today is going to be a wonderful day

sometimes you find what you've been looking for.
sometimes you find a very cranky old woman with a thick russian accent who scowls at you and slams a gate in your face.

for your sake, i'll start at the beginning.

we were just going out for lunch, shar and i. it was a gorgeous day; hot, calm, not a cloud in the sky. those are the days that i like best.
after we finished our pandinos, shar mentioned a garage sale she'd been at the day before. it sounded completely amazing and she told me i'd find scads of sweet things there, so we packed up and started off to find it.

i love shar. shar is great. but i found this out about shar yesterday:
shar doesn't know where she's going.
we went this way, and that way, and back over there, and east and north and down that street.

i guess that's about when it started to rain a little bit.

i looked down and saw this.

then i looked up.

the first crack of thunder reached deep down into my head and knocked hard on my brain, and a shard of lightning flew from one end of the sky to the other.
we walked a little faster. we talked about death.

we found it.

the garage sale, i mean. not death.
dead people don't web log.

the point is not that.
the point is that we made it.
after three hours of walking.
just as the woman was packing up her last few boxes.
the gate was open, so we just kind of stood there; two pathetic, wayfaring strangers.
she scowled angrily.
"VHAT DO YOU VHANT?"
we smiled. the kinds of smiles that you smile at someone who hates your guts.
shar was brave. "you're probably packing up eh?"
"VHOULD YOU LUK AT DAAT? DAAT SKY EES SO BLECK! EES GOING TO REEN, AND I AM NOT PUTTING MY TINGS OUT IN DAAAAAT WITHER."
and with that, she slammed the little gate shut and jammed a bony finger at the threatening clouds.
"YUS LUK! LUK!"
she kept hollering after us as to yus luk at daaaat sky as we hurried away. i began to feel like she thought it was maybe our faults that the sky looked the way it did.
it wasn't.
and that's when the sky opened up and dumped twenty thousand gallons of water right on our heads.
to say we were wet is kind of like saying barclay is cool. it's true, but it's a monstrous understatement.
we were soaked. and freezing.
we stepped in a puddle that turned out to be an ocean and had to wade through water up to our knees.
i was wearing my newspaper on my head to keep the rain from dribbling down the back of my shirt.

but we [eventually] made it home.
and guess what?
the sidewalk was right:
it was a wonderful day.
because shar is good company,
AND
because after i got home and dried off, mum and dad krause threw me a birthday party and gave me THESE:

kind of a booky rainbow after the rain.

emma, a tale of two cities, jane eyre, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility, treasure island, tom sawyer & huckleberry finn, and little women. how happy am i?

very.