Rain on the Roof

More of painting the house.

We're borrowing a bit of scaffolding from another family we're friends with (through theater and music), and the kid is doing an awesome job with the first west side (the way our house is built, we kind of have two north sides and two west sides). I've been spending the day on a segment under the deck stairs, which makes me happy because no matter how much I spill, it really doesn't matter.

I have this problem in many situations: The spirit is willing, but the body is klutzy. I love to help, as long as you can put me at some task that can't really be messed up. Usually, these are boring, so nobody else wants to do them. I'm generally so happy to be able to help that it doesn't matter to me. Generally.

Finish that up shortly after lunch, ladder up to the roof. Dad's discussing with me what does and doesn't need to be done up here, I'm running tools back and forth. On one trip, I lose a step and slide down the ladder - not the whole way down, but as I'm already a little nervous around ladders, I feel justified in dryly declaring, "Well, that was exciting."

Dad, who's up on the roof, probably couldn't see it, but you can hear every step on the extension ladders (we have two), and most likely had some other reaction to hearing something go wrong on my way down. "No more exciting, please." Made me laugh.

Later, I'm scraping the old stuff off part of the fascia, kind of humming to myself ("...my lover in the grocery store, and her eyes flew open wiiiide..."). The sky's been kind of spitting now and again since I got home that morning, but now it expresses a little more interest. Quick skip over the roof - I have a hidey spot I like up here from the last time we were doing anything on the roof.

Just over my front door, there's...I guess you could call it a double-overhang. It's an acute angle, but it's wide enough for me to hide out. The shingles are warm under my back, my hair's tucked up under my hat, and I just listen.

Smell my sweat mixing with the body splash I like, smell the rain on the grass and trees, and the unique scent of the shingles. Wrinkle my nose a little at the shingle-scent mixing with the rain - it's like something wet is burning. Listen to the rain hitting leaves, a brief chuckle of thunder, birds complaining or rejoicing about their feathers being soaked, the warble of water running down the gutter over my head that sounds like a nest of fledglings. Watch the colors - it's strange how, when it first starts raining, all the colors get brighter, like it's washing the dust off the world. This makes a little bit of sense in August, but this is May - we're hardly into dust season yet. And then things blur at a distance, and everything seems to be done in overtones of rich, living green. The maple leaves are at first brightening up to this change, but after about twenty minutes hang down in a dejected statement of, "Enough already!"

Smile, and roll back to just listen. Often, I love being out in the rain, but today I'm the kitty, and I was happy in the sun. I'm quite content to stay dry here, and use my other senses to check out the weather.

Incidentally, wet cat is just as bad, if not worse than, wet dog. It just gets far less publicity for some reason.

At some point the wind changes. Rogue makes fun of me for my catlike poses, but even when I do notice that I'm doing them, it's after the fact. In this case, I laugh at myself when I realize how I've drawn away from the rain bouncing off the roof into my dry space. Pull back, almost hiss, and if I could, I'd lay my ears back. I was warm!

Bubbles begin to team up on the small river running down my street. The warbling in the gutter is a rather riotous melody at this point, and a disgruntled grackle sits on the peak of the roof, glaring at me with some unlucky arthropod in his bill. My locust tree's been coming into leaf late, but it's having a fine time in this shower. You can't see the rain falling on the street, but you can see where it bounces off, and to me it looks like nothing so much as a huge party of very tiny beings celebrating at a concert.

The wet (and a wayward wasp) invade further into my space, and I resolve that the next point where it lets up (because of course it's not a steady rain - sometimes it exhales and relaxes a bit), I'm skipping back over the peak and heading down the ladder.

It comes a few minutes later, but as soon as I've made it to the ladder, the rain seems to realize that it has a new target. I must say, I am not fond of climbing ladders, up or down, when they're wet. Come in, shake my hair out from under my hat. Dad says that we'll have to wait an hour after it lets up to get back to painting. Yippee for me - I have other projects I want to get done.

But the rain's still pattering away to itself, experimenting with ringing on the ladder and scaffolding. I like drenching rains better for walking in, but happy rains are good in their own way.