I just watched our weather station record our rainfall since midnight to be 2.00 inches! As I type it’s only 7:50 a.m. Wow. The rain is coming down in a solid sheet. I heard it before I got up and thought that it might be the wind in the trees because the noise was so constant. Nope; it was rain. I asked for this, I wanted it to rain. I’m a rainy day lover, which of course we had about once or twice per year back in Colorado. But I’m starting to think, okay, enough is enough already! We had a few patches yesterday when it wasn’t raining and even managed to go for a swim last night. We noticed that we’re going to have to let water out of the pool because the water level is too high for the automatic skimmers to work properly. Good grief!

Seems like a good day to get my painting project started, or read a good book. I’ll just say my Enya mantra throughout the day and then I’ll feel better about it: let the rain fall down / everywhere around you / give into it now / let the day surround you.

To brighten the day, here is a photo of my day lilies in full bloom poolside that I took yesterday. Note the profusion of ferns!! Oh, and by the way, we’re up to 2.13 inches [of rain] at 8:27 a.m.

It was time to get up. The dogs were certainly ready, bounding around barking and eagerly anticipating their breakfast kibble. Okay, okay, I’ll get up. I need to pee [natch!] so I head to the bathroom and sit down on the toilet. WHOA, wait a minute, the room is moving…noooo...the mirror panel is coming off the wall towards me in what seems like slow-motion…CRASH!!!!!!!!!!! It hits the side of the jacuzzi tub and shatters before I even have time to think about moving out of the way. AHHHHHHHHHH! I scream, RICK!!! Of course he heard the noise, why was I yelling? I just sat there dumbfounded and quite naked among glass shards of all shapes and sizes thinking what the heck just happened?? Very, very weird. Not a piece of glass touched me which is amazing in itself when you look at the photo below. I did, however, have my slippers on so I could make my way out of the bathroom without cutting my feet.

By way of explanation, our jacuzzi tub is surrounded by glass mirrors on three sides. We’ve gotten used to it now, but at first it was way more than we needed or wanted to see of ourselves, especially when using the toilet. You’re getting my drift I think. We had entertained the idea of taking them down but thought that would really be a big project, and anyway just how do you go about removing large panels of glass? We now need to do something, but what? Remove the rest of the panels? Leave the rest of the panels and just paint the middle one that is now bereft of glass? Paint a mural?

I’m just glad it happened when it did. Imagine taking a bath and having it come down on our heads! Look at the huge shard that is left hanging over the tub in the photo below! Or the dogs! They love to sleep in the bathroom on the cool tile floor at night. It missed them by minutes! What made it come down just then? The barking of the dogs? The floor shaking a bit as 7 hungry dogs were bounding around the bedroom? Me sitting down on the toilet? [hey, wait a minute, I’m not THAT heavy!] or maybe the house settling just a tad after all the rain we’ve had over the past couple of days? We’ll never know. Not everyone can say they had such a SMASHING start to their day. Suggestions on what to do with the empty space would be greatly appreciated.

Hey, I bet you guys didn’t know that our house came complete with our own private sauna, did you? You know by now that we have a pool, but this is something new. All we have to do is step out onto our deck and VOILA! instant sauna! For those of you who are still wondering what the heck we are talking about, picture this. It’s raining. The temperature is 69.3. The humidity is 98%. The dew point is 68.7. Need we say more? I don’t need to mention here that we have the air conditioning on. Now I know the true meaning of the “conditioning” of that particular phrase. Air conditioning helps when trying to breathe liquid air. Good night! [My skin is lovin’this!]

Yeah, well, I know it’s a weird title, but it’s the truth. Except that we don’t have a belfry, at least not technically. We do have a protrusion of the attic that you could hang a bell in…but never mind, that is totally beside the point, but if you were going to get picky on me I wanted to be ready with an explanation.

Tonight we took a dusk-time swim. Not our first of the day, but the most memorable. This morning when we awoke it had been raining and the sky was gray [isn’t that a line from California Dreamin’? something about “and the sky was gray”], ENOUGH LYNNE, get on with the main story! Okay, sorry. In our minds [coming from Colorado], if the sky is gray it must be cold. Not so in NJ. It’s something we have yet to get used to. I see gray skies and I want to bundle up in jeans and two layers of tops, but instead what I really need to dress in is shorts and and a t-shirt.

When I took my morning swim it wasn’t quite raining, maybe a very fine drizzle. Maybe not even that. It was difficult to tell. It sounded like it was raining but I think it was only the trees rustling in the slight breeze and shedding the excess moisture from their leaves. A very soothing sound. The humidity nearly matched the temperature, but the water in the pool was perfect.

Tonight, after dinner, we took another dip in the pool. We had the cover off for the whole day as the robot cleaned the pool throughout the day, and as a result the temperature of the water had dropped by about 2 degrees. Rick was already in the water when I arrived on the scene and it felt cold to me. Nevertheless, I didn’t waste much time in joining him in a few laps. We soon noticed the firefly activity in the grass and woods nearby the pool. It was like magic. I can’t seem to get over it. As I was doing the backstroke across the length of the pool, a bat flew overhead. Then Rick saw another one. The bats and the fireflies seemed to be competing for our attention, and I had to get out of the pool to watch the show. So much better than a TV show.

By the way, we had a little over a half inch of rain today.

There are three versions of the Bears’ slide show available, all in Apple Quicktime format. If you don’t have Quicktime on your computer you can download it from here.

The small version is 10MB in size.

The medium version is 15MB.

The largest version is 48MB, so it is a whopper, but has the best detail.

Have fun!