Amidst the deafening drumbeat of rain on our metal roof, I sit across from the TV, unable to hear the slightest sound, even though the audio is turned up high. Such a waste of first-class music. To my right lies Otto, naturally calm, unfazed, dozing. Across my left ankle, we have Vandal, freshly medicated to dampen the peaks of his noise-induced anxieties. He, too, is calmer now, if not yet able to lower his pretty head and snooze a little.
The ‘Weather Channel’ marks our sunset for 17:20 h today, but owing to the heavy cloud cover, it was pitch dark out there well before this unseen sunset. As a matter of fact, we haven’t seen the sun in just about eight days. There was a hint, a suggestion of a glimpse, this morning at around 6:40 h, as I was driving to the farmer’s market in town. In a beautiful promise of imminent sunshine, the fog developed a bright, milky glow in an easterly direction – but it was only an empty promise. At least my marketing was not encumbered by rain. However, seeing many vendors struggle with additional tarps and plastic sheets flapping in the breeze, I didn’t linger either.
Vandal doesn’t appear to be overly impressed with my purchases, not even with the lychees. He prefers the tripe I brought back the other day. The piña is not quite ripe yet. It’s for Barry when he returns from Florida next Tuesday. By then, it will be perfect. I also bought two mangos, even though it’s way past their natural season and you have to pay extra for commercial plantation products. I just can’t resist a pretty, red-cheeked mango. To the right of the pineapple, we have my favorite yogurt ‘flavoring’, maracuyá.
And the rain still pours and pours. We’ve had so many hours of really heavy rain today. I wish, I really wish, I could send most of it over to Central Texas. Water is still so badly needed there! Costa Rica’s Central Valley, on the other hand, has had plenty lately. It started raining in earnest eight days ago and it hasn’t stopped yet.
We had a little 2-hour power outage, too, this afternoon. A perfect opportunity to start to read one of my favorite books once more. “The Road from Coorain” by Jill Ker Conway, the Australian past President of Smith College. When I first read this book some twenty years ago, her words bowled me over with their descriptive beauty. It is a great pleasure for me to absorb these vivid images again, which she manages to evoke so effortlessly. I’d like to propose “The Road from Coorain” for my book club’s reading list because it’s one of those books one likes to push on others. “Simply marvelous, you MUST read it, darling”.
Pretty soon it became too dark to read and I was just about to doze off when our electrical service was restored. I could’ve used a little nap, to make up for last night’s lost rest, when an earthquake woke me up shortly after 4 h. It wasn’t much, just some loud noise terminating in vibrating window glass and crunching window frames for a second or so. The dogs jumped up and looked at me for guidance, so I ordered everyone back to sleep, including myself. But twice more I felt very, very slight vibrations through the mattress, enough to keep me up a while longer.
The earthquake might also have been just powerful enough, to cause some shifting of roofing components, to allow the driving rain to push through a minor crack – generating a fairly substantial puddle right next to my bed. And, no, neither dog was the culprit, which I know with certainty, because drops happened to hit me as I stood there, wondering what the heck was going on. Unfortunately, I had to push the bed out of the way. No choice, really, being by myself this week and the dogs, duly unionized working dogs, won’t perform any heavy labor after 5 PM …
Another day, another adventure!
NOT IN A STRAIGHT LINE by Photolera Claudinha 
Lovely photo. Shoo the rain up here.
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