Late in the day a week or so ago, LC and I climbed into the truck and drove less than five minutes, until we reached BLM land.

It had been a hot, dry and busy day filled with........something. Painting or patching or staining very likely, although I can't really remember right now but that is how many of our days the past couple of weeks have been spent.

When I looked up at the sky I realized that a storm was rapidly approaching.

The sun was beginning to set in the west, but the sky was an increasingly volatile mixture of sun, blue sky, ominous looking dark clouds, rain, and lightning from the south that was seemingly headed right for us.

As with so many other days, we believed that Atomic City was going to get a storm.

As with so many other days, we didn't.

As with Cody, Atomic City is located in a very huge bowl that is surrounded by mountains, and somehow the rain always seems to skirt around us.

Always holding the promise of rain, but the promise is so often unfulfilled.

On this particular evening we could see the rain coming from multiple directions. Could actually see the rain bands. Could see it all approaching us in a sky that was alive and dancing in front of us.

When we stopped the truck in the middle of the dirt road on BLM, LC climbed out and began rapidly snapping pictures of the storm. I climbed into the bed of the truck and did the same thing.................

We worked hard on LC's workshop yesterday, ignoring the heat and determined to make some headway in getting him set up in the two car garage that is now his space.

A space and a place to set up tools and benches. To find a home for drills and saws and drivers and all kinds of other mysterious guy-things that I don't recognize.

I spent all yesterday afternoon and yesterday evening listening to a grown man constantly exclaim "Hey! I forgot I even had that!" "Hey! Do you know what THIS is?" "Hey! I thought I'd lost that!"

As long as I have known LC he has never had a shop, and has spent years cramming tools into too-small spaces.

He deserves to finally have a space that belongs to him and I am glad that he has it now.

It is good to hear his child like enthusiasm at finding a place and a space to set up his things.............

When I was 24 years old, I was wandering through a shopping mall in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Sean was two months old, and he was sleeping safely and soundly in a small car seat in the basket of a shopping buggy.

It was the middle of winter and he was wearing a matching white knit sweater and hat, and was wrapped in blankets.

As I wandered through the mall an old lady walked towards me.

As she approached she smiled at me and I politely smiled back at her, and when she reached me she looked down at Sean and told me how beautiful he was.

I smiled and thanked her.

And then she looked up at me and proudly said "MY baby is 48 years old".

I smiled indulgently at her, in that way that only a 24 year old young woman with a beautiful healthy infant can.

She was an old lady calling an old man "her baby".

I didn't understand.

Now I understand....................

I joined Facebook way-back-when, and posted only once or twice before deciding that I didn't like it and didn't see the point in it.

When I started my business in Cody I again started a FB page, and one day absently decided to do some searching around.

My mother still stays in touch with my first husband (the father of my boys).

One day I finally told her on the phone that I couldn't be her mother anymore. I'm not your mother. You're MY mother. Don't call me anymore until you're ready to BE my mother.

She hasn't contacted me in over twenty years.

Not even last year. Not even when Sean died.

I wish that I hadn't gone searching around.............