Day 5 + 9: Weather Blessings

As I sit here on my office chair, shifting my weight back and forth to avoid having my short-clad legs adhere to the faux leather surface as a result of the hot, sticky, cricket laden evening, I keep thinking "thank you, thank you, thank you weather person", (whomever you may be).   Had this day happened a week ago, I would have been sunk!   Simply put, "mid-nineties is not my bag baby!'.

About ten days before we left, my husband decided to brave researching the long-term forecast.  You know what I mean---that oh-so accurate 10-day out craps shoot that you can Google as you are packing, with great hope, for your upcoming vacation.   Neurotic, plan-for-every-possible-scenario me was wanting a bit of insight on whether I needed to start lining up borrowed rain gear just in case.  Note: I had already gone after a second pair of shoes to ensure dry tootsies in the the event of precipitation.  So, mentally prepared for him to report back on 'chances of showers', (knowing that I had a rain plan), imagine my surprise when the 'real', published long-range forecast for May 1, in Napa Valley, actually came up with "a chance of snow flurries and nighttime frost".  What?!  This was just about the last thing I imagined and decided promptly to ignore it as a late April Fool's prank or simply the reason that  I swear that there must be no job with higher job security rates that the local weather reporter has. 

The next morning I shot off an email to my real local weather dude, Mr. Vineyard Guy Tim,  and asked if he would consider starring deep into his crystal weather ball to see what May 1-5 might hold for us.  After Harvest '07, he has a now discovered knack for keeping us all up-to-date on the forecast in an information loaded, fun-to-read, personalized format.  From the day of my request forward, his chatty emails reassured me that I had nothing to worry about with each of his reports growing more favorable.  He was right---our weather was amazing.  Not too hot or cold, some wind but nothing our hats with chin straps couldn't handle.

So today as I picked my second grader up from school where you could feel the heat ricocheting off the black top as we approached and he said, "mom, I want to go home and use dad's computer to check the temperature in Death Valley", I thought to myself, "rain, why ever did I worry about rain?".  When we got home and checked the valley temperatures at 4 p.m. (Napa down to 92.4 and Death losing @ 84), we proceeded to spend the rest of the day laying low in the shuttered house and dipping our toes in the cold pool while I just kept thinking to myself how lucky we were that today wasn't seven days ago!