I’ve mentioned it on my blog a few times, and if you’re a weather aficionado like my dear old dad, you’re sure to know this already—we in the West are having a bit of a dry spell. A dry spell, as in Seattle hasn’t seen a drier May in 23 years. (Thank you for the “weather in a nutshell”, Seattle Weather Blog.) Don’t even get me started about June. My flowers are gasping their last dusty breath before crumbling into oblivion. Cacti are beginning to look like a viable alternative for my PNW flowerbed. On Wednesday, I sat in my sunny office concentrating on the day job. The by-now-unfamiliar pitter-pat of raindrops on the skylights above my head intruded on my focus. My wild whoops of “It’s raining! At last, at last! Moisture at last!” intruded on my cats’ naps. As they raced off in search of quieter environs, I logged on to Facebook to track the path of the rain storm. My local friends were equally thrilled about the change in weather—for about 60 seconds. It seems that those ten raindrops on my skylights were all that were allotted per household. The little gray cloud rationed out my family’s portion and swiftly moved on to my neighbor’s house.

However, those ten raindrops. What excitement they caused. They were something different. They were what we all needed. Okay, they didn’t do much good, but we were all thrilled about a gray cloud—and how often can you say that, especially about Seattleites?