The air is hot and muggy. Sweat pouring down my face, and even the back of my neck. You can almost feel the liquid in the air. Steam rising off the pavement. A haze in the air in places where the moisture is just trapped within the air. My curly hair that I straightened this morning, is now curly again, as if I just got out of the shower and my hair has started to air dry. The curls become frizz and I keep pushing my hair out of my eyes and face. Hair sticks to my face, like I can’t ever get it completely brushed away from my face it is so humid.

I get the feeling that when I do go inside, I will have to peel my clothes off like you do a swimsuit when you have to go to the bathroom. It’s like you can’t get out of it. Yep, the heat has just got to go. Maybe it really is global warming, who knows.

Have you ever seen that Twilight Zone episode where the sun keeps getting closer and closer to the earth causing it to be sweltering. In the episode, Scientists realized the sun would destroy the earth and burn everything up from getting closer and closer with no way to stop it. Although this is not really what global warming is, even back in the day when black and white tv episodes were on, there were Scientists who had an inkling.

Well, my mind drifted off for a minute I am so hot and sticky. Constantly wiping my hair out of my eyes. As we lay stone by stone of the landscaping outside the house, we just get warmer and warmer. Heat and humidity this bad causes me to get tired, weak, and thirsty. But we push through burying the bottom layer, then stacking up up up. Five to eight layers total due to a slight slope at the end of the house where the stones had to be stacked higher to level with the rest of the layers.

But then. Out of nowhere, the thunder claps…somewhere. I heard it! We all heard it! But I don’t see a cloud in the sky. We kind of all look at each other, then begin walking all the around the house looking for the storm cloud. Ah, there it is. On the southeast side of the house just over the tree line. It will start raining any time here because I see the streaks in the sky just about to reach the field behind our house.

I ran around to the front of the house where the others were, and told them it’s about to start raining. But one of them said to keep working until it starts or if it even will start. Lots of times in the summers it may rain all around us. It’s a hit or miss.

Another clap of thunder, then lightning, I am still carrying stones to him to stack and level, then as if the sky absolutely split wide open and turned on the heavenly faucet. Big drops, bigger drops, heavy downpour, a washing out downpour. We step onto the porch next to the stones we are stacking, to get out of the downpour, because there is no use right now. We will have to wait. But, oh, oh, oh, we all yell “No!” as we watch the stacked stone landscaping we just buried, leveled, stacked, and built, start to slide. It’s like a mudslide. Maybe it won’t wash too much more. Nope, one whole side of the stacked wall has completely fallen, sliding into more of the wall like dominoes, collapsing, whatever you want to call it. Whatever we call it, the wall is down. All that back breaking labor and work in vain. The fact that a storm can pop up out of nowhere is just a given for living in the Midwest.

Slight frustration. Okay, lots of frustration. But by this point, the only thing to do is just laugh. We all start laughing. Maybe because it really is funny, or we are just dead tired and frustrated that it’s like when the tub falls through the ceiling to the bottom floor in The Money Pit. Yep, probably the latter. We and Tom Hanks felt the same way that day.

Back to the story. Two hours later, and three inches of rain, we decided it was too wet to really do much else except try to maybe set the worst part of the fallen wall back up so it doesn’t just keep sliding. Well, that was not the solution, we found out, after watching it just slide back down. So we pack up for the night, and try again when it dries out in a day or two.

While that storm did break through the heat and humidity and brought great relief that day, this storm truly came out of nowhere. No chance of rain. Not even a small percentage. But only a little lesson in the blessing of a little cool water to break the heat and a lot of patience with a heavy dose of laughter, knowing all you can do is just laugh about it and try it again.

Libby