Thunder Storm

Lightening wakes me. This cell has already moved off to the SW, my electric comes in from the NE and it's raining hard. Probably won't lose power. I need water, so I get up, pour off the clean water from two five gallon buckets, into the five gallon kettle I keep on the cookstove, and clean the bottom of the buckets. There's always some crap at the bottom. From the coal-fired power plants along the Ohio. Put the buckets out on the back porch, under the drip edge. Four in the morning. The splash of cold rain, when I put the buckets out, wakes me completely. Nothing like it ever was. Haul in the sheep watering trough, there'll be water for a bath on Sunday. Get through Saturday first. Get to work early, let the carpet guys in, have my Irish breakfast, and probably be stuck at the museum all day because the fumes will drive the rest of the staff away, What's that Tom Rush song? "I feel like an engine, done lost it's driving wheel...". One more month and maybe I can take a few days off. This schedule is killing me. But I will be off work tomorrow, and I can take a bath, wash my hair, trim my toenails. I need to get some dandruff shampoo, the house is so dry, my skin is flaking like rust off the hull of an aging freighter. Pretty sure I'll find a morel later today or tomorrow. I might just wander in the woods tomorrow. It would be a boon if I could well and truly be lost. Find an overhang, where I could be out of the rain, retreat there, with a few nuts, some dried fruit, watch the rain drip into my future bath. It's a basic life, factored by time, light, "the rebirth of wonder". Water as a factor of change. Drawing closer to the edge. The entire carpet crew have shaved heads and tattoos, a sign of the times? I hold out for a rational approach, but the public spirit is beyond me. I did head out before sunrise, I did get to the museum before the carpet crew, Pegi did show up, and I escaped to the pub for a huge meat-lovers breakfast. The blood sausage was tasty, but even better was a white sausage that seemed to be oats and pork fat, also bangers, a rasher, two eggs, a scone, toast, baked beans, and a fried tomato. I was first pour on the Murphy's stout, so I got an extra glass of foam that had settled to a half-glass of beer by the time I had finished the meal. Hell of a way to start the day. The bonus was that the carpet crew left and TR showed up to man the ship, so I was free go. Stopped at Kroger for a few things, and booked it up the driveway in a lull between rainstorms. It's still stick trees on the ridge, but the blackberries are breaking bud and the poplars are hazing color. More or less officially spring. Sixty degrees today and the ground is heating up. Still just a little snow in the lee of logs on north-facing slopes, but it'll be gone before nightfall. I could have driven in, but I like the walk, the places I stop, to look at particular things. A certain fungus that I can't identify, a spring I hadn't noticed before, the way a set of jack-strewn trees form letters of the alphabet; things, in the natural world, that invite my attention. The duff is so thick it'll be difficult to find those first morels, but once I find the first one, I'll be able to see them. Deceive the eye. I think they mimic their surroundings so they can go to spore. If Phillip moves back here, we'd probably conspire together on another Beckett. I keep thinking I'm done with that. After a week like this last past, I'm ready to throw in the towel, retreat under my overhang, shoot anything that approaches. But by my calculation there is only one more awful week, and then I can start cleaning up. What I want to do is install a show, this jack-hammering, pouring concrete, hammer-drilling world is not to my liking. I'd rather be reading Mary's letters to her Mom.