Perpetual Ruminations

Monday

Another long day coming to an end. Not just long but tiring, too. I worked from five this morning until two this afternoon. Another pretty busy day, but nothing like it was on the weekend. It started out slow, a typical weekday morning, but it started to get busy around eight and stayed pretty steady up until around noon, when the weather turned nasty. It was still very slow when I left, but the weather was getting better, so it may have picked up some.

Not a lot, if the guards time-clock readings are any indication, however. Rhonda worked after me, and another guard provided double coverage. With it so slow, I clocked out a little early, and then talked to Rhonda and the other guard. I let them know that if it stayed real slow, Rhonda would stay on, since she is closing, and the other guard could clock out and go home early. If he didn't want to lose any hours, he could come back in and close up so Rhonda could leave a little early, but that was up to them, and especially up to him. I seen by the readouts that he left around three this afternoon, so it must have stayed slow.

I also see that Rhonda is still clocked in, and it's after nine. The store closes at ten tonight, so I assume that she is staying to close and the other guard did not want to come back in tonight. Not that I blame him, I really wouldn't want to come in again, either. Of course, it's a fifty mile round trip for me, he lives about a mile away. Even so, he probably didn't feel like going home for the afternoon and then getting dressed and coming back for an hour or two.

On top of just not wanting to come back in, the weather my be worse there than here, too. It was bad this afternoon, from about eleven thirty to one thirty. It started getting dark, and there was some bright lightning off to the west. Then the rain hit, and it came down heavy. Not long after the rain hit, the lightning and thunder moved in, then the wind. We had guests still in the yard, and a few showed up during the storm.

Since I was going to be done at two, I donned the raincoat and took care of the yard traffic, letting the other guard stay inside and dry. It was like being in a hurricane, the wind was so strong I could barely stand in place, and even with the raincoat on, the water blasted through the front snaps, into the hood, and up the sleeves. anything under the protection of the coat was instantly soaked, and I had plenty of wet areas were water got past the protection of the raincoat. I couldn't keep the hood up, and even with it up for the short time it was, it didn't do any good. The rain pelted my face and blew into the hood, running down my neck and shoulders.

It's kind of funny, the people in the yard  could have stayed under the warehouse roof and dry, waiting for the worst to pass. Instead they needed to get loaded and leave in the worst part of the storm. Of course, they didn't get out of the vehicle, but stayed dry inside. The yard people had some shelter, loading them in the warehouse, but for me, I was right out in the open checking the load. Of course, they had everything covered with tarps and tied down, making it even more difficult for me to look, identify, and count the items, but that's my job and that's what I did.

We do have a roof over the area, but do you think anyone would stop with the loaded area under any shelter? No, they park so they are in the shelter but the trailer is out in the weather. Of course, it didn't make any difference today, the rain was coming in sideways, and there was no shelter except inside. I don't know for sure, I have no means of measuring the speed, but for the wind to push me around the way it did, and to move items around the yard the way it did, I would have to say the winds were in excess of sixty miles an hour with gusts even higher.

The scanners we use are pretty resilient to-water, but they didn't stand up to the conditions today. I think the wind was the problem, it drove the rain and wetness into every little opening. I had mine freeze up in about a minute and then took the other one, logged into it, and tried to keep in under the raincoat as much as possible, but it also quit working in a couple of minutes. I ended up having to keep the guests paperwork and enter the information on that, as best as I could. I checked the load first, then enetered the information on the paperwork, had the guest sign it and then got it inside the guardhouse. In the few minutes this took the paper was soaked, and I had to hang it from the clipboard to let it dry out before I could drop it in the safety box.

On the way home, the country side looked like a whole different land, standing water in the ditches and all the low areas, yards flooded, and streams and standing water in the fields. It was still plenty wet from the last rain we had, now there is even more standing water, and my sump pump is running almost steady. We are suppose to get more thunderstorms, some severe later tonight, and there is a good chance of more thunderstorms and heavy rain through the rest of the week.

I was planning on mowing the grass tomorrow, but now it's going to be too wet. If the weather cooperates, I may be able to get most of it cut, but about one third is under standing water. If, however, we get anymore rain, the whole yard will be too wet to cut, and it's already about six inches tall. It's been one week, and it should have been cut about three days ago. But, it was raining and too wet then, too. Saturday was pretty nice, but after twelve hours at work, I just didn't have the gumption to do much of anything. Yesterday, was pretty nice, but again, I was beat and just could not motivate myself to do much of anything.

I knew this was going to happen, too. A while back, it got unseasonably warm, lots of sunshine, and it started to get pretty dry. Everyone was complaining we needed rain, and now we have it. It always seems to happen like this -- everyone complains we need rain and we get it. The problem is, it doesn't stop, and now they are all complaining it's too wet. Of course, if they keep it up, we may end up going from flooded to a drought, but that's how it is. Of course, I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the people around here just can't be happy with the weather, no matter what it is.

No matter what the weather does, they complain and gripe about it. A handful of years back, we had a perfect spring, early and nice. The hay was ready for a first cutting by early May, and they crops could have been planted in April, early April. Then we had a nice summer; it was hot, very hot, but we got light rains two or three nights a week. It didn't get wet, and a lot of the standing water was finally drying up. Roads, signs, and fences began to appear in slews that had been flooded for over twenty years. The crops were doing great, and everyone was complaining it was too hot, the season had come too soon, and we would have an early winter.

But it wasn't too dry, the crops grew fast and good. We had a long summer, then went into a very mild fall. Harvest came early, and again, everyone complained. They didn't get any silage up, it was too dry. Of course, these same people did not harvest by the state of the crop, they went by the date on the calendar. Even so, we had a record year, with one of the best harvest ever recorded, and still they griped and wined because they had to harvest too soon, and it was too dry, and anything else they could find to wine about. We didn't have much of a winter that year, either. We did get a little snow in November, about mid-month, but it was gone by the end of the month and we had no snow for Christmas. In fact, I have pictures of me holding the thermometer in January, reading in the fifties.

We had an early spring again, and then a nice start to summer. But, the flooded areas were almost dried up, everyone was screaming for rain, and cursing because they thought we would have another year like the one before. Why? It was a record year, and they had record harvests, isn't that a good thing? Well, it didn't matter, they soon got what they wanted. By mid July it started to rain and it rained and rained. We had one road left into town, and it had a stretch a good ten feet wide under water. It was about four inches deep, and flowing slowly, but for a while it looked like that road may also wash out.

We still have not recovered from the flooding that year and some roads are still under water. Even so, if it doesn't rain for a couple of weeks, and it dries out enough to make dust when someone drives on a gravel road, they start screaming we need rain. And we get it, lots and lot's of it. And, I suspect we will keep getting it for a while, since they are all finally screaming it's too wet. But, in time their screaming for it to dry up will result in just that, a big, long dry period. I don't mind wet or dry, I make the most out if each day the Lord grants me. I prefer dry, there are less bugs, and with all the standing water, we have swarms of bugs, especially mosquitoes.

I even heard on the radio, we have one of the highest rates of West Nile here, in the state, and our state is one of the highest in the nation. Of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out it's because there is standing water everywhere. Not just standing water, but slimy, stagnant, and stinking water. Perfect breeding for mosquitoes, and like I said we have plenty. I suspect it will be a very bad year for them, and every other type of bug that likes it wet. I guess we will stock up on repellents and make sure we have our insect netting on when we ride our bikes this summer.