driving along in my automobile

And after a day of driving rain and gloom, the sun is out and the world is gold and blue again.

I've been listening (yes, still! Holy schmoley, there are FIFTEEN CDs!!) to the 19th Wife and am amazed at the differences between reading a book and having the story told to you. I think about this book in the characters voices, which helps give body to the story, but I find I'm imagining a lot less about the scenes (what did a hot, still day in the desert sun look like in the pioneer days? What were the houses like in the small town?) even though I wouldn't get any more description from actually reading the book.

I wonder if this is why both my kids can disappear into a book they're reading on their own?

Yesterday I was booming down the road, listening, and there was a house coming down the road. A house, cut into two, still looking cheerful and pleased to go where it would be used (if sunny yellow paint and white trim can be said to have an air of excitement) - not an everyday occurrence on these roads, but still common enough so you glance and go on, and directly after that came an enormous round silver tank of some sort, shining in the  (brief) sun. I watched it pull under the overpass and registered wow, there's not a lot of extra room there, better steer toward the side of the road a bit

and started to do so, and

And then there was the deer.

Late Spring/early summer is a hard time for critters around here. The young'uns get the worst of it - they're nearly grown and out on their own, and have no idea of what that big expanse of hard-packed tarmac is (smash)

If I ate roadkill, this would probably be called the buffet season.

So, to recap -

Shiny instrument of hugeness on road to one side, dead (pre-killed) deer on the other.

I think I had about three inches clearance. The driver of the semi had dark hair, horrified eyes,  and a huge Adams apple that bobbed when he realized I wasn't scooting to the side.

And then we passed each other, and I went on, listening to my tale of polygamist woe and feeling very, very lucky that not only I wasn't a character in the book, I wasn't being smooshed on the highway either.