The rain woke me up at 3 a.m. I didn’t mind. I like the rain, and of all the things that could wake a person up in the middle of the night, you can’t do better than rain. Well, I suppose a blowjob, but rain is nice too, as long as it stays outside, which it did.

I was awoken again later this morning by Bonnie informing me that the pilot in the water heater had once again blown out. Of all the ways for a wife to wake up her husband, “the water heater is out” is at the polar opposite end of the spectrum from “blowjob,” which, let’s be honest, could have come before the news about the water heater.

With that news, I decided it was time to get up, so I reached for my phone and was greeted with a text from Spectrum saying I would be without internet all day today due to upgrades. It’s 2025, and my city is just now getting fiber. I had hoped that by this point in my life, internet interruptions would be a thing of the past, the way cell phone outages are, but it seems like once a week, I have problems with my internet.

This text was the first I heard that I would be without internet today. Wasn’t that nice of them to give someone who works from home absolutely no advanced notice that they would be without internet all day? Fortunately, I haven’t been without internet at all today, and I suspect that their upgrade plans were postponed due to the rain.

Things could be worse, though. Two thousand people in my city were without power this morning. Had I been one of them on top of no internet or hot water, I might have gone postal. Of course, if I had no power, what difference would it make if I were without internet?

So, for the moment, I have internet, hot water, and power. The fresh scent of rain is drifting through the window, and the temperature has finally dropped to a more human level, but this wouldn’t be one of my posts if I left it on that note, though, would it? No, of course not, I have to complain, it’s in my nature.

The rain, so late in summer, yet so much earlier than we normally get rain, means that the weeds are going to start growing again, which means I’ll have to pull weeds now, and again this winter. The more urgent concern is that it was 90º yesterday and that heat didn’t just dissipate because it started raining, so now it’s just – to use a word my mom always uses to describe the current weather conditions and I hate it for reasons that I can’t explain – muggy.

Tomorrow, the sun will return to join all of this water on the ground in the air to try to choke the life from me, and to be honest, I just might let them.