Ominous, ominous.

There are two times of year when rain is unwelcomed: graduation party season, when the moisture huddles everyone inside and creates a humid mass of eighteen-year olds and their parents; and roofing season, when we pull out giant blue tarps and rubber and things get taken out, put away, taken out, in an ebb and flow in a reign of angst. Both are concurrently in progress.

Mothers sob as the weather brings an uncontrolled scenario to an otherwise logistically sound event.

Contractors squint through the drenching rain as tools and electrical cords are woven and unwoven. Others stash the air compressor in dry places. All of this sounds like something Garrison Keillor would write about.

Something, though I make this up, more or less about “old grand graduation parties and people you see, marking the Lutheran time (after church of course) and coffee, of course coffee, a weak coffee, served by the community of parents who still love you, who raised you," and onwards into discussion of the Village People and the tribes of Africa.

Together Garrison and I eat famous pastries and quiche cups prepared days ahead of schedule, admiring their texture under tooth and pontificating of the forthcoming deluge of leftovers, ruling the fridges for weeks. Mold grows on the delicacies and younger sisters cry at their mothers, force feeding them old gyros that their brothers’ acquaintances could not consume in the day’s circuit of keeping up appearances.

The contractor watches the skies and dark clouds approach.

Ominous, ominous.

So today we make no effort to pack and unpack, set-up and take down. A steady rain falls and we clean the garage, tidy up, write, think, stay dry.