Saturday in the Valley

I woke up this morning to the sounds of rain outside my window and felt the immediate congestion inside my head specifically around my sinuses...  one of the pitfalls of living in East TN.  But, for me the advantages out-weigh the disadvantages...  especially at my age where sights and sounds are worrisome. 

As an English major in College, I am very familiar with the symbol of rain in literature...  and, is omnipresent in both prose and poetry to create the proper mental environment among the readers and the critics.  Whenever you have literature present, you have a whole host of critics who like to criticize writers for not writing as they would have expected them to write.

But, college has been behind me for over 50 years and I simply don't give a shit anymore what the critics may or may not think...  Rain, is a necessary evil in the South, especially in the Valley where a little rain is so necessary for survival.

I just mowed my lawn and with this rain and lots of sunny days after the weekend, no doubt I will have to mow my lawn again once maybe twice before the week is over...  While it is not that annoying to mow since I daydream while mowing, it does take time and money...  and, gasoline is not necessarily cheap anymore.

Once it warms up a tad, I plan to put on a sweatshirt and go out on my screened in back porch and listen to the rain for an hour or two...  for me, it is just as relaxing as sitting in my hot tub for 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, I only started learning to relax after I retired in 2015...  perhaps, if I had learned to do this earlier, I would not have experienced a heart attack...  who knows?