Rainy Day's and Wednesdays

By Al Horn

I know, I know... the song title was 'Rainy Days and Mondays'. The only problem is that it is a Wednesday. It is raining outside. Well, sort of. It's actually a heavy mist bordering on a light drizzle. It's cool and nasty and I have no desire to be outside. The only thing a day like this is good for is doing inside jobs around the house and I finished off the small list my wife had before noon. That leaves me with reading, sleeping, the tube, or writing. I guess it's no mystery which direction I've gone.

To be fair, I could have sat down and gotten into a good Mark Twain book my wife and I purchased last week when we were in Hannibal, Missouri. We bought the tour package tickets and checked out the boyhood home and the museum. We might have spent more time moving between buildings to get the full effect except for the fact that it was... raining. Mark Twain can wait a few more days.

I would have lain down and taken a nap except I was afraid I would sleep too long. There is very little I hate more than laying in bed at night because I know I need to get some sleep to deal with a full schedule the next day. It doesn't help that we are between heating and cooling cycles. It is just warm enough to not need the heat on at night and too cool to run the ceiling fan. It is the time of year you can just hear every little snap, crackle, pop your house makes after you have turned out all the lights and the television. My wife might just as well be sitting up next to me watching late night shows and eating popcorn. Actually the sound of David Lettermen's voice and the constant chomp, chomp, chomp might actually help me to fall asleep.

Even though we have more than one television in the house I would prefer to sit in front of the one down stairs for all the same reasons my wife does. The first one to the remote rules the roost. I can't blame her. It's her day off and she has a right to enjoy some of the daytime fair she likes. I find some of her arts and craft programs interesting but would prefer a good shoot-em up or a comedy. Unfortunately, we don't own any Billy Crystal westerns and our VHS copy of 'Blazing Saddles' is on loan to the Smithsonian. Permanently.

Now, I don't think that writing drew the short straw. I actually looked for reasons not to partake of the first three activities. At one point in time I looked for every free second I could get in front of a keyboard. Like a marathon runner who has been in a three-year coma, I feel a little shaky getting back on track. Besides, I have an aunt in Seattle who occasionally clicks onto our website to see if there is anything new. Beings I don't get much feed back for this site, it might be fair to say she is my biggest fan. Thanks to two lovely grandchildren I feel like I have been writing in the dark the last three years and I am ready to come out into the light of day again. If it would only stop raining.

Oops! My wife has announced she is going up to take a nap and the remote is all mine. There is thirty minutes until a good spaghetti western comes on. Just enough time to convert this piece to html then post it to the website. The question is... do I feel lucky?

**Thanks to Yahoo, our website host, it took a good forty-five minutes to set this up because their Page Builder program kept locking up. Better luck next time?