Juicy Again

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 04 July 2006 03:06:09

I loved my time in New Mexico. Had such fun. Loved meeting the people I met, eating the food I ate, seeing the sights I saw. It was all good.

But I don't know what I'd have done without a nasal spray, chapstick, moisturizers, sunblock lotions and about two gallons of cold springwater every day.

It was dry. I was dry. I have never been so dry in my life.

We're suffering a drought down home here as well... but what passes for a drought in Southeastern Louisiana is nothing like a High Desert drought.

Still, we've been at least "our version" of dry here since I came home. The bayous are low, the preferred lawn grasses are dormant, and the marshes burn.

Finally, Sunday, the rains came. Not enough rain, and not over a wide enough area, but thank God it's raining again!

I was in the new Sam's Club warehouse store when the sky turned slate-pewter-gunmetal gray. I welcomed the ominous blackness. No tornado green, right? Right! So it was alright with me.

I sat in the little cafe area inside Sam's, watching the weather through the big open rolling warehouse doors.

I could smell the rain coming. It started -- shoppers walking in and out of the place were furling and unfurling umbrellas right and left, it was like an exotic dance, the flashing colors of the umbrellas, the people revealed and hidden and revealed.

Then it was my time to leave. I walked through the inner door and out under the buggy garage, my steps getting a little quicker as I went. You'd think I was off to greet my lover.

I slipped off my shoes and strung their straps through my fingers, and took that first step out into the downpour.

It was bliss, it was a massage, it was hydrotherapy and a long cool drink. All my wrinkles disappeared and my eyes were perfectly rainwashed clear. The water caressed me, I felt it eventually making its way through my unruly mop of hair, down behind my ears, down the back of my neck, down my spine.

Droplets dripped off of me. Off my eyelashes and nose, my chin. Tinkly little twin waterfalls slipped off my breasts and arched down to soak my dress at the knee. My feet felt soft and sensitive and very slightly warmed on the pitchblack surface of the new parking lot. No time yet for much dirt to have become a part of the blacktop, no fear of hurting myself... The dark parts were rough silk under my toes, the painted stripes satin. The ground shone like black glass.

I met a co-worker on his way in -- under an umbrella -- as I neared my car. He smiled and asked me where my umbrella was. I told him I'd been waiting for this rain for so long, I wanted to feel ALL of it. Then I took my happy wet self home.