It's a bright sunny morning in the desert. I'm sitting on the back porch sipping my coffee watching a couple birds fight over something or other. The gentle hum of someone's A/C unit in the distance.

There's a full day ahead. High School, email, meetings, freeways. But for right now in this moment just exhale.

I've managed to work myself into a diet of eating lunch and dinner only. It wasn't even a planned thing really, it just sort of happened. I find I'm not remotely hungry in the mornings as I get older. What I didn't realize though is that this form of going 16 hours without eating is a form of intermittent fasting. Weird that it worked out this way.

Shoutout to my neighbors who fired up their Harleys last night for a bit at 11:00pm. Love you.

Huh, I realize I totally missed my chance for a passive aggressive Nextdoor post "Urgent alert: motorbikes at night".

No, you shouldn't be wearing flip flops.

Do Dr Martens make any, you didn't ask. No they don't and sandals aren't a thing going anywhere near my feet.

Springtime in Arizona. The Palo Verde tree in my front garden is blossoming nicely.

Now, I can't say what it is, but something that grows here my body doesn't like. I managed to avoid allergies growing up (or hay fever as it was known in England). But my eyes and nose run like mad in the spring here. And as I get older it seems to get slightly worse. Thankfully there are pills for all this that work like magic.

Sedona, 2017.

It's nice going up North every once in a while to see actual seasons and the leaves change colors.

As I type this the rain is beginning to fall. It's a cool, grey, overcast kind of day. The best kind in the desert. The smell of that rain though, love it.

Peoria, 2017.

When you live in the Sonoran Desert area of the Southwest, summers are interesting things. 115° during the hottest part of the day is normal. You go from air conditioned building to air conditioned building to air conditioned car and think nothing of it.

October is around the corner which means it's now cool enough outside in the mornings to have the windows open. It's the little things in life.

So this is what fresh air is. I remember this.

Just around sunset the clouds started to roll in. Nothing especially unusual about that in monsoon season, but what followed was…interesting.

Thunder. Lightning. Wind.

— Kevin Spencer (@kevin_spencer) August 24, 2017

The thunder got louder, the time between lightning flashes and the boom got less and less and less.

Super thunder, super lightning. And good lord rain. Like, all of it.

— Kevin Spencer (@kevin_spencer) August 24, 2017

And then the loudest bang you ever heard just outside our bedroom window. The lightning deciding our road a perfect place to strike. It was one of those ok, now I'm awake moments. Everything seemed ok in the 30 seconds I spent in the torrential downpour having a look. Our house looked fine, neighbors house looked fine.

This morning Nextdoor was abuzz with holy shit, did anyone's house get hit last night?. Because that's how neighbors communicate with each other in 2017 yo. Absolutely no trace of anything when I had a look around in daylight so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it remains but a mystery.

This week marks a small personal milestone. Somehow I've now lived in America for 20 years. What?

In fact, because Italy was home for 2 years prior to that, I've now lived more of my life outside of England than inside.

I'm forever British, European, and yet American all at once. It's complicated, but somehow it all just works.