Perfect…

…rainy afternoon.

Daily prompt. More entries.

Missive : Safe inside, toasty warm, while water pitter-patters on the roof… describe your perfect, rainy afternoon.

Been a while since I participated in the Daily Prompt. Then again, it’s been a while since I posted, and even then it’s kind of sporadic. Many reasons, the biggest being that it’s no fun immersing yourself in misery and then spreading it around too. Need to break the cycle, and what better way than with a post about a dark, damp afternoon, spent in various ways…

The perfect rainy afternoon.

Well, that would depend on the kind of rain I suppose. When it’s the hard, clamouring, twisty kind, with gusts of wind blowing the cloud and the drops all over the place, I would be standing in front of the window, gazing upon this mighty spectacle. Kind of scared, but in awe of the magnificence. Where I live, we have these summer storms. Lots of wind. Clouds billowing. Loud claps pf thunder and bright slaps of lightning forking down to the earth in crazy shapes. Most magnificent. Scarily so. But it clears the air. Ends the sultry humidity of summer in my neck of the woods.

Then you get the soft, misty kind of rain. Those are just a waste of time in my opinion. You can’t really do anything, not outside in any case, but it never lasts long enough to have an inside afternoon planned. Before you can get settled in, the sun has burnt right through any moisture, and the day is back to being bright and sunny again.

What would be the perfect kind of rain for the perfect rainy afternoon is the one where the thunderstorm played out during the night, or early morning. It stops for a while, clouds scudding over the heavens, gathering steam for the next onslaught. And then the rain starts. Soft, constant drops, sinking right into the parched earth. Some thunder rumbling in the distance, the afterthought of the storm that went before, but not threatening. Cold and wet outside, water dripping off the eaves. Warm and dry inside. Couch, blanket. Radio softly tuned to Golden oldies or maybe the classic station. Cup of hot chocolate on the table, smokes and ashtray close. Nice soft couch pillows at my back, and a book balanced on my chest.

That’s the time when you just gently slide away into the arms of Morpheus. To dream what dreams you may, to maybe ponder on some of life’s lessons, or just falling into the book you’re reading, forgetting the world outside. Wrapped in a cocoon of contentment.

And no post about rain and warm, safe afternoons would be quite complete without mention of my dude. The one that gave me a new appreciation of all things good in life.

It rains in Iraq in winter. A lot. It’s cold too. Very. Picture a contained housing unit, standing on cinderblocks next to a whole bunch of other CHU’s. Raining outside, mud everywhere. Inside the CHU it’s warm. Carpet on the floor, picnic spread out. French bread. Butter. Peanut butter and honey. Starbucks coffee brewing, the smell permeating the room. Two people sitting in front of the picnic. One filling in the crossword puzzle in the Stars & Stripes newspaper with the help of the other one. Norah Jones playing in the background. Just two people, wrapped up in their own little world, away from externals, marooned in their own creation of reality, no matter how flawed. It was a good time in my life. Many perfect rainy afternoons and evenings spent with the man that called me his dream woman.

And this is one of the tunes we listened to…