bits summer rainstorm

 There is a big storm moving in, the radar shows it will be here in a few hours - just as I will need to be leaving for work.  Someone told me it won't reach here, but I'm up anyway, as I woke up at 3 am and felt the rumbling overhead, and animal faces were at the door asking to come in.  They usually know what is what.  

Our Daphne dog is having a lot of trouble with her knees - she is over 12 now?  She has been coming in the upstairs door, but wanting out the downstairs door instead of climbing back up the stairs.  I've let her out the garage a few times, and this morning I made her a special bowl of dog food with milk because she had been laying on the porch outside most of the night and didn't want to come in because of the stairs.  But she made it.  She is the heaviest of the four dogs, and she has a habit of pulling her tendons a lot.  But this stiffness has went on for a few days and she might be feeling the weather coming, as well.

The potatoes I put out in the ground can benefit from the rain that is coming - it's been dry for a good long time.. and now we get a 'gully gusher' as it is predicting on the one site... I don't want to drive to work in that but it is what it is... 

We watched Ponyo last night, from Studio Ghibli.  It's been years.  Mark said it was 'lush' with all the marine life, and the simple but beautiful depictions of the boy's house, the food Ponyo eats for the first time, the little octopus that is sneaking over the lady's shoe and up into the house.  I understood some of the Japanese characters on buildings, posters and especially when the mother is signalling baka baka -repeater kanji (na) over and over again when she is angry.. I didn't catch all of what the boy sent back to his father at the end, but I got some of it.  

 Drinking more ginger licorice coffee and waiting for daylight - to feed the chickens if I can before the rain hits.. we'll just have to see how that works out.  Started doing my Japanese at level 19 again on the other profile, after refreshing on the phone profile for a while (which is at level 10?).  Japanese has three writing systems and they throw them all together sometimes, and that can get complicated, and make it a little harder to remember everything visually when it can be 'spelled' three ways and some of them are phonetic and some of them are iconographic so you just have to try to remember what it 'sounds' like at the same time.

It's 5 am now, and the rainstorm is rolling in as predicted by my weather site.  I have been telling myself to find a backup wall charger and cord for my phone to put in a plastic bag in my purse, and finally connected that today.  It's been a while since I carried one, and I should.