Home, home in the rain. . .

 SOUTHERN PINES, NC -- We spent a month in the Pacific Northwest and barely felt a drop of rain.  Now that we're back in my native Sandhills, Mother Nature is collecting her debt.

 The weather was decent for the family shindig the 19th, and we had a wonderful weekend, with my grandmother's six-bedroom house full of cousins Saturday night.  My aunt from Chicago was back in North Carolina for the first time in 11 years, after a long spell of care-taking for her late husband.

 She and my aunt from Greensboro, sisters together again in the house where they grew up, were a joy for the "younger" ones in my generation to see.  We remember the two of them in their 20s, and though they are 88 and 82 now, and their steps are slow and sometimes wobbly, they are pretty much the same.

 We even put on a small party for the Chicago aunt, who turned 82 on the 20th, complete with her favorite, pecan pie.

 The Aunts left on the 22nd, and it's been raining since.

 We came east three weeks early for the family to-do, and now are bunking alone in my grandmother's house, courtesy of my cousin and her husband, who live in St. Louis.  They bought the old and run-down place four years ago, and have restored it to a point far past its former glory.  Things work much better than they ever did when I visited as a child, when flushing a toilet was about like pulling the handle on a slot machine --there was always way too much chance of a poor result.

 In two days, we set out on our next adventure, a train trip to Poughkeepsie, NY, to visit Prince Charming's family.  Neither of us feels like making the long drive north, and the train station here in Southern Pines is quite convenient.

 My grandmother's longtime next-door neighbor's son will drive us the 12 miles to the station, and at 5:45 a.m. no less.  My brother will drive down from Greensboro and pick us up Sunday night.

 In the meantime, we've been passing the time in local coffee shops and public libraries that have wi-fi, as there is no Internet (also no TV)  at the house.  After a couple of days of rain, I outran my holds list from the library back home (e-books are wonderful), and became desperate enough to buy two jigsaw puzzles, which I've been working on obsessively.

 I've even come to enjoy the laundromat as entertainment, as laundry facilities at the house are still a work in progress.

 The local weather forecast is for more rain.  Same for Poughkeepsie.  Sigh.