better things

We survived 2012 -- this year that was supposed to be so epic and terrible, according to no one and everyone.

More important, I end it more intact than I began it, I think. And I feel good, if not entirely Important, things ahead.

2013 has always been some kind of mental Rubicon for me -- after which I can begin planning my life.

This is what we have

This is sort of the Nebraska equivalent of posting lots of pictures of the ocean.

dark days, dark trees

Sky lines

I've been drawing lines my whole life. I think I just figured out why. 

Zoom in; zoom out

My parents made/brought me a lovely dinner in my new house that I don't live in yet, and set up a table for me with my nice new dishes, which I hadn't opened yet.

And also we sat on paint cans converted to chairs, amidst dusty chaos.

Basically my life.

Yah!

Also it rained. And Doctor Who with my mom.

All around a good time was had by all.

the horrific drought

 I cannot remember the last time it rained.

I can remember the days it almost rained. Storms have passed through us, over us. I have watched giant gray thunderheads spew lightning to the north and west and east.

The air has gotten sort of thick and moist, and the wind has picked up and blown cold around me.

Sometimes a few drops make it onto the porch, fat lackadaisical drops, completely uninterested in the plight of my mom's tomatoes.

When storms are in the area we all take a deep breath and wait, at least I do.

I watch the radar and feel this dread that nothing will come our way.

Even when massive green and red storm systems appear on the screen, the blobs move above and below us, weave just left or right -- or disappear altogether.

The corn crops are dead, have been dead for a while. Whatever isn't dead has been irrigated, probably further draining what is now rationed water.

We beat the Dust Bowl for the hottest month ever recorded in U.S. history.

The Platte River is empty.

My dad fretfully waters the vegetable garden, hoping the well doesn't dry out.

My mom looked at the sky the other day, and said "it feels like it's never going to rain again."

She has left easily soaked boxes outside, refused to close windows -- despite assertions from my dad that it will rain -- and offered the interior of her car as sacrifice to rain gods so typically tempted by an open sunroof.

And, nothing.

I can image how real sacrifices for rain came about -- not so much to appease the heavens, but to let out a nihilistic scream of anger and mourning for a world gone dead without water.

What I see when I look up (II)

You can't really own a tree. And you certainly can't own the sky. But at the very least you can rent access to them, which I have, apparently.