The Morning After

There was a time when The Morning After wasn’t a good thing.   It meant I had too much to drink the night before and had a hangover.  If you have ever had one of those, you know that hangover is a very understated word for what can be a miserable experience.  At this point, the love-of-my-life is thinking, Bud, you’re making yourself sound like you were a drunk.   I wasn’t.  But I was certainly capable of having a few with friends, the few becoming enough to wake up with a pounding headache and upset stomach, particularly if I didn’t remember to take a few Alka-Seltzer before I retired.  One of my funnier drinking night memories was in college.  A friend and I were in the fraternity house bathroom and I had just popped two Alka-Seltzer into a glass of water.  He looked at me and said, Can I have a couple of those?  I handed him two and he looked around for a glass, then popped the large tablets into his mouth.  I still laugh when I think of him standing there with a ridiculous grin on his face and foam beginning to stream from between his teeth.  Ah, youth.  I am still known to have a glass or two of something stronger than water but I can’t remember the last time I had enough to be hung over.  It’s a good thing … I don’t think this old body could handle that anymore.  So, why this post?

Last night, we had an unseasonably late rainstorm.  It only lasted a few hours and certainly didn’t end the drought we’re enduring but it rained very hard for a while.  Those of you who have been to the Los Angeles basin know that Socal is not known for clear air.   When we moved here in 1971, on bad smog days the air literally was tinted brown and you could feel it in your lungs.  We still have some smog days but they are rarely as bad as they were back then.  What you may not know is that the basin was always known for hazy skies, long before the automobile and industry brought the brownish stuff.  As a 45 year resident of the L.A. area, I look forward to the day after a rainstorm, when the downfall scrubs both the smog and the mist from our atmosphere and sometimes sprinkles the mountains with snow.  These days, The Morning After doesn’t mean a hangover, it means this, the view I got as I headed to the park on this lovely Saturday Morning.

Beats the hell out of a hangover.  Have a great weekend.

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Tags: feeling older, humor, mindfulness, nature, photos, postaday

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