Rain, Rain...

Well last week was a whopper when it came to weather. Here on the west coast EVERYONE got rain, even us here in Vegas. In fact we got more rain in three days than we did all of last year combined.
I actually like the rain...as I say in my book "Sensitivity 101 for the Heterosexual Male"

After church we would go back to my grandmother’s house for a big dinner with even more extended family. One person I really connected with was my great-grandmother, I called her Nana. The two of us could sit and talk about anything for hours. She would tell me stories about when she was growing up. At fi rst I didn’t believe her when she told me,“We had no television, no electricity, and no indoor plumbing. Living on a farm, there weren’t that many other kids around either. I spent most of my time reading and doing chores. My favorite pastime was making noodles with my mom.”
There was a feeling I got around Nana that I felt nowhere else in my life. It was calming and relaxing. Part of that came from her distinctive smell. It was a woodsy aroma, not really feminine but not overly masculine either. It reminded me of the faint, almost sweet odor of fertilizer. Nana said, “What your nose detects is years of working on a farm and then spending all summer working my gardens to make them beautiful to look at.” Whatever it was, it worked on me.
I got along so well with her that my mom would let me spend all of my summers with her and my great-grandfather up at the cottage they owned in rural Wisconsin. The smells there were special too. The air was always filled with fresh cut green grass, the charcoal scents of a hamburger cooked on an open campfire, and the brackish seaweed that lay on the beaches in the early morning. It was a great place for me to be alone with my thoughts. I would spend most of the morning fishing on the small lake with him, the afternoons lying on the grassy hillside next to the cottage looking aimlessly into the sky, and then the night talking to Nana as we sat in two rocking chairs on the screened-in porch that overlooked the lake. We would share the night by sharing life.
As we sat together, drinking homemade lemonade and eating special sweets that she’d made during the day, Nana became my first exposure to the occult, ESP, UFO’s, and the afterlife. Anything that others thought of as abnormal was normal to her.
Her lemonade was really the part I enjoyed the most. She always floated a sprig of mint on top. I hated the taste of mint, but loved the smell, so I would take the sprig out of my glass and put it in my pocket so I could enjoy it later.
On the subject of religion, she reinforced my conviction that it does not matter how or where you worship God, as long as you believed in Him. She said, “Treating people with the respect they deserve is the best way to get into heaven.”
We also had another ritual which I still do to this day. Whenever the smell of rain came to the air--you know the smell--we would wait excitedly for the storm to hit. As soon as it did, there were the two of us out dancing in the downpour. Nana told me, “Rain is the cleansing agent God sends to wipe away your sins."

So the rain that fell this past week must have been a sign from above letting us know He forgives all of us at the same time.

Because of this weather mess though some people weren't as nice as they could be. I was stuck in the Albuquerque New Mexico airport on the worst of the days--Thursday. Many, many flights were cancelled all through the west, like Arizona, California and Nevada. One man in particular was just down right mean. He was yelling at anyone who would listen about how dare they cancel his flight. He approached a young girl at the SouthWest gates and preceeded to humilate the poor girl for a good twenty minutes. All I could hear her say was "I'm sorry, I don't control the weather." He stomped away madder than ever.
I was next in line and even though I didn't know the man, apologized to "Melissa" for what she was going through that day. She just smiled and said "Just part of the job...most people understand."
Melissa helped me get onto a flight and even moved my luggage to that one. I asked her name and said I would write a letter to her boss thanking her for her friendliness. I even saw her smile as I left.
But back to "the man." Of course he was waiting in my area of the airport and still complaining about missing his cancelled flight.
As "Dimitri" started to call my flight to line up, this idiot walked straight up to him and started to complain very loudly about "why are they leaving, if I'm not?" Dimitri started to explain, but "the man" got extremely agitated and walked away mumbling "F***ING rude, A**HOLE."
That did for many of us in line. As he returned to get "your name, so I can report you" a few us yelled back at him about him being rude. He looked at us all, threw up his middle finger and cursed us all out. One older man went and got security, and as we were being loaded into our plane, he was handcuffed and loaded  to who-knows-where.
I guess my moral here is that God is listening and reacts to everything, even if you don't think he is. We all got what we deserved...me a plane ride home...Melissa and Dimitri justice and a smile...and the mean old man, a place to calm down by hinself--jail.

By the way here is my book trailer--Hope you like it.



Till next week,

Phil