Rain and Spackle

Oh dear God. I'm watching the morning news right now, the early morning news. there is an annoying blond at a laser skin care center showing off a great Christmas gift idea. For $500 bucks they will shoot something into the pierced holes in your ears and plump them up. Seems that, over the years, the holes made by piercing one's ears tend to enlarge, and are pulled down by heavy earrings. So now one can actually shoot some sort of Spackle into one's earlobe and make them young again. Oh my, what I wouldn't give for young earlobes, it's a dream come true, it is. Problem is, it's not my earlobes that have been enlarging and drooping as I age. I'm waiting for a Spackle shot to bring the girls back to their former glory. And then, my butt.

I'm up watching the morning news because I've become an early riser. This is not by choice and I don't especially approve of it. The older I get the more I tend to wake up at 4am. As a rule, after about five minutes, I usually get up and go to the bathroom. This justifies the wakefulness, at least in my own mind. It also makes it my fault because if I quit drinking tea after 8pm I might not be up at 4am taking a leak, whether I need to or not. Oh, and a word to the wise. When one finds oneself out of toilet paper at 4am take an extra two seconds and find a Kleenex box. Coffee filters are NOT a recommended substitute.

This morning however (and I actually made it to FIVE in spite of the tea I took to bed with me) got me up in time to spend a quiet hour with the rain. I enjoy the rain, especially in copious and very noise quantities. This is why I keep the love seat in the window, so I can curl up with a cup of tea and watch the rain. Don't get me wrong, mudslides and traffic accidents aren't my thing. Just rain.

Now my father lives in what's called one of the "local mountain communities". He's already got snow, at least according to the morning news. They have snow in Gorman too, which will trigger the closing of the grapevine, if it already isn't. This is hardly news, they close the grapevine when someone in Frazier Park doesn't cover their mouth when they sneeze. But, in the local mountains, the school districts have declared snow days. This is in anticipation of the storm moving in this afternoon, mind you, not the actual storm itself. I have a sneaking suspicion the super has a new boogie board. Or perhaps droopy earlobe piercings and $500 to burn.

Television is, of course, on "storm watch!" all morning. It wouldn't be L.A. if they weren't. This is why I walk to work. Even in the rain. It's hardly a pithy observation that no one can freaking DRIVE in the rain here and I, frankly, feel safer on foot. That and the fact that, several years ago I ended up the owner of a Burberry scarf AND umbrella and I feel compelled to actually use them every now and then. The umbrella came from eBay, the scarf came from the Burberry store in Las Vegas one year. That was the year we bought our Hirschfeld. The gallery, as all galleries, was having a reception, free wine was involved. Lots of free wine. The desired result was achieved, thus the Hirschfeld. However, the gallery (who's name quite honestly escapes me now) was located one or two doors down from a Burberry store and that store also reaped the benefits of the free wine being passed out. In my defense, this was several years ago, before the current recession, back when we had credit and jobs that were actually worth something.

However, for now, I'm going back to my window, and the rain.