The thunder...rumbles?

We had a fantastic thunderstorm a few nights ago. The kind where you can't sleep because your room is being constantly lit and re-lit by flashes of lightning. Or, even if you're the kind of (crazy) person who can sleep with the lights on, there was the thunder. At first it was so faint that I thought my neighbor was listening to her music too loudly (again). But once the storm got nearer, I was forced to mentally apologize to my neighbor for blaming her. But not too whole-heartedly. It's not like she's ever apologized for waking me up at 2:30 in the morning last year. We'll call it even.

It was the kind of storm that made me want to go stand on our deck and watch the show. If that were possible.

Which it isn't. Even if I had managed to drag myself out of bed to look, here's what I would have seen from our deck:

Trees.

From our porch?

Townhomes. Then trees. Lightning storm? Not so much. Maybe some flashes of light in the clouds, but to see a streak of lightning is rare.

So I stayed in bed and imagined myself up a fantastic Arizona monsoon. One where you could watch it building up all day over the valley. The clouds would get darker, the humidity would build (yes, Virginia, there is humidity in Arizona). You could stand out on our deck and watch the lightning start over Tucson city.

And then, BAM! It hits. Sheets of rain that flood the washes--and your garage--in minutes. Wind that rips the screens of your windows and removes the kiddie pool from your backyard (we never found it). And the lightning. Beautiful, enormous streaks of light everywhere you looked.

But the best part was the thunder. Usually it sounded like a bowling lane--a long rumble followed by a crash that echoed off the mountains. My favorites were the ones that just cracked right above you. The ones that set off car alarms and made our dog pee on the carpet. That's when you knew the storm was right above you and that you should probably get off the deck.

Thunder doesn't sound right out here in the East. Instead of a long roll followed by a nice, satisfying crash, you just hear the rolling. Like the bowling lane has been carpeted over and someone forgot to replace the pins. Listening to the thunder here makes me edgy--I keep waiting for crashes that never happen. I'm not sure what it is: no mountains? The trees? (I have more trees in my backyard than in all of Tucson).

I guess the storms make me a little homesick. I start thinking it's time for a trip home. My brain tells me I'm being ridiculous--August in Tucson is about the worst it can get. 105 degrees, anyone? 110? But then the monsoons come rolling in every evening to give some relief. And the desert during monsoon season? Beautiful. Barely a desert at all.

But until piano teaching and cake decorating brings in a heck of a lot more money than it does right now, a flight home is out of the question. So instead I just lay in bed, listening to the storm rumble away.

These people have no idea what they're missing.