I Hate the Rain

I detest, abhor, and loathe rain.

Not me.

I actually like the idea of rain. I like rain at night, when I’m going to sleep. I like the sound it makes on the roof as I burrow under the covers.

I also like rain in the morning. I like to watch it while I drink coffee.

I like the rain when I’m at Starbucks, because somehow it makes buying ridiculously overpriced coffee seem more practical and less excessive.

But say I’m trying to do something productive like write a blog post, help my sister-in-law clean before her son’s birthday party, or smile…then I hate the rain.

Rain makes my head hurt, and it makes me sad. When I can’t see the sun, I feel depressed.

I vividly remember loving the rain one time in my entire life. Sienna was about a year old, and I had just started watching Veronica Mars. It was a Saturday, and all I wanted to do was sit inside and watch my new-found love. The Ogre, though, wanted to take a walk and do all kinds of outdoorsy family things.

I whined, pleaded and pouted to no avail. Shoes went on. Child went in stroller. I sullenly walked out the front door.

We hadn’t gone three steps before the skies opened up and let loose with a torrential downpour.

So we went home, and I turned on Veronica Mars and thanked the weather gods for loving me. I was so happy I poured myself a glass of wine at 2 p.m.

What’s weird is that I love the snow. I even love the snow when it’s not sunny. Snow is so lovely and ethereal. It turns everything into a magical wonderland.

How could you not love this?

Rain is dreary and boring. It turns everything into mud.

Blech

This really makes me a horrible person, actually, right here and right now. I live in a state that is currently enduring the worst drought it has been through since the Dust Bowl. All around me, my fellow Texans have been praying for rain to put out the fires, revive their dead beyond dead plants, and generally render this land habitable once again.

I’ve been with them in theory…right up until it actually rained.

I know this post sounds really hyperbolic and dramatic, but it’s actually true. Rain really does make me horribly depressed. My head has been hurting for three days and I’m on the verge of tears just now, as I’m writing this.

So now I face a moral dilemma: how do I be grateful for something that the world needs, that the world has been praying for, that is truly a gift, but which makes me personally want to stick my head in the oven?

Not to go all Sylvia Plath on you, but I’m genuinely grateful that I have the distraction of my in-laws and children today. Otherwise, that oven would look mighty tempting. And the fact that it’s electric and not gas would probably not occur to me until after my face was already uncomfortably hot.

Then I would just feel like an idiot, making me even more depressed.

Luckily, it is my precious godson’s birthday today, so I will absolutely have to force myself to smile. And as my reward, I get ice-cream cake.

I guess things could be worse.

I think, though, that at some point I am going to have to make peace with the rain. It isn’t likely that I’ll always live somewhere like Vegas or Dallas. In fact (spoiler alert), I have it on good authority that the Ogre and I and our precious brood will be moving very, very soon to a place where it rains every single afternoon. 


I am terribly excited about this, because it means 1) my husband will be with us, 2) I will get to have a new real-live friend who I made via these interwebs, and who I absolutely cannot wait to meet (and whose facebook page I  may or may not stalk trying to get clues on what I can cook for them the first night we invite them over that they will like), 3) the Ogre will have a temporary job, 4) we will live within mere miles of a BEACH, and finally, the most important, 5) I will be within driving distance of the Harry Potter theme park.

Here’s a hint:

The picture alone makes me swoon. I cannot wait to see it in person.

I. Am. So. Excited.

The first weekend we’re there, I’m driving to the theme park by myself and raising a glass of butterbeer in my own honor, for living without my husband all these many long months.

Okay, so all of these things are just overwhelmingly exciting.

And then there’s the fact that it rains nearly every afternoon.

And that alone is enough to make me want to cry, again.

I guess at some point I’m going to have to just go outside while it’s raining and sit there, in the rain, until I no longer want to drown in it. Until I can bear the fact that it looks like the whole world is crying.

But I’m not doing that today. Today, I choose vodka. And Chaka Khan.