Water, water grey and wet

     It is raining.  Something quite familiar.  The hummer at the feeder is all rusty, and red capped.  He doesn't seem to mind the rain.  It's early enough to find quiet in the house and space to think.  Don't believe I could deal with this all the time, but a few hours a week it's nourishing.
     Dan's family reunion was last weekend.  It was raining there too.  A dark and sheltered log cabin near Mt. Hood, 19 of us packed in.  It was enjoyable, yet separate from reality in a way.  Would love to see these people in their regular lives, doing ordinary things.  I have been with Dan now for 16 years, married for 10 of those, yet I have not been in the homes of most of his family.  Getting to know people without knowledge of their surroundings and how they move through life is a little complicated.  It really comes down to various bits of information gleaned over the years.  Short conversations held during brief visits, anecdotal stories my husband tells and entirely subjective feelings I have over time accumulated.  I find them all to be interesting in their own way.  And I am left with being curious and wanting more.
    Quinn just has a few more weeks of school, and then we are into the summer swing.  Wonder if the rain will stay.  It is an El Nino year, and the weather may be unpredictable.  It seems to be this way all over.   This brings to mind Emergency Preparedness and Sustainable Practices.  Makes me want to store some dried food meals, and work in the garden; put survival gear in the car, and remember to teach Quinn how to build a fire or a shelter.  Why my mind goes to these things is not something I want to explore right now.
   Most of the pressure that is raining down on me now is just organizational.  Getting Quinn's summer time planned and paid for. Paying the bills that come due at the first of the month, doing the books for Dan's business so that he knows how much money he can spend. Figuring out if I have the time to start Boot Camp [(an exercise program that seems to be taking my friends and acquaintances by storm) I need to lose about 40 pounds to get back to my pre-30 weight. Then there is the garden, fixing regular meals, yard work and do I even want to bring up the reason I'm blogging, to begin with. . . will it help me to learn to write with greater skill?  I will need it to get into the MILS program and pay them a lot of money to make my life even more complicated. Yes,  that is the point.  It is part of a"Follow my Joy" program that I seem to have placed myself on.   The rain appears to bring me back full circle.
   When I first came to Seattle, 18 years ago, it was during a particularly gray and rainy winter.  There was something in the air here that felt like home.  I don't know if it is the few drops of Scottish blood that I carry from some long dead ancestor or the grayness itself that spoke to an aspect of my personality, but it still feels like home when it's raining.  Not a home of memory but the mind place of home.  That is where I like to be, and where the "Follow the Joy" idea originated.  Doing things, saying things, being things that place me in that frame of mind.  It's raining.