Newsflash: Wet Tin is In

Because our weather order got lost in the mail, we have been having pot luck during the great roofing event this week. The Pot has been full to the brim with rain, except when it was ungodly hot or dark.

Deciding that early morning hours were better used for construction, we postponed our morning swim until 5 p.m. There are very good reasons we swim before dawn, including the fact that we are both red-headed and prone to skin cancer. Another reason is that when the real swimmers, i.e., those young 'uns on the swim team come, swimming becomes exceedingly strenuous. Picture doing the American crawl stroke with motorboats in the lanes on either side of you. Fast swimmers make a wake that can make you feel like you're drowning the whole time. We like to avoid this sensation. However, yesterday, an executive decision was made to swim in the afternoon with the sharks.

Just as I finished a quarter-mile, which takes about 12 minutes, a lifeguard appears in my lane. I have to get out. There's thunder. This time, however, the thunder was very near by, even in the same county with us.

I felt pretty silly in the lockerroom yesterday, drying myself off as a torrential downpour beat on the roof of the building. I don my dry clothes and go out into the deluge to my car to go home. But first, I must stop and record my milage. Why? Because, dear friends, the quarter-mile I swam yesterday brought my total to 50 miles since March 15. My goal is 100 miles by September 15, so I'm half-way there. And no, of course there was no cover where I had to stand to have my distance recorded.

The streets were deep in water, and I had to be careful not to get the engine wet going home. This meant that there were a number of people in larger vehicles around me who got very frustrated because my little car was going slow. Oh, well.

My dear husband tells me how he hopes it hasn't rained at our house yet, because we haven't covered the roof. I am thinking that he's whistling in the dark, because that ship sailed when we left the house.

Sure enough, when we arrive home, there has been a downpour. When I get to the front door, I discover that it now rains on the front porch. In fact, it rains in our mailbox. My bills have arrived in time to be soggy.

The rain has stopped, so husband heads up to the roof to do whatever it isn't already too late to do. While he is up there, he makes an amazing discovery—wet tin is slick! Whoda thunk it? Some time later, he asks if we have any band aids.

"How bad are you hurt?"
"I didn't quite cut the tendon," he tells me.

I, of course, panic. He, of course, is pulling my leg. I guess he was feeling ornery after his amazing discovery.