Yeah, Yeah, Everybody says that no matter where you live. But after almost 8 years of living here, I think I finally believe it. Today was beautiful, sunny, and hot - almost 90 degrees - not a single dark cloud anywhere to be seen and only a 20 percent chance of rain. My hubby and I had been working hard at various chores and around 3pm I walked out to the shop where he was working and talked him into taking a break from the project he'd been working on for a few hours. He'd just finished putting together one of those canvas tent/carports from Costco and was planning on staking it down when I showed up with promises of mexican food at Rio Sabinas and a trip to the river to splash around with our two dogs, Jake and Kenzie.
He looked up at the sky, then looked at me and shrugged. "Sure. Why not. I'll tie the carport down when we get back." Soon we were all piled in the truck, and after running a short errand, headed for Rio Sabinas. By the time we got to Belgrade, the skies had darkened considerably, but no rain yet. Hmmm. Maybe it will blow over, I thought.
We parked in the shade, and Jim put the windows down a little. The temperature had already dropped 10 degrees, but I was worried it would still be too hot in the truck for the dogs. "Lower," I told my hubby, "put the windows down more. Don't want the dogs to get overheated."
Not 10 minutes after entering Rio's, Jim glanced over and looked out the the window towards our truck. "Look outside," he said.
"OH,...MY,....GOD!"
Not only was it raining, it was raining sideways and blowing pretty hard.
"GREAT!" I sighed and shook my head.
Not only was the truck getting soaked inside, so were the dogs and so was our house not 10 miles away, since for the first time this summer, I'd left every window in the house open!!!
"Oh well, whaddya gonnado?"
We turned back around, looked at each other, and smiled. "No point in running out there to raise the windows now," I said.
"You brought towels for the river, so we can sit on those on the way home," Jim offered helpfully.
We laughed and turned back toward the TV, munched on chips and salsa and watched baseball for another 20 minutes or so.
Once the rain stopped and we were done eating, we payed our tab and headed out to the truck. I opened the passenger side front door and climbed in. Not too bad, I said, and grabbed a towel to put down on the seat just in case it was wet.
Then I turned and looked into the back seat and busted out laughing. Jake, our black lab-german shepherd mix, was not amused. He had a mournful look on his face, and the position of his ears telegraphed his displeasure (one was straight up, the other bent backwards in his classic I'm-not-happy-with you-right-now position). He was soaking wet (as was Kenzie). To top it all off, he was covered in sprinkles of the buds from the trees we'd parked under that had blown in throught the open window next to him, making him look as if some festive, mexican pinata had burst over the top of him.
"Oh, poor Jake," I laughed, as I took my towel and tried to dry him off with it. Jim offered up his towel to try to dry off Kenzie.
We drove towards home, wondering what the house was going to look like on the inside. "Break out some towels, honey - we're gonna be mopping up window sills for awhile."
We're only a few miles down the road at this point, when Jim's cell phone starts ringing. He pulls it out of his pocket, but since neither one of us recognized the number, he didn't answer it. "Wonder who that was." Then my phone starts ringing. Same number. Hmmm. Maybe we left something at Rio's and our friend Carrie, the manager is calling to let us know.
"Hello?"
"Diane?"
"Yes?"
"It's your next door neighbor, John."
"Hi John, what's up?"
"Your tent just took off."
"What????!!!! "Our tent did what???!!!"
"Your tent just went airborne and is now 3 pastures away between Pat's house and Walker Road."
"Oh, GREAT!!!!" I looked at Jim. "Our neighbor John just said our tent just went airborne."
Back to neighbor John. "I went outside to try to catch it, but before I could get to it, a gust of wind took it, and it sailed over the neighbor's barbed wire fence."
"Thanks for trying anyways."
"No problem. See you guys later."
I hung up my phone and looked at Jim.
"Guess we can turn the sprinklers off now," he said dryly.
I laughed and shook my head. "Yup. guess so."
I looked at our temperature gauge on the dashboard. It had dropped 31 degrees within an hour. Lesson learned. If you don't like the weather in Montana, wait five minutes.....but be sure to tie everything down and close your windows before you leave! :0)
