rain

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — March 1st

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about it? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on March 1, 2018 on this blog.

#writephoto — The Last Time

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“You never get it right, do you?” Amy scolded her husband. “This is the last time I’m going to leave planning the family vacation to you.”

“It’s not that bad,” Craig said.

“You’re not serious, right?” Amy said. “We’ve been stuck in this cabin for almost a week and have yet to see the sun. It has rained every goddam day. The kids are going stir crazy. And, frankly, so am I.”

“But it’s not raining now,” Craig said defensively. “Look out the window. The clouds are breaking up. I think the sun is coming out.”

Just as he said that, large raindrops started pelleting the cabin’s windows. “Right,” Amy said. “A little research, Craig, and you’d have known that you booked this cabin in the middle of the rainy season. No wonder you got such a good deal.”

“Look at the view, Amy,” Craig pleaded. “The mountains, the lake. It’s so serene. You have to admit that.”

Amy glanced out the window. “Is it? I can’t tell with all of the raindrops streaming down the window.”

“But if you look carefully you can see the rays of the sun coming down from between the clouds,” Craig pointed out.

Amy turned around to see that their two kids were up. She smiled at them and said, “How about I fix you some breakfast and then we can all play Yahtzee?”

“Again?” both kids groaned.

Written for Thursday Photo Prompt from Sue Vincent.

Thursday Inspiration — Yes It Does Rain in Southern California

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For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has instructed us to respond to this challenge by either using the prompt word rain (or rains), by going with the above picture, or by means of anything else that we think fits.

Well first of all, it most certainly does rain in Southern California. Not much during the summer months, that’s true. But in winter, as the girls don’t warn you, it pours.

Same with Northern California, where I live. And this year, it literally did pour, which was great because we had been suffering from an extreme drought where what little rain we got before this year was not nearly enough.

But that’s a sidebar conversation. Back on target, the song I thought of for Jim’s prompt is “Rhythm of the Rain,” a 1962 song from the Cascades. It tells the story of a man whose lover has left him. The falling rain reminds him of what a fool he has been. He tells the rain that it isn’t fair that she stole his heart when she left him and asks the rain to tell her that he still loves her. But ultimately he wishes that the rain would go away and let him cry alone.

“Rhythm of the Rain” was written by John Gummoe, lead singer of the band. It was released the song in November 1962 and rose to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1963. It also spent two weeks at number 1 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart and Billboard ranked the record as the number 4 song of 1963.

The Cascades were a one-hit wonder and none of their follow-up songs charted, so Gummoe left the band in 1967, because he was “mainly just tired of being on the road and our career was going downhill instead of up.”

Here are the song’s lyrics.

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I've been
I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone again

The only girl I care about has gone away
Looking for a brand new start
But little does she know that when she left that day
Along with her she took my heart

Rain please tell me now does that seem fair
For her to steal my heart away when she don't care?
I can't love another when my hearts somewhere far away

The only girl I care about has gone away
Looking for a brand new start
But little does she know that when she left that day
Along with her she took my heart

Rain won't you tell her that I love her so
Please ask the sun to set her heart aglow
Rain in her heart and let the love we knew start to grow

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I've been
I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone again

Oh, listen to the falling rain
Pitter patter, pitter patter
Oh, oh, oh, listen to the falling rain
Pitter patter, pitter patter

Simply 6 Minutes — A Weekend at the Shore

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Nathan was excited when he came home from his local Costco and unloaded the SUV with stuff to take with him, his wife, and two young children to the shore for a mini-vacation over the weekend.

But when he walked through the door to his apartment, he knew something was wrong. It was deadly quiet. No kids running around screaming, no TV on in the background, and no wife to ask him why he was late coming home again.

He called out to his wife, “Sophia, are you here?” No answer. “Danny, Denise, where are you kids? Daddy’s home.” Silence.

That’s when Nathan noticed the envelope with his name on it pinned to the refrigerator door with a magnet. He took it down, opened the envelope and read the letter inside. It simply read,

Nathan hadn’t seen this coming, but Sophia had always told him that he was oblivious. He sat down at the kitchen table and tried to decide what to do next. He had motel reservations at the shore so he decided to take everything he just bought at Costco, put it back in the SUV, and drive there by himself. At least he could have a mini-vacation where he could clear his head and figure out next steps.

When Nathan woke up the next morning in the motel room, it was raining outside, and the forecast called for rain for the rest of the weekend.

Undeterred, Nathan took out the beach chair, the umbrella, the bucket, the beach toys and the inflatable pink flamingo, and set them up in the hotel room. Now, especially, he deserved this mini-vacation, and despite losing his wife and kids and the rainy weather, Nathan wanted his shore time.

After a few minutes sitting there in the beach chair, Nathan began to feel a little foolish. He grabbed his laptop, opened it up, and did a Google search on divorce lawyers.

Written for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes Challenge. Photo credit: istockphotos.com.

WDYS — A Double Rainbow

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Seven year old Izzy lived in a small house in a small resort town near a very large lake with her mother. She loved to play outside, and she was always looking for new adventures. But that wasn’t in the cards today, as it had been raining for most of the morning and that made Izzy sad.

Just after lunch, Izzy heard the rain stop and she asked her mother if she could go outside. She loved the way the sun sparkled on the wet pavement, and she was hoping that she might see a rainbow.

She was in luck. There was a double rainbow in the sky, its colors shining brightly against the gray clouds. It was the most beautiful thing Izzy had ever seen and she stood in awe, watching the rainbows shimmer across the sky.

She had heard that seeing a double rainbow was a sign of good luck, and she couldn’t help but feel excited. She closed her eyes and made a wish, hoping that her luck would hold. When Izzy opened her eyes, the double rainbow was still there.

She turned and ran back inside, grabbed her mother’s hand, and pulled her outside, demanding that she, too, see the double rainbow. Izzy knew her mother would be just as excited as she was.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Jules Paige – Port Washington, WI over Lake Michigan.

WDYS — No Relief

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Miguel could feel it in his old, arthritic bones. He walked over to the widow of his small adobe home and looked at the gray sky and the dark, threatening clouds quickly approaching over the parched brown grasses of the rolling hills. Maybe, at last, he thought, we will get a good, soaking rain that will end this drought that has killed our crops and taken most of my livestock.

When Miguel heard the rumble of thunder as the skies darkened, he stepped outside. It was almost as dark as the night and Miguel stuck out his left hand, palm facing upward in the direction of heaven. “Oh please, God,” he prayed out loud, “Please let it rain.”

A large drop fell into the palm of Miguel’s outstretch hand and exploded. He held his breath until he felt another drop fall on his shoulder, and another on the dusty ground at his feet. “Thank you, God,” Miguel said, “Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer.”

Hundreds of raindrops starting falling and Miguel was relieved, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from around his neck. But then the dark sky started to lighten up. The raindrops stopped falling, the clouds parted, and the sun peeked through. The ground didn’t even get wet enough to create mud.

Miguel wanted to cry, but his dehydrated eyes could not produce tears. “Why do you tease me like this, God?” Miguel asked, knowing there would be no answer. He walked back into his home, closed the door behind him and wondered what he had done to cause God to abandon him.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt: photo credit: Geetanjal Khana @ Unsplash.