Rain Induced ADD

I take it back about the rain. It’s been pouring all day. On my patio, earthworms are holding up white flags. I’ve never seen such rain! It’s thumping and thumping and thumping on the roof like a bill collector pounding at my door.
Speaking of bill collectors, I got my 2010 Census envelope in the mail, and already they’ve sent a notice saying it’s late. I think the notice came before the census. I am not looking forward to filling that out. It’s not like I have anything to hide, it just seems like I did one just recently. Can’t they have a form that says, “Check here if nothing’s changed in 10 years.” Sure we’ve all aged, but that shouldn’t be too hard for them to figure out. Other than that, everything’s stayed pretty much the same. Filling out the census is just one more thing I don’t really want to do.
That list is getting longer. As I get older, it seems like the list of things I do want to do gets smaller. I’ve narrowed down my wants to a few essential things. I want tasty food, less commercials, and a lot more sleep than I’m getting.
They say we don’t get enough sleep in this country. How can we? The phone rings at all hours. Kids are sick. The dog is sick. Computers and late night TV vie to keep us up. And this freaking rain. It’s like a jackhammer out there.
Now there’s a job. Can you imagine the physical strength it must take to hold a giant vibrator all day long? I bet those guys start out weighing 300 pounds and have to be replaced every few months when their weight drops to 150.
Once I rented a floor buffer. I’d never used one, and I turned it on and it swung me around the room like I was on Dances with the Stars. That’s one powerful machine. I never did have my way with it – I just hung on and hoped it would eventually cover the entire floor at least once. My arms were sore for days.
I’ve been listening to comics on the satellite radio that came as a trial version on my car. Those guys are so funny, but when I tried to analyze what they were doing, all I could observe is that they just surprise you all the time. They say something like, “I got a dog on my birthday. I married her on New Year’s Day.” They take you where you don’t expect to go, and it’s amusing. I can’t wait to get in my car now.
One was talking about Hot Pockets – you know, those frozen fast-food microwavable delicacies for teens and singles? He wondered why they weren’t on menus in restaurants. “I’ll have the chicken cordon bleu with a hot pocket on the side.” It made me think of food names when I heard him. Some names like Wheat Thins tell you pretty much what you’re getting. Others, not so much. If you’d never seen these products, what would you think they were? Skittles? Nestles Quik? Cheetos? They could be anything. Cheetos could be cheetah toes. Skittles could be little skillet things. And Quik could be microwavable fast food.
Oh that rain outside! Who can think? On a night such as this, a person would do well to simply head to bed and hope sleep steals in during a lull in the deluge. Please forgive me for saying “Hooray” for rain.

Rainy Day Hooray

We get a lot of rain in Oregon. Right now it’s pounding on the roof like a million squirrels are doing aerobics up there. I went into the laundry room and found water on the floor. This happens for three reasons: the toilet has overflowed, the trap in the washer is full of rusty coins, or the gutter outside is clogged up.

I don’t know how I became Little Miss Fixit in my house. Well, actually, I do. I have to do it because my husband says, “Aw, screw it.” He doesn’t actually say that, but it rhymed.

What he says is to remind him tomorrow and he’ll fix it. “I’m reminding you right now,” I say. “I’m watching this show right now. It will keep until tomorrow.” When tomorrow comes, I say, “You told me to remind you to clean the gutters out.”

“I said to remind me tomorrow,” he answers.

“But it is tomorrow,” I say.

“It’s actually today,” he says. “It will keep until tomorrow.”

He thinks he’s clever. When I strap on the tool belt he turns the TV up higher so my hammering and drilling won’t disturb his show.

This evening, after I mopped up the water, I got the screwdriver and took the washer apart. I hate checking that trap because it’s got this very complicated clamp that frightens me. I worry I won’t get it back on the hose right and water will spray out like a fire hydrant. The washer was fine.

Then I checked the gutter and sure enough, it was full of pine needles. Thank goodness – that’s easy to fix. Whenever it rains hard, which used to be perpetually, the gutters get clogged and overflow, forming a puddle that finds its way into our laundry room.

I like the rain, though. It’s a good excuse to sit inside and read a book or play on the computer without feeling guilty. We’ve had the most awful run of sunshine in Oregon this winter, though. Usually we can count on steady rain from Halloween to the 4th of July, with the exception of a couple of weeks of sun in January, and maybe a day or two scattered here and there, but that’s it. Nobody uses umbrellas here when it rains, but I’ve seen people carrying them to get some shade.

I guess I’ve got the opposite of the rainy day blues. What would that be, I wonder. Rainy day reds?

I can hear the frogs down at my neighbor’s house croaking their delight. Well, they croak for no reason all through the evening. And they don’t actually croak. They ribbit. There are so many – hundreds of them – that you can hear them over the TV with all the doors and windows shut. Still, they seem to ribbit more when it’s raining. People come over and can’t believe how loud they are. It’s like a frog rock concert. I’m going to go now and let the rain and the frogs lull me to sleep – they almost drown out my husband’s snoring. Almost.