I intended to post yesterday and time slipped away amid multiple events and errands, not to mention getting soaked in a thunderstorm. In general, unless there is a serious weather system hanging over us, summer thunderstorms blow through in as little as ten minutes and it’s not at all unusual to be staring through the glaring sun as your windshield wipers are on full power. Or you cross three blocks down out of the pounding rain onto totally dry pavement because “isolated” means contained in a small radius. Yesterday was the exception. Two girlfriends and I are pretty good about making time for lunch once a month and yesterday we met at Ram’s Diner in Naranja (I think I’ve posted about Ram’s before). I had to make a run by the grocery store and fill the car before we left for an event in Key Largo that evening. I made my farewells a little early, noticing the clouds had become more threatening. Okay, maybe I could make it into the store. Nope – didn’t happen. It was obvious the rain wasn’t going to let up quickly, so fine, protect at least my head and cell phone clipped to my waist with the umbrella and not worry about from my knees on down. I didn’t need more than a few items and if the normal pattern worked, the rain would be either gone or much lighter as I checked out. Wrong again.

The driving rain and now standing water in the parking lot weren’t going to slacken and I simply didn’t have time to wait it out. I had decided not to stop for gas even though the tank area did have cover over it. My leather sandals were completely soaked as were my lower pants legs and somehow in juggling the grocery bags and umbrella, I managed to get part of my shirt wet. The relatively short trip home was pretty slow as the torrents hit the windshield and standing water geysered up when you drove through it. Forked lightening splitting the clouds was added to the mix. Once in the house, I gingerly tiptoed across the floors to remove my wet shoes, then stripped out of partially soaked clothes and into my robe. Shoes onto the window sill and clothes draped on a chair, I was glad to see we hadn’t lost power. It was almost another 30 minutes before the storm abated and then we had the typical South Florida clearing where the sun burst out and the heat sucked all but the deeper standing water right out of the hard surfaces. By the time I dashed back out to gas up the car, there wasn’t a trace of gray cloud left in the sky. Ah well, summer is our rainy season.