I’m not one to complain about the weather.  Why would I?  What difference would it make?  It’s like when you ask someone…usually an older someone…and often a male someone…how he’s doing.  Sometimes he’ll answer, “Can’t complain.”, and a voice inside my head adds, “And it wouldn’t do any good if you did.”

Despite my physical aversion to colder weather, I never complained when spring took her time getting here.  I adapted instead.  I looked upon the situation as an excuse to purchase a few more sweaters with three-quarter-length sleeves.  I love sweaters with three-quarter-length sleeves.  They are some of my favorite things.  I especially love them if they are made from cashmere.

One of my friends was particularly irritated by people complaining about having to wear shoes in Atlanta in April.  As it happens, she was born in South Dakota.  I don’t think she’s lived in Georgia very long which would explain why she isn’t aware that, by April, most southerners are organizing their flip-flops according to outfit and/or occasion.  She took to Facebook, warning anyone bemoaning cooler temperatures that they had better not complain about sweating in July or she’d be there to remind them they’d gotten just what they’d asked for.  I’m guessing she hasn’t had to make good on that promise.  Not because she’s a particularly scary person. And, not because people finally realized that complaining about the heat doesn’t cool things off.

My friend hasn’t had to remind anyone how they wished for Atlanta heat because Atlanta hasn’t gotten hot yet…not really hot…not Atlanta hot.   Atlanta hasn’t gotten hot yet because during the month of June we received 9 1/2 inches of rain.  And, since that time, it’s rained every day in July.  So far this year we’ve accumulated almost 42 inches of rain which is more than we had for the entire year last year.

Sometime around the middle of June people began to complain.  Often, mine was the lone voice of dissent.  As the minder of a garden, I didn’t dare complain.  For years I watched my garden literally burn to the ground because of lack of rain.  There’s no way I would complain now…unless it is to bemoan missing melons.  I planted melons, you see, and something ate them.  I assumed the culprits to be rabbits until I spotted a pair of deer strolling casually through a neighbor’s yard.  They stopped, on their way down the street, to nibble on roses. 

Back then, in the middle of June, when only about 30 inches of rain had fallen, melons seemed like a good idea.  Thirty inches of rain is enough water to fill lots of watermelons.  Now though, some twelve inches later, I’ve begun to see that too much of a good thing really is too much.  A melon, you see, begins as a blossom.  A bee spies the blossom, and then he sees another one, and another one, and so on, and so on, and before you know it…mini-melons!  But bees don’t like rain.  Even in a light rain, a bee can’t leave its nest.  And a blossom without a bee is just a flower.

So much water in such a short time changes things.

The chicken pen is under water.  Seeing their ugly little toes disappear into the muck time after time as they rush to greet me reminded me of jungle rot, a podiatric malady soldiers in Vietnam often battled.   Last weekend I put down boards for them to walk on.   My chickens haven’t had as much as a sniffle in six years. Its bad enough they’ve had to learn to eat off a dinner plate.  I can’t take a chance with jungle rot.

My flowers are drowning.

My floors are muddy.

My dogs are smelly.

And, don’t even get me started on my hair.

I’m willing to concede that, aside from the health of my hens, most of my worries are negligible.

And then I read about the snakes.

It makes perfect sense when you think it through, which I never would have done if I hadn’t read that a local newscaster was hospitalized with a snake bite.  The sequence goes something like this:  many bugs don’t do rain which means things that eat bugs are forced to forage.  Foraging, as it happens, often requires travel outside of one’s usual hunting grounds and, thus, increased time outside of the nest.  Guess what eats the things that would eat bugs but are now having to hunt?

Snakes.

And, here’s another twist.  Just like my chickens who now spend ninety percent of their time inside the henhouse, snakes are tired of being wet.  Only they don’t have a house of their own, so guess what?  That’s right! They’re not picky!  They’ll use yours.  Right now, in Atlanta, the average wait time to have a pest control company out to your house to remove rain weary vermin is two weeks; two weeks of sharing your house with something that slithers.  No. Way.

My seventh grade teacher, Mrs. White, marched with Martin Luther King.  She played guitar and taught us folk songs and regaled us with stories from her past. One story involved a snake.  It’s the one I remember.

She’d gotten up in the middle of the night to pee.  For whatever reason, she didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom until after she’d done her business.  That’s when she saw the snake, coiled around and around and around the inside of the toilet bowl.  Having carried this image around in my head lo these many years, you can believe I toilet with the lights on, and only after careful inspection.  And there’s no loitering.  When I was a kid, my father’s bathroom always smelled like newsprint.  He obviously hadn’t heard the story.

Yesterday the rain held off until rush hour.  This is not unusual.  In fact, yesterday was the second time I’ve sat in traffic and watched marble-sized hail gather on my windshield wipers before being swooshed off to ping the car in the lane next to mine. 

By the time I arrived home, hail had given way to torrential rain and pounding thunder. My dogs don’t care for storms.  Usually they’re too nervous to eat.  But when it rains every day for weeks, something’s got to give.  Murphy, my boxer, followed me into the sunroom willingly enough but minutes later, after I’d gone back inside, I heard his super-sized claws hit the industrial strength screen we installed to protect the French door from just that type of abuse.  He gave a jerk of his head when I opened the door; our signal that he wanted company.  I sank into one of the rocking chairs I’d drug in off the patio during an earlier storm, and immediately wished I’d grabbed my Iphone.  For a few seconds, I considered going back in to get it.  I could play a word, check in on Facebook, or read an email. The sound of rain hitting the roof called me back.  I realized this was an opportunity to just be, and I don’t get enough of those.

I give the rocking chair a push and fold my arms over my lower abdomen, appreciating the softness of a little extra padding.  Looking around, I realize I never really see this room.  I’d forgotten, for example, about the funky wine bottles and vintage tin signs I sat on shelves next to the ceiling.  I’ve downsized from a plethora of plants to a table covered in cactuses and hung, above them, twinkle lights encased in aluminum stars separated by wind chimes. I’ve left my mark here. 

The sound of azalea branches scraping windowpanes turns my attention outside the room.  The wind is blowing.  The sky is unnaturally bright.  Maybe the sun, too, has had to adjust; taking any opportunity to shine.

I wonder how the chickens are faring.  It’s cooler now, after the hail.

When did my head tilt to one side…ever so slightly…the way it does just before a nap? 

When did my eyes close?

The rocking has slowed.

Sleep could come.

Would he be disappointed if I slept through dinner?