Rain, rain, come and play...

(I will tell you all about bowling, planets, and Costco, but it will be so much better with pictures. Which I don't have yet, since my sister took them and then left to go back to Colorado. But I will get them and then tell the tale.)

Growing up in Las Vegas, blazing hot weather was the norm. As a child, I even played outside in the summertime--sometimes with bare feet! I'm still not sure how that worked. I didn't like the heat even then--rain was (and still is) my absolute favorite favorite weather, and a good thunderstorm could make my day. (It is unfortunate that I also have a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which means I get depressed if I don't get enough sunlight. So, even here in arid Utah, I sit in front of a lightbox for an hour a day during the winter. Otherwise my children have a cranky ogre for a momma. No Pacific Northwest rain forests for me!)

There is nothing I like better than to be outside as the storm blows in. The clouds rush overhead, the wind picks up, and that indescribable smell of rain on the desert fills the air. Then the drops start to fall, just a few big fat ones at first, and then increasing to a crescendo of rain (and sometimes hail) in a matter of seconds.

Big thunderstorms are common in Las Vegas, and they almost always come in the late afternoon/evening. When I was in high school, I was often at work at the public library when it started to rain, and I always felt gypped. One day, a huge storm approached--we could see it out the huge bank of windows looking west. I was dying to go out in it, so I was thrilled that it was time to fetch the books from the outside book drop--a good 100 meters away from the front door of the library. Pulling and pushing the huge, unwieldy replacement cart took two people, so I convinced a fellow worker that we had time before the storm hit.

Right in the middle of switching the empty cart for the full one, it hit--not the rain, but the HUGE dust storm that preceded it. In a matter of seconds, we couldn't see; our ears, eyes, and hair were filled with dust. We shoved the empty cart into the drop box, slammed the door shut, each took a side of the full cart, and tried to make a run for the library. Except it was so windy the cart kept veering, and our eyes were filled with sand...the rain started when we almost to the door. We managed to protect most of the books from the rain, but the books on top were grimy and gritty with dust. Both of us, however, got pretty wet. Which meant, of course, that we were now wind-blown, muddy, AND wet.

Although we definitely looked worse for the wear, our supervisor decided that it would be foolish to send two teenagers home during a violent, flash-flood-causing, crazy loud thunderstorm, and so we trooped into the bathroom to try to clean up a little. Fortunately, my coworker thought it had been a hilarious adventure, but I at least learned my lesson. No more trying to get a little storm-time in when there are books involved!