The last few days in Tucson have been overcast.  If you have ever stayed through a rainy day in Tucson you will know that this is rarest of all weather patterns for us.  We have rain that falls in the front yard but not the back.  We have renegade clouds that fly in a clear blue sky and dump whole rivers of rain in a hour, but then disappear faster than the person who takes the last cup of coffee without making a new pot.  We have clear mornings and rainy, monsoony afternoons but I can't honestly remember the last time it was just cloudy, and rainy - all day, for days.

To say this makes the Tucson population euphoric is an understatement.  We are drunk with the rain.  The plants are not only green but they are all budding and flowering - it just takes a few days of rain here for them to show off, because the plants get drunk too.

My friend Beth and I ate lunch at the newly renovated Amtrak station's restaurant, and watched the trains go by, and gawked at the fat white clouds that were snagged on the Catalinas.  It was a lovely break in what has been a long, emotional week.  When the Carpenters sang the classic "Rainy days and Mondays", they hadn't seen a day like today.