The haboob and the blackout


        Yesterday evening another giant wall of dust hit the city. The trees bent and broke, and the wind was dangerous and intense. It howled for forty minutes and just as we sat down for dinner, the lights went out. Of course that meant no a/c as well, which worried me, the wind was still a hot wind (like a hair dryer on the highest setting). Then as we fumbled through dinner by candlelight we noticed it was misting rain. This changes things, maybe it will cool down.

     We gathered our dog and Naomi and decided to take a walk. The wind was there but not bad and it was just a drizzle. Debris was everywhere, and trees and branches were down all around us. Emergency vehicles raced past us. And the misting rain and the breeze was fantastic. As we approached the supermarket the rain began to pour, so we cut across the lot and noticed the metal corrals that hold the grocery carts were flipped over and tossed to the side by the wind. We approached the covered area in front of the Safeway where a group of supermarket workers mouthed and gestured "We're closed" at us through the glass doors. We wandered past them shrugging and pointing to the roof. From here we walked the outdoor mall under the roof till we had to run back home in the pouring rain. It was the best dog walk we'd had all summer.


After a few hours of playing cards and then dominoes by candle light, Naomi offered to read us some of her book (Mike and I couldn't see well enough to read, but she was all for trying). She was reading "The Secret Garden", a book she'd found in her room in Ireland a few weeks ago and started there. I remembered last year when Phoebe worked on the musical, that it was full of ghosts, so I thought it'd be perfect! Alas the book has very few ghosts. Naomi said it was all in the beginning when everyone died of cholera. Oh well.

Today when I left to teach art camp I noticed a clothes hanger high up in a tree ..... That was some storm.

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