Shluuuup!

That sound you hear is me being sucked into signing up for a month's trial membership in Audible.com.  I saw a commercial this morning (when I was trying to wake up enough to turn on the Wii) saying that you could get 2 free books this month instead of just one.  2 FREE books!  I like free.  I like books.  (It's a set.)  Mostly I borrow books/audiobooks/Kindle books from the library, which is also free, but I don't get to keep the library books.  Now I have the awful decision of picking 2 books that I want to read and will also want to keep.  Too bad I can't just keep swapping them back to Audible.com once I've read them and withdraw another one, but then that'd make them essentially a library and I don't think that's what they had in mind when they started their little endeavor.  I was hoping that I could double-dip because they've also got a 3-month, $7.49/month trial going on too.  Maybe I can do that one next month?  I'll pay attention.  Turns out Audible is a part of Amazon so my Kindle Fire already is ready to receive books from them; I don't have to download anything.  Don't have to poke and prod at the screen's non-buttons (I made my Kindle's "keys" make a typewriter sound to make them friendlier), read FAQs and forum posts trying to figure out how to make this stuff work.  My tech savvy-tude only goes so far and then I need to find a kid.  I thought I was still dreaming when I woke up this morning.  It was raining.  Raindrops were pecking on the window over my head.  Actual water was falling from the sky and soaking into the parched ground.  Not a lot of it, no, but some.  Enough that I could take my Photo A Day picture early even though the theme today is "best part of your day."  See?  Look, raindrops in the birdbath.  Rain.  I wanted to immortalize it, record it, capture it just in case it continues to be scarce.  At least the lawnmower's getting the summer off.  No grass is growing under my feet.  Really.  Brown and crisp over here.  Seriously.

July 3--Camille Pissaro, Haystacks, Morning, Eragny.  The sun was so strong that Jeanne was sure she could hear the light move across the dry grass at the edge of the orchard.  She lay in the cool shade listening to the bees that loved the rotting windfalls and the cicadas screaming their love songs in the summer heat.  No one knew where she was.  Luther and the twins had ridden off to go fishing and Mama was sitting in the rocker in her bedroom reading and rocking.  She could hear Papa and Saul out in the field hoeing weeds, but she might as well have been on another planet in her cool, dim haven.  That is why she was the only one to hear the scuff of heavy boots on the gravel drive.  She was the only one to see the shambling man walk out of the woods and stand to look at the house before turning up the driveway toward the back door.

Um, not good.  Not good at all.  I've got a bunch of things I want to do today, errands mostly (I already chased a few germs out of the bathroom) so I'd better go fuel up and get on it.  Maybe I'll drag Durwood along with me and we can try out the new roundabout where Taylor St. crosses West Mason.  Maybe I'll even go around twice, like a carnival ride.  Woohoo, the exciting life of the over-60 set.  We live on the edge.  Toodle-oo.
--Barbara