I had this plan to write two posts a week until the end of the year. Ever since I changed the format on our blog archive, and I could see the number of posts we've done per year, I was determined not to let 2014 be the fewest Dharma Bum posts ever. We ended 2005 with 360 posts; we ended last year with 76. The worst year was 2012 with only 67. Yikes. But plans went awry when I spent one entire night last week sleepless with another serious and painfully bad headache. I've been getting them once or twice a year, and I just had my second one this year. I think they may be migraines. My father had them, and my sister has been suffering with them since she was a teenager. I am beginning to notice the early signs of onset. One is a heightened sensitivity to sound, and the other a discomfort with too much light. Then, POW, a headache hits that won't let me sleep for an entire night. Most over-the-counter pain meds don't really do much for migraines. And to be perfectly honest, I don't like to take medication. I have been taking one 325 mg of acetaminophen daily just to cut down the ongoing pain from the degenerative arthritis in my neck. That's it. Pain is a pretty terrible thing. So, my plan to do a second post last week slipped away.
Fortunately, though, really grand things happened on the day after the headache. We had 2 1/2 inches of rain (that's 6.35 cm). It rained all day, a good steady downpour. It was wonderful, certainly not drought ending, but enough to assist the thousands of firefighters fighting several huge blazes in the state.
While it is unlikely the rains will continue. The day of rain helped to quell a bit of the fear and quench a bit of the earth, if just for a day.
So, all of northern California was pretty ecstatic by this record rainfall. Of course, I loved the skies. All those clouds and the intermittent sunlight produced opportunities for iridescence and rainbows, and just plain ol' beautiful sunsets.
Life is good when the headaches have gone, the rains come, and fall is in the air.