ANOTHER RAINY DAY

It seems as though it has already rained forty days and forty nights. Not only has it rained, but there has been thunder and lightning. When there are strong winds, we tend to lose electricity. It follows: one feels powerless without power! It is hard to read by flashlight only. Candles romantically illuminate but do little to enable reading small print.

These gray days make me tired, too tired to even look for the rainbow that must be there when it rains and the sun shines at the same time. Having seen rainbows in my lifetime (actually two, at once, over the Golden Gate Bridge) I can stay comfortable and dry and picture the rainbow in my head. It satisfies me, yet I wonder if memories like that are robbed by age. Are they less significant than plot novels, which I can't retain as soon as I have read the last page?

Straining to breathe the humid air, I realize that I am also straining it somehow through my nostrils. I wonder when my evolutionary lungs will revert back to gills. My ability to hold my breath under water has never been strong. In fact the closest i came to it was watching the guy on TV having himself waterboarded. Of what am I thinking? Give me some dry air!

Parking lots are small lakes. There is no way to see just how deep they are until I follow the car in front or find myself wishing my car was amphibious. Indoors, the humidity is quickly oxidizing the brass and silver I so recently used all my elbow grease to polish. Pages stick to one another; the next page makes no sense. Confusion forces me back. Everything around me has lost color.

I've begun counting the squirrels in the back yard and am sure a pair is missing. When I hear pounding I search for the Ark but since we live on a hill, I have yet to see signs on Noah, not even Evan Almighty. Meanwhile I watch the weather map and get cheered up. It's worse everywhere else. As I swallow more Vitamin D, I fantasy the death I am avoiding from tornadoes, forest fires, and earthquakes. Turning into a prune with moss on my North side seems preferable, somehow.

RAINY DAYS

Something about a rainy day brings me back to childhood. I no longer 'play' outside on sunny days so why should it make a difference? Yet, difference there is. My muscles and bones ache and I have no energy (or so I tell myself) to start a project. All I want to do is sit in a chair and read, occasionally getting up to stuff my face, to stop the stomach gurglings.

If it rains all day and I can rationalize there is nothing I HAVE to do, I can eliminate the several minutes it takes to get dressed. My furniture and the books I read do not care about my appearance. But rain means something different to many people. It makes grass grow when you can't get it mowed and can only wish you had a goat on your lawn.

If you are so unfortunate as to suffer a basement water problem or be in a flood plain, filling sandbags must not be fun and wading indoors even less comfortable. (Watching your belongings float around the basement is even worse.) I can't imagine the horror of sewer systems backing up!

However, when it is just normal rain, the gentle tapping on roof windows, the muted light, the fresh green outside makes it not unpleasant. When your hairdo does not suffer getting wet, you can even happily go out in the car and run errands without having to locate sunglasses. Nature seems forgets to keep a proper balance. I'm not complaining (as I listen to the 110 degree temperatures around the country, the tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, and whatever else people are subjected to by Mother Nature). Insensitively, I silently think, "Better you than I". I can tolerate the snow in NE winters and the cold. I am forced to tolerate the price of staying warm in the winter but I do not have to watch my house float down the river, burn up, or disappear in a gap created by an earthquake or sink hole. No, indeed, I can just hunker down in a comfy chair and imagine all the things I could do if it wasn't raining. It's almost as good as being there!