Weather – Nourish-n-Cherish

Anticipation, Joy and a Surprise!

Is it raining yet?

I could barely sit still. Excited. Like a puppy waiting for a run around the park. Every few minutes, I found myself peeking out at the skies, and wondering whether the predictions were true. You see? We had been promised rain. The skies however did not seem to realize that our weather apps had predicted a 95% chance of rain. I genuinely do not know how they do this, but many times if it is a 30% chance of rain, the clouds may bother rolling in to salute the weather gods, but don’t want to go through the trouble of pulling on their grey robes, and just flit away.

This time they did not even bother rolling in. 95% chance of rain. It has to come – dance, spring, skip to the window. Nothing yet.
Sunny skies. D,s,s. Nothing.
A little breeze. Nothing.

When people tell you to keep your child-like outlook in life, I don’t think they realize how much disappointment goes with that. “We’ll go for a walk!”
When?

“Ice-cream?”
“Later. Once I’m done with work.”
“Done? Still? Not yet?”

It really requires enormous amounts of resilience. I salute you children – I really do. So, I peered out, sipped tea, and peered out some more. Nothing. So, I decided that the best thing to do was to be apathetic. Act like I didn’t care. Because I don’t. I mean, if it rains, I am sure, I’ll come to know.

Just as I thought the meteorologists really had messed it up this time, the rains started. I didn’t notice the dramatic shifting of the skies. The thunderous clouds rolling in. Like an efficient theatrical crew, the whole thing happened in minutes.

Then, the show started.

Oh! Was it good? It was amazing! I sat on my patio dancing away from the lashing rains, enjoying the sound of the water pouring down – beating against the broad leafed plants, and dripping down the pine needles. I watched the roses get drenched – rose petals with fat water droplets on them have to be one of my favorite things.

The son was equally thrilled to go to school that day. The biggest highlight was that his cross country runs would not be cancelled for something as trivial as rain, and he wanted to run in the pouring rain. I tried to make noises a responsible mother ought to make, but found myself excited for him. How can one not be excited about running in the rain with your friends?

I set off for a walk with an umbrella in hand, listening to the soothing sounds of the pouring rain, and getting a thorough drenching from all sides except the top where the umbrella tried its best. A friend of mine stopped her car to chide me, but refrained because I looked ‘far too happy to be scolded‘.

Plop! Plop! Plop! Surprise!

Later that evening, the son and I had both dried off and looked very pleased with ourselves with our little rainy day adventures. That was when I noticed. The roof in our house. The same one that leaked and had been repaired last year (but was never quite stress tested afterward) was not fixed. The pouring rains meant we had a puddle on the floor, and I found a little of my soaring spirit subsided somewhat.

But so what?

The first real rains of the season were well worth it! The sunset the day after was even better. So there! Happy rainy season fellow beings. May the Earth make a pluviophile of us all!

The Beauty of Rainy Days and Mystical Mornings

Some say that talking about the weather is exceedingly dull. I disagree.

Take for instance, this adventurous morning:

Misty mornings

I stepped out to the early morning air and found myself completely enveloped in a misty, foggy, cold, moisture ridden world. I shivered delightfully at that. Somehow the atmosphere lilted the eucalyptus scents towards me even if we could not see 10 feet in front of us.

The atmosphere yanked me by my navel and took me in beautiful swirls of thought to the beautiful Nilgiri Hills – a place where the Western Ghats meet the Eastern Ghats in the South of India. Almost all of my childhood was spent in misty mornings, and rainy reveries. In my mind, if ever there was Utopia, it was there, soaked in that magic.

The slow lifting of the mists as the suns rays pierced through the clouds is divinity itself.

The crisp sunny afternoon followed by a cloudy and rainy evening sang its Christmas carols all on its own.

Heavy Downpours

We also received our first heavy downpour of the season and it brought leaky roofs, streams of muddy waters, and swelling rivers in its wake. It was delightful.

We had all been wringing our hands a bit, and saying to each with worried tones, “It is going to be a dry year again!” “Was it always like this?” and so on. Like worried climate doctors. If I remember it correctly, even a decade ago, we had pretty good rains. But maybe I wasn’t as attentive to the data before. There seems to have been whole periods in life when the busyness of it dwarfed the ability to observe these things.

I mused on these things, and read a book sitting by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree that day.

Interconnectedness of the Universe

Some mornings, I stare up at the breath clouding near my mouth on foggy winter mornings while making a little fake-smoke-joke, and am astounded that the long dark nights still find a way to foggy mornings. If I go walking at night, to catch the Christmas lights twinkling in the community, I’ll look up at the stars if the sky is clear, and wonder whether our lives would be any different if one of those stars decided to not shine and sparkle.

Would it be a cascading effect – or would the distance protect us? Who knew?

Then, I wonder whether it is as the children say: Is it a bit odd to be this enamored by a thing as simple as the weather at my age? At any age?

Still, it is wondrous that we live on a tiny blue planet, cloaked in a delicate veil of an atmosphere, that allows for all of this to unfurl around us. If that isn’t magical, I don’t know what is. There is a word for this – the feeling of wonder at the world around us. Several words, in fact. So, it isn’t odd and I can assure entirely satisfying to be this kooky about being excited by the weather.

Weather Warnings

I peered out into the window wishing and hoping, and skipping, and sighing for the past week for one of the scariest storms of California to materialize. Really! The media when bored can really get going. The storm may be wreaking havoc in the mountains up in the mountains of Northern California, but here in the Bay Area, there was no need to send people scuttling in with flash flood warnings, gale-like wind warnings, or any warnings at all for that matter.

It turned out to be a beautiful set of days – a bit wind-blown, but not too cold. I set out on walks with gusto hoping to brave the gusts of winds. There were no gusts or gales. Just winds. All perfectly normal.

Atmospheric rivers indeed – I watched the sad trickle of water in the stream that masqueraded as a river next to our home, and sighed a bit.

Even as I write this piece, I understand the true luxury of walking-weather in late November. It was amazing to see how the birds took flight and staggered a little as they got used to the thrusts of the wind. I must say watching pelicans change flight in windy weather is a marvel. Geese – so perfectly blase and arrogant in their daily demeanors, looked a little comical as they squawked to each other and determined direction for their little flocks.

One day, I took refuge in a copse of trees and listened to the winds howling just around them. Trees provide such marvelous wind barriers, and I felt a strange sense of being protected in the little clearing amidst them.

I took my cup of coffee out at mid-day, and found the first few fat droplets of water descend. They sprinkled about a bit, and then decided that it wasn’t worth the effort.

It was just another November Day – with a promise of rains, winds : heavy and gusty.

P.S: The rains have just started: I sat cradling my cup of tea: hesitant at first and then a little more insistent. Time to start dancing in the rain!

The Siri Philosophy

It was a wonderful week-end morning and the family was lounging about the house as usual. The husband tried to stir us into action, but his attempts were feeble. He was too happy to be sitting and playing chess on his laptop or looking at some of the excellent things that people have to say on Facebook. Even if one were the strapping, active kind, one look at the daughter in her pajamas, hair looking straggly with a well-worn Harry Potter book in hand, would set you down firmly against taking action and let things be. The son and I were sending toy cars zipping down the highway in the living room. Even Time seemed reluctant to move on.

I must pluck you from this torpidity and show you what happens when the husband thinks we are not doing anything. Take for example a drive in the car : Point A to Point B. There we are, all buckled up like good citizens and looking out the window dreaming or thinking about something. The daughter is most probably thinking of the book she was reading last or the TV show she was watching. The son drinks in the welcome sight of cars and trucks on the road, like an elephant out on a saunter in New York City. I am either looking out the window enjoying the scenery or fiddling about with something in my handbag (there is always a real estate issue in my handbag). The husband casts one sideways glance and I know what is coming even before the words have left his mouth. He takes it upon himself to employ our time better. He shoves a cellphone in my hand and says, “Look at the alternate routes to get to Point B.”

I was naive enough to do this before, but not anymore. “What is wrong with this route?” I ask.

“Nothing, there may be traffic in this route.”

I don’t see any traffic snarls up ahead, so I refuse to check out alternate routes. To this, he adds, okay check the current route for traffic and see whether we need to change our route. I have now figured out the only thing that shoots this line of thought in the bud. “Shall I drive?” I ask innocently. He gasps and clasps his steering wheel with love and says no more.

I saw a similar glance now, when he looked up from the laptop. I put on a seriously busy face and rushed the toy cars about like nothing before and made a fake police car siren and weaved the police car through the traffic. The husband saw that there being no need for spurring me to activity just yet, went after the daughter, who still was looking blissful in her pajamas. “Check the weather forecast for the next few days.” , he told her.

A few minutes later, I heard a loud conversation going on with Siri. The daughter thinks Siri is hard of hearing, uses an ineffective hearing aid, and does a fair bit of lip reading to understand her. She shouts out her questions at it in slow, exaggerated mouth movements.

SIRI. WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING.

Siri is patient with her usually and answers nonsense or picks from links on the web. A little while later, I heard her boom out that the temperature is going to be in the 80’s and very warm in the coming days. But the conversation with Siri was not over yet. She was going on with it like a long lost friend marooned on an island and dying for her company.

WHY. DO. YOU. THINK. SO. SIRI.

It is at times like this that I doubt the machine learning algorithmic part. For Siri’s response was “You look at things that are there and ask ‘Why?’. I dream of things that aren’t there and ask ‘Why not?’”

This response was clearly too philosophical for the daughter, for she asked Siri to not get ‘technical’ on her.

The husband, in the meanwhile, is now curious to see how Android performs for the same thing and whips out his Android device. An all-out Android Vs. Apple war is set to take place in the living room. Poor Android now not only has to compete against Siri, but has the added disadvantage of a South Indian accent thrown at it in normal conversational tones.

“What is the temperature like in the next few days?” asks the husband.

Android disappoints him by saying that it cannot understand the question. A few more tries get him vague answers. “What question did you ask Siri for the temperature?” asks the husband of the daughter. The daughter shakes her head and says he is going about the whole thing in a wrong manner. “You know? Warm up to it first, get friendly, and then ask the questions. You have a better chance of getting the right answers.” she says firmly.

I think I have enough philosophy to last me a few days and take off for a shower. Get friendly with Siri. My foot.

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