I Like To Hear the Rain Come Down

It’s a beautiful day.

I came home early, in pain, from work. A migraine. The “perfect storm” of hormones and changing barometric pressure. As soon as I walked in the house, the smell of a “cat house” assailed me. We have two cats, both fixed, but they can make the whole house smell like we’ve got an entire litter using anywhere and everywhere in the house as their own private litter box.

Then I saw the corrected adjustment for a bill that I paid over the weekend. I had thought the corrected bill and had already arrived and that that’s what I had paid. But no, I somehow didn’t give it thought when I paid it and only just realized that I’d paid the original full amount, rather than what I should have paid.

And M said he has an interview on Monday. Woo, good news! But it’s “an insurance job.” Well, I know how that will go, but at least he has an interview. But still, I rained on his parade. I couldn’t help myself, apparently.

He asked why I hadn’t asked him about the bill over the weekend, and I said, basically, I screwed up. I assumed that the bills we had in our bill holder, the one specially meant to hold our bills in the right slot so we’ll be sure to pay them on time, had our old bill instead of the new one we had received. Silly me.

So I was tetchy. Pissy. Angry.

Oops.

M walked into another room, I thought to use the restroom, but never came back. So I put on my shoes and went out to the porch to sit in the rain. I realized I had overreacted when I was doing it. My hormones overpowered me. Despite what my best friend D used to tell me, I DON’T give my hormones too much credit. I only wish I did. They don’t get like this all the time, but every once in a while, they go crazy. Smells are sharpened, exaggerated. I can’t focus on anything—including thoughts—long enough to see them through to completion. Any little interruption that comes along aggravates me, gets under my skin.

So I overreacted. And I got pissed about overreacting. So I sat, with my hooded sweatshirt on, on a patio chair on the porch, listening to the rain pitter-pat gently on the grass, through the leaves of the trees, onto the pavement of the porch, the sidewalk, the driveway, soothing me to calmness. The sound of the rain is gentle, comforting, calming. I watch a squirrel run partway up a tree trunk across the road. The mist has settled in between the trees, the moisture combining with the semidarkness under the trees to blur the lines of everything, the squirrel and the edge of the tree trunk becoming less distinct the longer I watch.

I turn my head up to the sky and let the drops caress my closed eyelids, massage the tension from them even as they twitch from the sudden, light plunks. I inhale the cool, damp air, rich with the scent of freshly cut grass and heavy with relaxation. As the cars slosh by on the highway, makes me think that the earth is breathing, the kiss of the cars’ tires on the pavement acting as the slight aspiration of the earth’s sigh, the spray rising behind the cars like the moisture that freezes in the air after you exhale on a very cold day.

The rain is starting to soak through the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I sigh. Truly, it is a beautiful day. These days are rare; the chance to enjoy them, even rarer. The slow fall of this rain, its slow, steady fall, this air temperature, the green of all the fresh leaves and new grass, the mist, the chitter of birds in the tree branches, all flow together, intertwine gently, like lovers reuniting after weeks apart, holding one another gently, caressing one another in reverence.

Sighing slightly with the earth, I wander back inside, my anger cooled for the moment, my hormones held at bay.

But there, waiting, is the sound of a crazy bird that has spent all day flying into one of our windows. Into the same spot, over and over again, making a huge smudge on the window. Thunk. Thunk…..Thunk…Thunk. No idea why, just hurting itself over and over again. Mike said maybe the bird that ran into the window the other day was a female and scattered pheromones on the window and this is a male trying to get to her. A possibly good theory, certainly worth consideration. Nope. Even window cleaner on the spot didn’t make it stop for more than 5…thunk…minutes. The cats yell at it. Thunk. The cats moan at it, hungry, excited. Thunk. Thunk. … Thunk. I stare at it. Thunk. Crazy—Thunk!—bird. Thunk. Son of a bitch. Thunk.

Mike picked up George from his napping position in a dining room chair and carried him to the bird’s window. The bird flew away to watch from the tree stump at the west end of the house. It values its life enough to stay away from a human and a cat, apparently. But it has no fear of a window that obstinately holds its ground against the bird’s crazed—but somehow mellow—attacks. Crazy freaking animals we have around here. Seriously, first drag-racing mice, and now a suicidal bird? The darker side of me wants to laugh and wonder where the rest of his compatriots are…maybe something similar was Hitchcock’s inspiration. Crazy effing bird.

15 Minutes Later…

The bird has stopped.

For now.