The Rain it Raineth Every Day

A whole bunch of random randomosity:

An excellent Mexican lunch in Westminster at a little joint called Pappa Joe's. Authentic Mexican more than Tex-Mex, I had the steak tacos with loads of onion and cilantro (I admit I scraped off a lot of the onions). It was good stuff.

Went to Helmand with a large group for Lisa G's birthday. The food was amazing, we did the family style dinner where they just brought out platters of food for the table and we got to try almost everything on the menu. Then back to Lisa's parents for a birthday cake.

The only problem with the day is that I now feel like one of those prize pigs you see at the State Fair: enormous, sluggish, and incapable of anything other than wallowing around pinkly. Ugh. I feel like maybe a day or two of nothing but tea and juice might be a good idea.

We dropped Jim and Andy off at their place and drove home in a downpour. Thomas was driving and I was nervously trying to make sure we were in our lane and not too close to anyone. Once or twice we hit large puddles and I could feel the wheels float a little.

It took me back to some of the family trips we took to Texas when I was a little girl. In my memory there was always a terrible thunderstorm at least once as we drove across the country towards the Panhandle. Is that true or have I just taken two or three storms and generalized? I don't know. What I do know is that I remember sitting in the back seat next to Carmen and watching Mom or Dad hunched over the steering well, peering through the windows into the driving rain. The windshield wipers on the 1962 Chevrolet Impala made a rhythmic whocketa-whocketa while they pushed sheets of water away. Trucks passed us, sending more sheets of water over us. Mom was always tense driving in those conditions, and Carmen and I knew better than to talk or laugh. In those situations, whichever parent wasn't driving would turn around and chew us out. "Your mother needs to concentrate on the road, sit there and be quiet!"

Driving in those crappy conditions now makes me feel much like my Mom did then, tense and out of sorts. Back then, in the backseat, with my parents driving us across Tennessee, Arkansas, or Oklahoma, I wasn't scared at all. Our little family cruising down the highway in that long white car felt safe and secure to me, and the thunderstorms just added a little excitement to a long, long trip.