The air felt stagnant and thick as I walked up to the road. The sky wasn't gray or pink or blue, just a weird mixture of the three. No hope of rain, no beautiful sunrise to make up for it, and not a whisper of a breeze.
The puppies bounced beside me, eager for our walk, but in my head I heard, What a blah morning.
I immediately stopped that thought in its tracks, though, firing back...
I'm breathing. I'm walking. It's a beautiful morning!
It's been slow, hard work, but I'm finally learning to burst those melancholy balloons before they take flight.
Sure, there was that haze over everything. Then, when the neighbor boy drove past, the road dust hung in the air, frozen in place (not literally 'frozen' of course - it was probably pushing 90 degrees already, at 7:30am.)
The dirt fog didn't stop Belle and Max from playing, though. They saw the beauty of the new day. Max ran at full gallop... TWICE! Usually once is all he has in him, if even that much get-up-n-go.
I'm not sure what, if anything, he was chasing. He just ran for the joy and ability of running, I think. Lounging in the cool of the laundry room during the heat of the day must be agreeing with him.
Belle ran, too, a dog cyclone whooshing round and round and round us, until finally diving into Max who promptly bit her neck.
Not hard, of course. It's their ritual. A dog thing.
Back home, I tipped a little water from their drinking bucket into the pie plate/bird bath we keep on a stump near the birdfeeder, watered my bougainvillea, whose blossoms have become like fuschia jerky, dried on the stem, and then dumped the rest of the water on our poor loquat tree, all golden and green and drooping.
It's a direct descendent of one that grew in front of our home in La Porte. I believe that one has died, as well as the one in my parents' yard, an offspring of the original and daddy to ours.
I hope the baby makes it, the last in its line.
I refilled the bucket then filled a watering can and lugged them both up the walkway to appease my poor crape myrtles, whose buds finally gave up trying to open. They sit on the boughs like pieces of stale pink popcorn.
Beside them, my miniature rose bush is dying. It had been hanging on valiantly, but I'm afraid the guys didn't notice it when I was gone last week and neglected to water it. My fault. How would they know? It doesn't look like a rosebush right now.
Especially right now.
Finally, I took the empty containers back down to the house, refilled the bucket (again!) for the dogs (and the birds and the squirrels) and, stepping back into my air-conditioned refuge, glanced at the clock and wondered where the heck my morning went...
Please, sir, could we have some rain?
