On Saturday evening I noticed a Severe Weather Warning on the weather channel button in the right sidebar. I clicked on it — “high winds from 12 pm Sunday until 8 pm Sunday.” Shoot — high winds means DUST. Saturday Mike came to the house and we replaced a couple of windows, summerized the swamp cooler, hung some new towel rods and curtain rods, put bookcases together — the stuff that I would never get done on my own — and I ran the vacuum cleaner. Now this was all before I saw the Severe Weather Warning. I assure you I would not have touched the vacuum had I noticed it.
The wind kicked up around noon and within an hour, was howling around the house. We had sustained winds of 45 mph and gusts in excess of 65 mph. The visibility was very poor when I drove into town to the grocery store. It was so awful outside that little Nola decided not to be housebroken. She had no plans to go out in that weather. Had she, the wind might have picked her up and taken her away. I’ve always admired a flying red dog — but not that way.
So now the vacuum is waiting for me to suck up all the dust that filtered into the house. It’s been 62 days with no rain at all.
I don’t blame Nola a bit! My brother lived in Casper, WY for a few years. My sister-in-law hated the constant dust from the constant wind! The suicide rate in Casper was very high due to the constant wind. They left. You can have some of our rain! We’re expecting heavy storms this evening, with some wind of our own–but accompanied by heavy rain, again!