Here comes the rain again....

it's wet but we're jake with everything

…but I don’t care because this year I live in a house with no holes in the roof, no big dark gaping holes that pour water from the ceilings of the rooms of my house, no cratered and splintered holes in the floors caused by holes in the ceilings above that result in holes in the ceilings and floors below, no cracks around the door frames that allow water to come pouring in over the doorsill.

Last year at the start of the October rains we lived in the palaceta, with no indoor running hot water or functioning kitchen. We wore down jackets inside; most rooms had a bucket beneath a hole in the ceiling. Most still do, in fact, but we no longer have to live amongst them, having moved into the guest house with its lights, hot running water, solid ceilings and floors, a functioning bathroom and windows that keep the rain out. Soon an oven and TV will be delivered and we will finalize the cabinet tops. Life is good.

Last week was a drizzly one, threatening but not quite managing to rain every day. Last night the sky finally made good on its threat: for hours the rain pounded down. It started around 1a, just a light pattering. I woke at 3a when it started coming down harder and harder and the lightning lightened my bedroom window. I checked the weather app and while there was a note saying “severe weather warning in effect” the app itself showed no rain at all, even at the moment I was looking at the app with the deafening sound of rain on our laundry room roof in the background.

It was only last night, over by morning - sometimes these severe weather warnings last for days. Still, if there is a clear point of transition from fall-that-feels-like-Indian-summer to fall-that-feels-like-winter-is-coming, it was this rainstorm. It rained long and hard. It rained so hard part of the horta wall collapsed into the potato rows. It rained so hard the giant empty swimming pool now has 2” of standing water in the deep end, unable to drain away due to fallen leaves collected at the bottom. It rained so hard half my roosters didn’t show up for feeding time, as if they know and are embarrassed by how slatternly and bedraggled they look in the rain.

When it’s misty or drizzly the calcadas on Olive Tree Lane can be dangerously slick in any type of shoes except rock climbing approach shoes, with their sticky gummy soles made for smearing footholds where none exist into solid rock. But since all my gear is still in containers an ocean away, I make do with my Nike tennis court shoes, walking flat footed in a horizontal shuffle as though on ice. Though moisture has fuzzily filled the air for more than a week and stopped pounding down only at 6a this morning, such are the well draining properties of Olive Tree Lane that by the time I walked down to feed the chickens at 6:45a, it was dry as a bone.

The olive trees, too, are transitioning, from their raw pruned shapes of late spring to healthy, bushy tree-like shapes. The Secret Garden continues evolving from the dense, dark and often dead foliage of when we arrived, to a sun-light dappled space where the shapes of the hedges forming walking paths are again discernible, where palms soar and bamboo sways.

This weekend Alberto brought over a young tree, a type that is fast growing and drought resistant. We have a larger one in the quinta garden. It has little white flowers, he tells me. But yours doesn’t, because it doesn’t get enough sun. You can tell that’s the problem, too, in the light-seeking, Seussical way the tree has grown between the great spreading branches of the Japanese plum and the medieval plane tree.. We’re going to put the new baby Seussical tree in the front garden over at the palaceta, where the trumpet bushes and false lavender and canna lilies (all also provided by Alberto and Rosa) have all taken admirable hold, beautified our spring and summer and made the palaceta, despite its challenges, feel like home. That was an important transition point, too, I think.

And despite the rain - or rather because of it - progress has picked up on a number of fronts. The exterior of the cottage is painted, a crisp white except for the benches which will be the same gray as the windows (not yet installed). The blue trim we chose is a very traditional look in the Alentejo region, Alberto tells us.

While walking Jake in the hills on the opposite side of the street, we met some neighbors, Fatima and Harry, who let us know they have been watching our renovations from a distance, with great joy and approval.

I knew the people who lived there, 34 years ago, Fatima told me, leaning from her third story window. I grew up here, I have always lived in this house.

Their home - which was built more than 100 years ago, and is 4 years older than the palaceta - has more than 30 rooms, and each floor is now occupied by a son with his family. We were so pleased that they stopped us on our walk to introduce themselves; it was a little funny to hear Herb’s reminder (if we can see them, they can see us) brought home so clearly.

So you’re not living in the big house now? they ask. Your property lights at night are amazing! they say. And they approve of the swatch of blue we painted on the porch of the palaceta. A beautiful color! they exclaim.

Later at home when we were walking up Olive Tree Lane, we heard a shout and look across the way to see Fatima and Harry on their third story balcony, standing with with arms around each other and waving and halloo-ing. We waved and hallooed right back. Already I am planning some kind of drinks-and-apperizery thing with the neighbors to celebrate the transition to real fall - I am delighted to have more neighbors to include on the list. I am looking forward to learning more history about this place that for a hundred years has born my nickname on tiles embedded next to the front door.

Tiago brought and installed a digital doorbell, so that when we are in the quinta’s garden apartment, delivery trucks or the postman can ring us. It works with wifi, up to 200 yards. So far the h has been the only one to ring it. It might be fun to put a sign on on it at Hallowe'en, encouraging trick-or-treaters to ring the bell, then we come howling down our long driveway, the h in his wolf mask wielding a chainsaw, me in my ghostly sheet screaming like a banshee. Those who do not race away screaming will get a caramel apple and full size candy bars, as Halloween has not penetrated Portugal to the point that there exists bags of fun-sized candy bars one can buy at Walgreen’s. (also: there is no Walgreen’s). I think it sounds like a hoot but the h says maybe my …dedication… to fear won’t be 100% appreciated here as it would in the US. Also, with all the upgrades, the house just isn’t as scary as it used to be. If the driveway and frontage still looked as it did last year, on the other hand…

Jake too is transitioning. During the drizzly days we noted he walked with a new old man’s hitch in his gait. Though this morning, after last night’s downpour and the subsequent dry break in the weather he is all bright eyes and bouncy joints. That boy has the rheumatiz, my granny Lulu might have said. My good beautiful bestest boy is thirteen now, a fact whose implications I am well aware of even if the h and I refuse to acknowledge them in any way except unspoken. His wants his walks with the same frequency, intensity and (im)patience as always, but doesn’t seem to notice or mind that they are shorter than they were just six months ago. His appetite is unchanged as is his affection for his network of friends whom he greets with the same equable, egalitarian love he has always shown. He gets anxious if he doesn’t see them for more than three days running.

Due to his above-average size relative to other dogs we see around the village, Jake is often met with canine anxiety, wariness, or in the case of one tiny lion-maned chihuahua, hysterical (but totally fake) aggression. Through it all Jake remains jake, a cool customer that will wait you out and then resume his assumption that the two of you are already friends.

He loves his naps, and if he sleeps more deeply than he did before, his dreams are still as full of phantom chasings and racings as ever, if the cycling of his back legs and the distant woofs of his dreaming self are any indication.

In the mornings, his rear legs take longer than the front legs to warm up. The familiar click of his toenails on the wood floor now are apt to be followed by a skitty little sliding sound, as if the muscles of his back legs are not always *quite* up to the task of holding him steady, or launching him upward onto a comfy couch or bed.

But after only a minute or more he is standing strongly, watching as I set into motion the routines of his day: breakfast, followed by the beloved dental stick; accompany me to the palaceta as I feed the baby henlets, tour the Secret Garden intimidating roosters while henlets romp in the flower beds. Return to the quinta while I have breakfast, maybe get a biscuit or two and begin waiting for the morning walk.

Walk is followed by a mid-morning nap, which will be interrupted to move from outside to inside, then back outside, depending on the weather, or if he hears Tiago or Paulo or Alberto outside, which will necessitate a visit and a little but not too much barking of joyful greetings. There will be lunch; afternoon napping inside and out, then an afternoon walk, as far as he feels like it and weather permitting.

Then, dinner, followed by the nightly property walk with the h and me, after which the evening is devoted to naps and a final visit outside to do his business. Sometimes - not always - he will accompany us to the churrasqueria, where he will visit with the folks in line while I am inside ordering and paying. Last night a woman with a younger dog, maybe five, walked up to the line, and Jake - whose muzzle is now half silver - went stiff-legged with his rump in the air, wagging, in a puppylike invitation to play.

More often, he will spend part of the evening between me and the h as we watch an episode of Industry or My Brilliant Friend, his body long and skinny between us with front paws touching the h and his back paws touching me, woofing lighty in his dreams.

After 9p, it is all about sleep for Jake, and it is deep and uninterrupted - but definitely not dreamless - until morning. Most nights he sleeps without incident at the foot of our bed, never touching the h but perhaps resting his chin on my ankle or shin in which case I hold very very still.

Not very often but also WAY WAY too often, he will nap on my side of the bed and then just call it a night, settling in like Godzilla sinking into a tarpit. No amount of trying to pull or push and shove his limp deadweight of eighty pounds out of my spot in the bed will wake him; there is a reason his first nickname was a song, Jakey Jakey So Slow To Wakey.

But at some point in the night he will wake and get creakily down from the bed, using the fluffy cushion for a step that we placed on my side. He’ll come look for me and settle down to sleep next to me, and I will whisper Sucker and run and get on my side of the bed which is still warm from his body. Not really about this last part; I wil often lay with him for a half hour or so, massaging his broad shoulders and, like last night listening to the rain before going back to bed with the h, with Jake out like a light until 8a the next morning, and lately, sometimes, even a little bit longer.

Thus ends a full and goodly day for a chocolate dignitary of a dog, a day I will repeat ad infinitum for as long as I am allowed, a day that’s kind of like a version of heaven.