Soggy + Soccer = Sogger

There's a special place in Heaven for soccer moms...

Les Eaux de Mars

The abundant waters of March have brought our seasonal levels back into a respectably healthy zone and the rainy days, alternating with warm sunny ones, have provided a profusion of flowers everywhere. The single tiny plum blossom I posted a photo of recently now has thousands of companions.


Seeing all the rain in March reminded me of a wonderful lilting song that became one of my favorites while living in France, Les Eaux de Mars, sung here in French by Georges Moustaki (click the "preview" button on this MP3 download to hear a snippet). Perhaps you know it in the original Portugese version, Águas de Março by Antonio Carlos Jobim. The song is beautiful in any language -- captivating, just like raindrops swelling on tree branches.

Here Comes the Rain Again

Finally, we've been blessed with some measurable rainfall. The changing weather can make for some beautiful and dramatic skies, and if you're paying attention, you can spot a rainbow here and there. We're still several inches short of where we should be for this time of year, but there's more water on the way. Bring it on!

One Day Everything Went Wrong

It must have been an omen: everyone was downstairs in the lobby, the taxis were waiting to take us all to the airport, and one girl was missing. When I called her room, she said -- well, I won't tell you what she said -- but it was obvious that she was still sound asleep. As it turned out, it didn't really matter, because the choir conductor and I had both misread our reservations, and we arrived 4 hours before our scheduled flights.

I go to the desk to see if we might be able to get an earlier connection, as we're cutting it close to be in Paris and checked in to our hotel before the Bastille Day fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. Yes, we can connect earlier, through Frankfurt, but it only gains us 45 minutes and it will cost 100 Euros to change our flight, so I agree when the man behind the desk says, "Better off to wait for your flight and spend your money at the restaurant upstairs..." That, it turns out, was my first big mistake of the day...

The flight to Frankfurt takes off without fanfare, all of Chloé's friends aboard, and not long after we board our own flight to Stuttgart. That's when the sky opens up right above our heads -- thunder and lightning and torrential downpours -- and we sit in the plane for an hour and a half before I concede that we've missed our connection to Paris, the last one from Stuggart for the day. But there's hope...

We can connect through Munich (the pilot calls ground control to assure there are seats), so we jump out of the puddle jumper into the pouring rain and run to change our tickets. Unfortunately, we can't do this at the gate, only at the ticket counter, and by the time we get there we're eligible only for the waiting list, so they won't guarantee Paris seats either. We do make it back through security and onto the Munich flight, but by the time we get there, the next Paris flight is full, so we have to wait two and a half hours for the next. Wouldn't you know, the last flight to Paris is late, so we arrive there just as the fireworks begin.

We run to get a taxi; there's still hope that we could catch the tail end of the fireworks if we move quickly. But there's a problem: the taxi driver is happy to take our money, but not take us into Paris -- he categorically refuses to enter the city. So for $85, we're dropped off at 11:30pm, 4km from our hotel. We walk, with baggage, over cobblestones, against massive crowds of people who all got to enjoy the fireworks, dammit, and don't get to our overpriced hotel until nearly 1am.

It's surprisingly rundown, dirty, and noisy, and we have to lean way out over the balcony to see the Tour Eiffel, although none of that would have mattered nearly so much if we'd been there for the extravaganza. We have to get up at 5:30am to go to another airport to catch our flight to central France; I'm taking it all in stride until the woman at the front desk (who has check us in and out) says, "Well, you really didn't stay long, did you?" Yes, and that makes this the most expensive night in a hotel I've ever spent in my life. For several seconds, long chains of expletives run through my brain, but then I remind myself that these are the perils of travel.

Some days (and nights), it seems, nothing goes right...

Weathering the Storm

Yes, the storm was really as impressive as they predicted. The wind howled all night and day, blew out the dust in the upstairs rafters, forced rain through the cracks in the kitchen window, and turned the trellis on our front deck into a pile of toothpicks. We emerged unscathed from our house, warm and dry. We were lucky enough to not lose our electricity, which allowed us to have a movie marathon and bake cornbread in the electric oven to go with our chili. James apparently likes to court danger, however; don't ask me what he's doing, standing on a rain-slicked three-legged stool, leaning against a wobbly railing eight feet above the ground. I couldn't tell you...

After the Rain

There’s a euphoric feeling in the air on the crisp, cool mornings that follow a night of rain. The air smells clean and everything glistens. Birds bathe in the shallow puddles that formed in the hollows overnight, twittering more cheerfully than they did yesterday.

Last night was the first real rain of the season, and now it truly feels like summer is over. From the kitchen window we see an ever-changing tableau of our microclimate, and I can tell it’s going to be a “cardigan day”. For me, the weather is perfect when it’s cool without being too chilly.

Jack sleeps on the couch; he’s had a rough night of urping from the flu he seems to have caught just as I’m finally getting over it. Socrates isn’t feeling well, either. I know that’s the flipside of the seasons changing, but fall is still my favorite. I miss the intensity of the changing colors of autumn that I grew up with, and hope when the kids are older we can get back east one year for “the show”.

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, though; I love being able to depend on rain that doesn’t start until October and can usually be counted on to end in April. Cuddling up as it pours down is a treasured pastime in this household, and the whole world seems brighter when the sun peeks through again. Even the hummingbirds act as if the salvia’s nectar has been sweetened by the downpour. Everything’s better after the rain.