Storm Watching

The sky outside is white and the wind is making that fake Hollywood Western sound for "blowing really hard; storm's a-comin'."  Everything is covered in a layer of grayish dust.  The overgrown backyard is a low, muted green, and when Abby tore back and forth across it this morning chasing her ball, little clouds of dust made it look like she was working extra hard.  I'm off work, having packed all of my hours into an ill-conceived ball at the beginning of the week just so I could get the hell out.

Abby and I are holed up inside right now, waiting for the day to decide what it's going to be.  I'm still not used to California weather.  If we were in Texas, this would be a storm sky and it would roll and change every twenty minutes until it finally broke open.  The light would wheel around in circles and change shades from green to brown to gold like someone was flicking a kaleidoscope over the sun, and the thunder would start far off and low like someone dropping things in another room.  I loved storm watching in Texas.  In Kingsville, Pants and I would stock up on booze and invite people over just to sit out in the driveway while the evening air got all static-y and went suddenly cold.  Then when the rain started, we'd move inside and open the curtains around the big picture window and break out the chips and salsa. 

There's beauty and release in a good storm.  Everything gets all knotted up and tense beforehand, and then afterwards the world is all washed off and sparkling and everything smells different.

Storm watching in Florida was a little too real.  People are jumpy, and deejays on the radio spoil the surprise by telling you about all the storms boiling up around Cuba and which direction the wind's headed and what the ambient water temperature in the Gulf is.  All science, no poetry.  And no wonder-- those are the killer stomp-you-out storms that made one of our neighbors spray paint "State Farm is a bad neighbor who lies and steals" on the roof of the bombed out husk of their home.  

California is stingy with its storms.  It saves them for the winter, and even then it refuses to get loud and throw things, preferring instead to pull a long grey blanket over everything and just weep quietly.  For two days now, the jury's been out on this one.  High winds and a twenty-degree drop in temperature is all we've got so far.  And don't get me wrong-- I'm grateful for a break from the heat.  But nothing's happened yet.  

Across the street, a pack of shiftless teens share a house occasionally overrun by various toddlers, who arrive from somewhere else.  Sometimes an older woman with slack, white-blond hair comes out on the front step to smoke and gaze through and past my house, and she never seems to register that I wave at her when I go out.  Today, the teen pack has their garage door at half mast and they sit in the shadows of the garage, staring out from behind white framed sunglasses, waiting for something.  In my cynical old age, I used to think they were up to no good, selling drugs or something.  And maybe they are, I mean, it makes sense with all the quick stop traffic in and out of their driveway.  But today it feels like we're both doing the same thing-- waiting for a break in the sky.