With Nary A Watch Nor Warning

The atmosphere was angry today, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. Well...technically, that was what George Costanza said about the sea, shortly before revealing that as a fake marine biologist, he had removed a Titleist hit by Kramer off a cliff at the beach from a dying whale's blowhole. Let's just say that a wicked thunderstorm kicked up this afternoon in Hillmomba.

The Pony and I had just returned from town. Dark skies followed us along our winding route like a Boston terrier nipping the heels of a hurried mom dropping off her toddler at an in-home daycare. Just before we left the gravel road for the Mansion driveway, fat drops of rain pelted T-Hoe. Just enough to create a muddy sludge on his back hatch and bumper.

The Pony carried in our belongings and went back to the garage for more. I was setting down my things on the kitchen counter when I heard a large crash. I feared that The Pony had fallen down the porch steps and onto the concrete sidewalk. It was a thumping sound like thin-skin-covered bones on wood. Not the whump of the metal door slamming on the wooden door frame of the garage. I rushed outside onto the back porch and around the corner made by The Pony's bedroom. He was nowhere to be seen. But the two-piece bookshelf/chest of drawers that Farmer H had set on the side porch had lost its top. The bookshelf was laying face down, sticking off the wooden planks, soaking up sideways rain.

I could not see The Pony. I hollered for him. He finally appeared in the garage door with his Kindle in a plastic Devil's Playground bag. He trotted three steps through the horizontal-pour, and hoofed it up the steps. But didn't. The Pony put a foot wrong. It slipped out of his Adidas slide and he crashed onto the four steps to the porch. The Kindle was OK. The Pony had a red leg. Not bloody red. Angry skin red.

We righted the porch furniture but did not put the bookshelf back on top of the drawers. The dogs paced and shot us the stinkeye. They don't much like storms. I don't much like dogs in the house. We left them to stew in nature's juices and retired to the safety of The Mansion.

There was nary a watch nor warning to be found on broadcast TV.