Nobody ever said I had good judgment.
The rain didn't amount to much in the end. I don't know how much fell overnight, but the yard was not very wet when I went out this morning. But then just after one o'clock this afternoon there was a sudden cloudburst, and everything got drenched. It didn't last very long— it was over in less than ten minutes— and that one cloudburst probably brought almost all the rain we've gotten from this storm. Birds and feral cats scurried for cover, the downspouts flowed noisily, and sudden puddles appeared, reflecting the blustery sky. Half an hour later it was all sunlight, and a landscape of grass and shrubs and trees bejeweled with bright drops of water.
No traces of rain fell during my shopping trip. When I got home I decided to spoil my dinner by eating a couple of those cheap donuts. They won't stay fresh for long. In a couple of days they'll be stale, with watery spots on them. I'm sure the nephew will be glad to come around and wolf at least half of them down before it comes to that. And if he's eating cheap donuts he can't be eating my more expensive foods. Or at least he'll eat less of them. That means they were a good investment after all.
Sunday Verse
Waitressing in the Room With a Thousand Moons
by Matthea Harvey
Is difficult at best. The moons desperately want to circle
something, so when a dish comes out, they dive-bomb it, bump
into each other and a dusting of moon-rock falls into the food.
We call that Parmesan. They know the plate won't be a planet.
We've been here for centuries and not once has a planet come in.
I guess they do it just-in-case. Having lived most of their
lives too close to everything, their sense of perspective is
poor. A plate of dumplings can start to look like a solar
system. Lately the moons seem to be losing hope. They're just
going through the motions and their waning is way more
convincing than their waxing. They no longer swarm around each
swirl of steam. A red smear signals Ketchup, not Mars. The food
is not very good, but people keep coming. Some come with nets to
sieve the sky for the tiniest butterfly-sized moons. Security is
good, though—no moon has ever been smuggled out. And most of the
diners look up the whole time, which makes it easy to get their
attention when we recite the specials. We, the waitstaff, are
waiting for the day when we come into the restaurant and find
the moons circling another moon. Below them, we endlessly orbit
the tables. Our leader has left us too.
