Insert Photo Essay Here.

Unfortunately, I've been a bit too busy lately with actual work (the kind I get paid for, anyway, not the kind that I have to do regardless, like washing clothes and disciplining increasingly unruly little boys) to take marvelous photos of our local attractions, like the Beauty Parlor and the Gas Station That Doesn't Sell Gas. But in the meantime, here is a little photo of our house- with directions!

http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=18&X=1500&Y=20030&W=2

Look on the left hand side of the page, then move to the top third of the page, about halfway to the middle, and look for the shadow of the water tower. It's a big round shadow, right next to where the Depot used to be before it fell down. See that? Okay, now find the road right next to the water tower, the one that runs out to the river, and trace your finger along it to the right until it stops in the main road (Main Street, of course!) that runs through the middle of the picture. Still with me? Turn your finger left on that road (north, toward Roxobel), and the third building you come to on the right hand side of the road (the last bldg you can see in the picture on that side of the road, almost at the top of the page) is our house! It's right next to where the Coca-Cola plant used to be! Right next to where the old fire department used to be on the other side! You don't know where that is? Oh. You're not from around here, are you?

The sad part is, you get less clear directions than this all the time around here. The sadder part is that even though I grew up here, I can't follow these kind of directions most of the time. And the saddest part is, they all center around where things USED to be.

Monsoon Season

The Great Deluge is upon us tonight. Just an hour ago, it was nice and bright, if a little cloudy, so no stars, but we could see the far off lightning for our 4th of July fireworks and hear the party at a neighbor's house. Just now, we got caught outside in sheets of rain and wind that blew the lawn furniture over and threatened to take us with it. Yes, it's Eastern North Carolina summer again.

Tornado watches come once a week and thunderstorms are nothing to blink at. We're familiar with this type of weather, through September at least. Sometimes, like with Hurricane Floyd, Mother Nature comes through with a howling vengeance outweighting our blase expectations, but mostly, it's just a little rain and wind, and if it doesn't knock the crops down, we call it a summer rain, no matter how fierce it might sound at midnight on the tin roof.

There's something cathartic about being caught in a downpour, something soul cleansing, like the way a river baptism might make you feel, washing your sinning, worrying heart free with the knowledge that you have nothing to do with anything, that there's nothing your wishing and reasoning can do to control the world... all you must do is remain upright in the storm and know that tomorrow, the flowers will look that much prettier because of it.