"Ask and Ye Shall Receive"... or, "Wake Up and Look Around, You Idiot!"

We had a big dust storm two days ago here in the Valley of the Sun.  The wind blew and blew, and the dust was so thick it looked like fog.  It wasn't quite a "Haboob" like the one I wrote about a couple of years ago, along with a cool video, here -- it did not have the rolling clouds of dust you get with those -- but it was very windy and dusty for most of the day.

Then in the evening, it rained for about 5 minutes.

Five minutes was just enough rain to clear the skies of all that dirt - yay! .... and deposit it all onto my poor car -- bummer!

So after the 5 minutes of rain, my car looked like I had gone off-roading for hours through the mud.  It was literally covered.  It was muddy brown instead of silver-gray.  I could hardly see out of the windshield when I got in the car to take the kids to school the next morning (yesterday).  So I drove straight to the gas station and washed the windshield.  Better for driving, yes, but my car still looked a mud cake.

It was cloudy and a little windy again yesterday so I didn't want to wash the car - figuring either it would rain and this time would rain long enough to clean my car or it would rain for 5 minutes again, just long enough to make the car dirty, and either way, washing it first was a waste of time.

It didn't rain again.  This morning, the skies were clear blue, with only a few little puffy white pretty clouds.  And my car still looked like I had taken it off-roading, which might be an OK look if it were an SUV, but it's not - it's a Lincoln Town Car - and so it just looked silly.  And crappy.  And sort of embarrassing.

So I drove over to the car wash near my house - the kind you drive through and it washes the car for you, because that's all I had time for before meeting my client before the court hearing.

Everyone else in the neighborhood apparently had the same idea, because the cars were lined up out the driveway of the car wash place and halfway up the street!  No way I had time to wait in that line.

I thought of another automatic car wash place, not too far out of the way, and drove there.  Same thing - line around the building and out into the street.  Ugh!  Passed another one on the way to the freeway -- same thing -- huge line!

I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to drive around with my car looking like a muddy mess, and I drove toward the Courthouse.  I stopped at the traffic light just before the parking lot for the Court building and I sat there berating myself, "Dang, I wish I could have washed my car.  I hate that all the car washes were so full this morning.  I should have done it yesterday evening...  I hope my client doesn't see this mess..."

And then I noticed it.  A car wash!  Right across the street from the Court building!  A drive-through one!  With only one car waiting to enter!

I pulled in, paid my $7, drove into the car wash with my ugly brown muddy mess of a car, and emerged from the other side in my beautiful gleaming silver Lincoln Town Car...  oh, happy day!  Suddenly everything felt brighter, lighter, and more wonderful!

I'm still not sure if all my wishing made the car wash magically appear, as if in a dream, or if it's been there all along and I just never noticed it.  Either way, it felt like a gift from heaven!