Books and Storms

I have rediscovered the loft in my house. It's such a glorious place. Because my house has an open floor plan (meaning that there are no walls separating the kitchen, living room, reading room, etc.), the sound carries from room to room. No matter where I go I can hear The Young and the Restless booming from the living room everyday at noon. Yet, when I go upstairs to the loft it's so pieceful. Because the room is on a higher level than the rest of the house, you feel somewhat disconnected, and though you can still hear the noise from the house, it is not bothersome. Of course, I go in the loft to read. I feel like it's my own corner of the world where nobody can touch me. I secretly wish that I could install bookshelves along the walls and make it into a partial library.

This is a view of the side of our house from the stairway leading up to the loft, and normally there wouldn't be a green dumpster in view, but the house next to us is still being built. That's the vegetable garden to which my step dad eagerly tends and there is a stone path that goes around the perimeter of the house. The backyard view is so cute with the garden railroad. The little house is a children's playhouse that my step dad constructed and uses as a shed for garden tools.

I spent all of yesterday morning upstairs in the loft, huddled in a blanket and reading The Shadow of the Wind. The latter is a gothic novel set in Barcelona (yay!) with wonderfully ominous passages. I love gothic literature. It was an appropriate read for yesterday because just after I took the above photos, a huge thunderstorm rolled in. The clouds were absolutely treacherous and very promising of the storm to come. As I mentioned, I was reading my book when I looked up and peered out the window. I watched as the sky turned black and the yard light in our backyard clicked on, sensing night time. Still in my pajamas, I skipped down the stairs and ran outside to take a picture of the clouds. Just as I stepped through the door the rain began and pelted me in the face. Nonetheless, here are the resulting photos.

It was beautiful. Summer storms are definitely something that I never experienced when I lived in Los Angeles. I love them.