Now, however, as I approach middle age (and if I'm middle-aged now, I should expect to live to 106) I realize the weather is gosh-darn fascinating. I live in Atlanta, where, thank goodness, the weather isn't quite so fascinating as it is elsewhere, what with their blizzards, floods, typhoons, and tsunamis - I don't think I could stand living anywhere quite that fascinating - but the weather right here at home is plenty interesting enough, I can tell you, especially in the glorious month of February. Why, once every four years we add an extra day because we just can't get enough of it.
For example, we have rain. Then we also have drizzle. Sometimes it's merely cloudy and other times there's fog. This may sound like a limited variety, but the combinations dear Mother Nature achieves with it are seemingly infinite. It might rain in the morning and drizzle in the afternoon, but sometimes it's the other way around! And then, it might be cloudy and you'll be on the edge of your seat wondering if it's going to drizzle or rain. Or it might be foggy. Once it was foggy and drizzling at the same time! It's cuckoo-crazy, I tell you.
That's all Nancy and I talk about. When we first met, we talked about going places and doing things, then we talked about how to pay off all the bills for those places and things we'd seen and done, then we talked about babies, the kids, then we talked about money some more, then we talked about teenagers, and we talked about money, then our teenagers talked about money, then we started talking about weddings, and we talked about money, then we talked about money some more, but now we mostly talk about weather, and we've never been happier.
When the evening news comes on, I'll watch with half an eye about NASCAR crashes and the Oscars and how America has gone straight off a Fiscal Cliff, hit bottom, and bounced, but when the weather comes on, I drop whatever I'm doing and stand in front of the TV like the dog in that old "His Master's Voice" Victrola ad. And those weathermen tease you, too. They know what they're up to. They'll say, "Five day forecast coming right up after these twenty commercials and a boring old story about leukemia research." And you'll be on tenterhooks wondering, "Will it be rain? Will it be drizzle?"
When I die - if I ever do, I'm so busy I may never get around to it - at the approximate age of 107, I hope heaven will have a climate like here in Atlanta. In pictures I've seen of the place, everyone's always standing around on clouds and it seems to be sunny all the time. But I hope it rains at least once in a while. Just to keep things interesting.
This originally appeared in The Brookhaven Neighbor
