No Open House

What, three posts in one day?

Call it a whim. Call it guilt at having not posted for a while. Call it can't go outside the damn house or have the damn windows open because of the damn wind.

This has been an unseasonably windy spring. An unreasonably windy spring. When the winds let up last week, we rejoiced, only to have the temperatures leap up to 110 degrees, which is the shits, although it did take the swimming pool from "cryogenic" to blissful.

Then someone turned on the "wind" switch again, and there are trees down all over the place. Fortunately, not in our yard -- so far.

Plowed fields are now being deposited 60 miles up into the mountains and up everyone's nose with the gusts in excess of 40 mph.

My Japanese maple's leaves have all curled, crisped at the edges, battered and dehydrated by the wind.

Forget swimming -- it's now too cold again for dips in the pool, and even if one did, one would have to take a bath afterwards because of the amount of mud in the air.

And monumentally irritating is the fact that although the house is only at about 70 degrees, when the wind kicked into high gear this afternoon, we had to close up the windows and turn on the AC -- to clean up the air in the house so that we could stop coughing and sneezing. We won't be able to open up to catch cool air tonight -- there's too much dirt carried on it.

Places along the highways where farmers have plowed fields are almost obscured by the crap in the air. I went to the store this morning and was assailed not only by the wind but by the scent of freshly-spread chicken manure. This is May, for heaven's sake, not March!

In this last picture, Howie's expression says it all. His tail, usually held high in exuberance, is down. He's squinting. His ears are in an annoyed position. As I type this, he's not even in this room. He's gone back to the bedroom, having given up on the day.

He should have been swimming with me. Instead, we're hiding from the wind.