Thunder Only Happens When it's Raining (and it makes the windows rattle, too)

Holy Crap.

I'm sitting at the computer, minding my own business, plotting ways to inflict painful, anonymous, vengeful death on my assholio movers who STILL have not delivered my stuff (Lily is getting a little tired of playing with the same one Barbie and the kitten is sooo over being put shoved in a basket and getting carried around like Toto to Lil's cloying, overbearing Dorothy), when a low rumbling makes me turn my head toward the window.

Hmmmm.

The dog, sleeping loyally at my feet, perks his ears up, but does nothing.

Then, BAM!!! The loudest crack of thunder I might have ever heard pounds down on the house like the steel boots of a thousand giants. The windows shake and shudder, and the dog is off and running, yalping and barking at the front door because maybe he thinks its the mail man dropping off a really big package? (he might actually rip the mail man's leg off his body, incidentally, if he ever got the chance, so strong is his instinct to protect his dwelling).

I swear I've never heard thunder like that in my life. It was wild and ripe, a concussion of clouds that can only be produced in a place where humidity is as thick as a strawberry milkshake.

But the air here is sweet. It's fragrant and you want to almost savor it on your tongue. It is delicious in a way that New York air could never be. It's air that carries the scent of year-round tropical lilies and the greenest grass and sweet tea and shaved ice.

It makes me feel kind of drunk and I almost weep with glee when I walk out of the house and instead of livery cab drivers cursing my ass out, or the sweating cement of buildings and sidewalks sealing me into a kiln-like tomb, there is only the low rumble of thunder. There is the chutt-chutting of cicadas and baby frogs and there is green grass and the squeak of a cat laying under a patio chair. And I think, yes. Yes. Yes.

This is the life for me.