First I will give you some good news. Today’s blog post has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH TOILET PAPER. I’m sure you were all ready to push the DELETE button if I was able to dig one more story out of the panic buying of toilet paper.

Instead, I’m going to talk about my next favorite topic: the weather.

Weather is very important to the citizens of the Phoenix metro area. I speculate that this obsession with weather stems from the fact that most of the days of the year include blue skies and sunshine. It’s true that for much of the year, people see the blue skies and sunshine from their windows because it’s too dang hot to go outside. This time of year, however, the weather is perfect. Blue skies and sunshine and temperatures in the high 70s or low 80s.

Except when it rains. The television meteorologists (even if they’re just pretty young women barely out of college wearing high heels and cocktail dresses and tossing their hair a lot) get very excited when they can report that rain is in the forecast. The weather is changing, they will say, barely able to hide the glee in their voices.

And Arizonans are excited as well. Jen’s son-in-law likes to stand at the bottom of his driveway and watch the palm tree fronds blow in the wind as the weather front moves in. I’m pretty sure I’ve overheard him saying, “A-yep, thars something blowin’ in fer shure.” Weather phenomenon excitement makes everyone sound like they’re from the heart of Appalachia.

As for me, weather changes are disheartening. I like my weather to be predictable: 75 degrees and clear skies. That’s why I bought a house in AZ. I take any unpleasant weather as a personal affront.

The news has been reporting that rain is coming to the Valley of the Sun. I awoke yesterday morning to mostly gray skies and few sprinkles. By last night, it was raining pretty steadily. This weather pattern is supposed to continue — in fact worsen — over the next few days. I’m not too distressed by that because Bill and I are leaving on Thursday for our Denver home, where he has a few doctor appointments and we will see as much of our family as possible in a few short days.

Of course, my sister Jen has already rained on my parade by telling me the weather people are predicting a rain/snow mix on the weekend. I’m pretty sure there would have been glee in her voice as well, but she texted the information to me. She managed to refrain from including the snowman emoji.