It was the usual morning routine: race to throw on some clothes to take her out for her first walk. And, as usual, as soon as they’d gotten a couple of hundred feet from the front door it started to rain – again. It was always raining. Even if the sun was shining when they left the apartment it would start to rain a few minutes later.
Another day in paradise – another day in Hell!
Morning routines accomplished he sat down at his desk to check his e-mail and do some work, but the heat, humidity and rain persisted in his brain, overtaking his mind to the point that he couldn’t think of anything else.
The calendar said that it was fall, but the thermometer seemed to have neglected to notice. High eighties, the weather forecast had predicted. Unseasonably hot. Didn’t anyone ever tell the seasons that there are supposed to be variations in temperature, he wondered?
The day’s To Do list was filled with errands, but would he get through it without regularly trying to wait out the torrential rain that happened either while he was in a store, forcing him to wait inside, or as he was driving to the next location, forcing him to wait in his car in the hope that it would stop long enough to race inside without getting drenched – again.
Another day in paradise – another day in Hell!
Three sets of soaking clothes later he sat at his desk again. He’d given up on the errands and he’d given up on getting any work done.
He turned on the television, but the pundits on the cable news channel were regurgitating the same punditizing they’d regurgitated in their never-ending quest to fill up the twenty-four hours a day the channel broadcast. At least they got paid for platitudes, ideology and dogma rehashed and dissected ad nauseam.
And he’d seen the murder mysteries run and re-run to the point that he could quote the dialogue verbatim. That, plus the deterioration of the other channels into a miasma of the sophomoric or the pandering to the intellectual level of a flea, of what appeared to him to be the viewing public, sent his hand reaching for the off button on the remote.
Too hot and humid to read.
His dog asked to go out again. He looked out the window – it wasn’t raining. Maybe, he hoped, they could get through a walk without the rain starting again before they got home. He doubted it, but the look in his dog’s eyes forced his decision.
Still dry on their return, an event he almost felt warranted recording for posterity, he returned to his desk.
He pulled over a pad, picked up a pencil and started to write –
Another day in paradise...