12: weather, the storm

It's not really 11:59 pm. 

Not in this time zone, anyway. The timestamp lies, as I try to convince myself that I am succeeding at this February blogging project, even though I fell asleep on the couch at 9 pm and didn't wake up until six hours later.

It is raining now, as it likely will be all weekend. It sounds lovely, the steady flow of droplets melting onto the driveway, dancing on the roof, snapping against the window, the sweet streams singing in ensemble all around. Now a crescendo, and it is all accented by the occasional pop from the radiator, generously sharing its warmth as I sit here huddled in my old hooded sweatshirt that I bought on clearance for $3.97 at least seven years ago, that has seen at least five states and two, soon to be three, countries, that boasts a little hole in the elbow just from wear and that somehow makes me love it more than when it was intact. 

Yes, rain like this all through the long weekend, they predict, and wind, too; storms all over the bay area and beyond. I'd rather have snow, I think, you know that dry, powdery Utah snow that isn't too miserable to go out in, but that won't happen here. Snow in the Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia mountains, they say, but I, as do most people in the region, live in a valley.

And it doesn't matter, anyway, because forty-nine people just lost their lives in a fiery plane crash, and when people are dealing with storms like that, who the hell cares what form of precipitation I prefer? I get the feeling that neither the music of rainfall nor the hush of snowfall would do much in the way of comforting those forty-nine families or the town of Clarence Center today.