After my endless bitching about the drought and its dangers, Saturday we had a shower that cleaned the air and perked up the plants.  Then Monday around supper time, the heavens opened and we had a genuine thunderstorm that went on for three hours.  We had something like four inches of rain in that time. Woody was in a restaurant and then at the movies, so he had no idea when he came home what had happened.  I was trying to meditate, but didn’t accomplish much as the continuous lightning was too disturbing.  Puck the Abby, Xena, the huge rescue and Sugar Ray, my sweet pacifist Burmese all got on me.  Mingus, the smallest but with a lion heart, got up on the bay window to protect us all from the storm.  He fluffed up his fur and stood guard.  But a bolt of lightning struck near by, the power flickered, my ears rang and Mingus flung himself on the couch and tried to burrow under me. We’re on a hill, so flooding is not an issue but Dunn’s Run close by was roaring.  Normally it’s just a creek but it overflowed its banks Monday night.  But all the seedlings in the garden survived [I covered the fall lettuce seedlings on the porch] and all the green life drank it in and grew visibly. I have been mostly a farm wife lately, although now the canning is finally done. I made freezer blueberry jam in two batches, froze 6 pounds of pole beans over the week, two bags of bell peppers and froze and dried cayennes.  We are not getting as many tomatoes this year, but our canning is done and I dried the first batch.  I’d like to dehydrate at least two more honey jars full. I am fooling around with the novel I finished a year and a half ago.  Also fiddling with the preliminary ms. of my to be new poetry book for Knopf. Wednesday night we celebrated Rosh Hashonah with friends, including one recently widowed.  I do a ritual with a combination of my poetry and prose.  We started with chopped liver and baba genoush, then went to the table for candle lighting and my program, then we had roast chicken, tomato avocado salad, noodle kugel.  Finished with a honey cake I had baked that afternoon.  Our friend Helen Miranda Wilson, a painter, brought honey her bees made for the apples and honey ritual.  Helen lives across the marsh from me and her bees are regularly in my garden. A cycle completed. My Droid died late Wednesday, so Friday when we went to Orleans to both get our hair cut, I got a new cell.  I am still putting apps on it and learning how to do the things I regularly do.  I feel naked without a cell.  When I got out and forget it, I feel weird.  I had to read People magazine in the salon while waiting to get my haircut and was I bored shitless.  I care as much about celebrities as they care about me. Normally I get all the news from six sources on my cell or read my emails. Saturday we went to a party at the elephant house on Wellfleet Bay,  That’s what the locals call it from a fancied resemblance to an elephant when see from the water.  It was a spectacular day, in the high 70s with a strong breeze and barely a wisp in the sky.  Many sailboats skidding by.  Cormorants and gulls fishing.  I made tabouli and a honey cake that this time I covered with maple icing to celebrate the one year anniversary of Dan and Paul.  The elephant house has been in Paul’s family for generations. They had cooked barbeque chicken and burgers and everybody had brought something, potato salad, green salad, cole slaw, cookies, brownies.  Woody went swimming with Dan right in front of the house, where there’s a large sandy beach.  I drank and ate too much and that pretty much finished me off for the day. I only could stay awake for the first half of the Michigan-Notre Dame game.  I was impressed with Gardner, the new quarterback, and also with Gallon who can run like a deer in trouble. But I was just exhausted.  I got a little bit sunburnt in spite of the sunscreen, but it didn’t keep me awake. Today it’s back to work full time.  and I’m quite ready to get back to work.