Rain

This is the first blog in over a month. When I first decided to do a blog, I figured I'd be writing four to six a week. I mean, I have plenty of opinions on the things I read, encounter or hear about in my day-to-day. But once the blog had been established, I was so wrapped up in frustration over the shabby work that my former web guy was doing, the blogs became more rants, so I waited till I had a new guy. By that time, I'd lost the flow of writing.

What inspired me to write again was an odd, delightful and unexpected experience with my cat and my computer. We have two large dogs living with us temporarily, and the cats have been pretty much hermits in the master bedroom or outdoors for a month or so, with the exception of daily visits to my office from Lucy, the friendly one. Midge, the other cat, only appears every couple of days.

Last night, Lucy finally came into the living room and sat down and allowed herself to be patted just a few feet from one of the dogs. This was a breakthrough. (The dogs are locked in their room upstairs during the day, so this is when Lucy has been showing up on my desk. )

Just now, she came in from the rain and brushed against the computer screen in her latest attempt to distract me from my work and demand attention. This left about two dozen droplets of water on the screen, which glow like multicolored crystals from the light of the screen behind them. On an overcast day, following many previous overcast days, this was cause for rejoicing, a bright and tiny show of beauty in the midst of cabin fever and boredom!

And now, as I write this, the final drop has dried out, and my screen is again a flat slab of words and formatted graphics. But now I know that I can carefully apply several drops of water to the screen and enjoy my own little light show. I hesitate to suggest this for anyone else, because the electrons on the screen might react with a wet fingertip and cause, if not major damage, some small discomfort or electronic failure. (I don't know this stuff. That's why I draw cartoons instead of programming space shuttles.)

But it's nice to know, as the rain pours down in a metaphorical cloud of misery, that there are little miracles of light waiting on a wet cat.