Sweater Weather

I couldn’t understand why a month ago the stores here started carrying actual fall clothing. I thought for sure that summer styles, colors and patterns would be “in” year round here. I went to Pac Sun a few weeks ago to say hi to our neighbor that works there and they were actually selling thermals and fur-lined quilted jackets! Had I known I would have stocked up on some items, especially for the kids, because I doubt they want to be wearing fleece when it’s 82 F with 70% humidity. We don’t have central A/C so we can’t even simulate frigid conditions indoors if we wanted to. Well, imagine my surprise when I woke up last night FREEZING. I had to get up to turn off the ceiling fan and find our down-filled duvet that has been relegated to floor-duty since we moved here. Even closely flanked by two little warm bodies I was cold. I squinted (even though I was only 6 inches away) from the thermostat to see what the actual temp was. 76. The coldest 76 degrees I’ve ever felt. And it still felt cold when we got up to go to church the next morning. I had to search the closets for something with long-sleeves/pants for Miles and I almost let Avery wear her fur cape (but her cow was wearing it)! I, for the first time since we’ve been here thought I could get away with wearing black. So what has caused this tremendous drop in temperature? Rain. Hard, steady, torrential rain-storms*. Rain like this for 30 minutes causes San Antonio to have 4 foot flooding and knocks down shallow-rooted trees in Maryland. Here, we get waterfalls. It gets soaked up by the ground, makes everything green and feeds the hundreds of waterfalls.

*At church people pray for the rain to stop (I guess that’s okay, and probably better than publicly praying for UH to win it’s football games). Maybe so they can get back to the beach and so their pools don’t overflow, but I bet some other parts of the country would love some of our moisture. 15 inches in one night.