans, except then who it hits is the folks who haven't been federally mandated to put their houses up on stilts. Or it hits the same damn place and confirms the hard-won beliefs of both those who believe in tests from god and those who have had plenty of god's tests, thanks. No help for the middle there, for the center—and let me not to the marriage of centrist minds admit admittance, but sometimes it's nice not to help out the outliers on both ends. Or maybe it's merely nice to hope for those who have their houses built on sand instead of those who've got the means to build upon the rock. I well remember that Sunday school song. It means one thing for fourth-graders at Holy Innocents' in Sandy Springs. I suppose it means something else altogether for those in the floodplain, for those on the hurricane coasts. How simple it was then: Build on rock; do not build on sand. Sunday school, I guess, has little to do with tax brackets and class warfare and property values. Or perhaps it has everything to do with all of that.

Here, and now, I'm hoping to figure out how water got in the shed. There, they're already, I presume, trying to figure out how to get it out, once it gets in. May the god of your choice and the weather channel of your choosing be with you down there, friends and fans of weather, fair or foul. Stay boarded up and safe and sound. The ANYLF staff raises one in your direction.