2022 Wednesday — Clouds

At 7:00 this evening I was in our newly improved backyard with our pups Chloe and Mitzi. They absolutely love the new stretch of lawn; they could care less that it is artificial turf (see yesterday's blip).

I looked over the back fence at the beautiful cloud decorated sky and did what has become second nature to me -- pulled my phone from my pocket and captured the moment. In Southern California we rarely have humidity or lightning and thunder, but in the next 2 hours after this photo was taken, it sprinkled rain and then it poured and the thunder was loud enough that little Chloe sat next to me and growled at the loud ka-booms. Mitzi has lost most of her hearing; she didn't even know it was thundering.

The rain was perfect for washing away the dust of the drought season that we've been experiencing. My photo reveals the dusty dirt horse trail across the street behind our house. The street is the invisible borderline between our city and Norco, the city that is north of ours which celebrates being rural and refers to itself as the “horse capital of the world,” which is quite obviously a huge exaggeration.

I've had the privilege of looking over that fence into Norco for the majority of my life. My parents moved us into this home in May of 1963 when I was 13 years old. Two years later I left this residence to marry Mr. Fun. Eighteen months later my parents moved to Central California and we moved into this house. Then 4-years later we assumed the loan and we paid them their equity and the house has been ours all these years.

This has been a day of looking back through sections of our history. Each time we are here in SoCal, my goal is to decrease our saved clutter. We did that in a big way when we moved back into this house in May of 2018. We had lived a mile and a half away from here in a lovely large home from 1994-2018. We needed to downsize; moving back was a good, good solution.

Today I opened another plastic tub of saved clutter not knowing what the contents would present. It was filled with dozens and dozens of letters and greeting cards circa 2001/2002 when Mr. Fun was leaving a position he'd enjoyed for 22+ years. It was an extremely emotional time in our lives. When I took the lid off the tub, the cloud of emotion was staggering. I sorted pieces into piles of "shred," "possibly shred," and "Save." Awhile later as I shred a big, big pile, the feeling of relief and satisfaction was enormous. I could write for hours about this -- not now, but I do believe that writing is a way of coming to grips with unresolved feelings.

The lovely, lovely rain this evening washed away the dust of many things. I thank God for His gift of rain.

From "the words and paragraphs factory"
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too

P.S. Soon we'll pack our pony named “Honda” and journey back to our home on California's Central Coast where we'll continue to enjoy retirement and to heal as we enjoy the song of the waves, the tickle of the wind, and the lovely wonder of the ocean and its surroundings.