A measurable rain fell yesterday morning. Except the device with which said measurements are conducted, failed. Broke. Developed a crack. I was looking forward to the post rain trip to the fence but was sorely disappointed to discover upon arrival no solid evidence of the rain I had just witnessed. Had it really happened? Of course. It was at least one quarter of an inch, if not more. I watched it run down the driveway, escaping toward town creek.

I relegated the broken gauge to the trash heap, another piece of nearly non-biodegradable plastic to sit in a landfill for several centuries. It would seem as though I’m part of the problem. Maybe next time I’ll get one made of glass. Although, judging by how much glass I’ve dug up out of my yard I think it stands a pretty fair chance of survival in a landfill. I think the biggest upside is that it won’t get all foggy and fuzzy and hard to read. Most plastic can have a bad reaction to ultraviolet light. Its why my old one broke, all on its own, sitting on a pole.

To console myself for being unable to measure the rain in my yard, I baked a batch of molasses cookies. It was a first, and I really didn’t do it to console myself, but saying I did means that talking about it isn’t a non sequitur. Back to the cookies. They taste okay. I’m going to tweak the recipe to see where it takes me because my mother used to make molasses cookies and I really liked them. It seems reasonable to suppose that reaching back into the past like that might be a response to grief and the facing of mortality. Looking for my youth, that sort of thing. If that’s the case, I’m okay. It will be fun, and I’ll have cookies.