RAIN RAIN GO AWAY

This column is being written on the Friday before you
will be reading it. I hope by then the rain will be over
at last.
As of right now it has been raining every day for a
week, and it’s really getting on my nerves. And everyone
else’s nerves as well. Any more precipitation
and I’ll be asking Siri how big a cubit is. (Siri says a
cubit is approximately the distance from the elbow to
the fingertips. Whose elbow and fingertips affects the
final measurement. How did Noah manage without a
smart phone?)
I can’t help feeling guilty for complaining about all
our recent rains when folks in the Carolinas and surrounding
areas are being inundated by Hurricane
Florence. It’s unpleasantly similar to our experiences
here last year when Hurricane Harvey visited the
Houston-Galveston area. As I’m writing this column,
Florence has made landfall and is pounding the Carolina
shores.
What’s especially unnerving about our latest
weather is that Hurricane Florence did not arrive
alone. At about the same time Florence was threatening
the eastern coast of the United States, several
other storm systems were forming in the Atlantic.
One is currently predicted to go out to sea; another is
expected to come in somewhere south of Cuba and
Puerto Rico. There’s also a disturbance in the
Gulf of Mexico. It’s getting way too busy this year.
And let’s not forget that hurricane steaming its
way across the Pacific toward Hawaii. That same
state dodged another storm just a few weeks
ago. Can we say deja vu?
And then there is the mosquito invasion.
They’re everywhere. They pounce on us when
we go outside. They’re zero in on us as we get
into our vehicles. They swarm us – their helpless
victims – as we go about our errands. It’s
like a zombie apocalypse, only with insects. And
the mosquito control folks can only do so much,
thanks to the recent rainstorms.
At times like this, Las Vegas looks more and
more attractive to me. It rarely has any rain, mosquitoes,
and definitely no hurricanes. And all
those casinos! It’s my idea of paradise. But it’s
just not Texas.
So I’ll have to stock up on umbrellas and mosquito
spray for now and continue to hope that the
Lone Star state will eventually make casinos legal
here. But that’s about as likely as getting an “Ike
Dike” built . . .