Rain is Life - Well, Here Anyway

I have something to say.

Today it rained. A lot.

Does that do it for you? As a reader, are you now inside my head seeing what I am seeing? I'm going to go with no, unless you have some fantastic ability to telepathically see what I'm thinking. And that would be weird, so please stop.

As a writer I should know better than to write such a damn boring sentence. It doesn't convey much, or anything really. That sentence is as interesting as a flattened cardboard box (well, assuming you aren't a cat - my cats think flattened cardboard boxes are awesome). Those few words cannot adequately express what I witnessed today.

Moochie: Flattened cardboard is awesome. And mine. I don't share.

For one thing, the sun never came up yesterday in Portland. I mean, the sun did come up - that's what it does, it has to. If the sun didn't come up we'd be in a hell of a lot more trouble than just wet, that's for sure. The problem today is the rain clouds were so thick and so dark all the sun did was make it a mildly lighter gray, like going from night to charcoal on the color palette.

All day long the rain fell in torrents, slamming against the roof with such force it wakes up the cats. Considering they don't get up for fireworks, that's saying something.

At my office I am on the fourth floor of a four-story building, and the rain fell so hard I couldn't hear the person across the cubicle aisle talking to me. The conversation simply stopped, both of us looking up at the ceiling, wondering if today is the day it finally collapses. Thankfully (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) it did not, otherwise you'd be getting a much better story now.

To get to my car after work I have to walk roughly a block and a half from the building to the parking structure. I did hit the light in the crosswalk so I had that going for me, but I didn't have a hood on the coat I chose to wear this morning. Oops. By the time I walked that distance, which took about two minutes at my increased pace, I had water streaming down my face, my glasses were spotted so much I couldn't see, my khakis were soaked, and I stepped in a puddle that soaked one foot. That in itself is amazing since I wore Gore-Tex hiking boots, which tells you the depth of the puddle. Lucky for me traffic was moving slowly, so I didn't get hit with a tidal wave from cars driving by.

The drive home was a disaster. Normally here when it rains heavily it's not a big deal. Heck, it's Portland, it rains, we know that, city and building planners know that, so buildings and roads are developed accordingly for maximum drainage to avoid standing water. Today that didn't matter. Puddles deep enough to drown a duck were all over and I think I drove through 73 of them. You know that sound your car makes when you drive through too deep of a puddle and get something wet that shouldn't, the screeching from some belt or another? I heard that sound eight times in a forty-minute drive home.

Either that means it rained a lot, or I need to start avoiding the puddles instead of plowing through them like a little kid. Probably the former.

I stopped at the library to run in and get a book. That was about the same distance as to my car from the office, and resulted in two more drenchings.

On days like this Misaki doesn't even want to go outside. Considering she is a dog and for her outside is the bathroom, that can be a little problematic. Wednesday she went outside at 7am before I left for work and did her business. We trust her enough to let her tell us when it's time, but I took her out again at 7pm. At that point it wasn't raining, but all she did was sniff a bit and then come back in. At 10:30pm, just before bed, I tried to take her out again, this time during a downpour. Misaki approached the door to outside from the sunroom, which I had open for her, looked up at me, shook her head, and went back to the house.

I don't wanna go out there in that wet stuff! Huff!

"Dad," she said, "No way in hell."

For one, where did you learn to talk like that young lady? What? Me? Oh. Never mind...

Secondly, what's the plan? Apparently the plan was hold it. Thursday morning she went out at 7am despite the torrential downpour, but she was not happy about it at all. It had been 24 hours - and no, that's not a record. Her personal best is 29 hours. We started to get worried a bit but she finally relented to the force of Mother Nature.

Misaki is huffing at me as I write that.

Ruby never cared - she'd just go. Not Misaki, she has standards. There can be no water falling from the sky and the ground cannot be wet. There can be little wind (wait, that's my standard - when it's windy she spends all of her time in one place smelling the air rather than doing her business). And it sure can't be muddy, not that she would allow her paws dirty even if it were.

Does that give you a little better picture of our gorgeous Portland weather, our liquid sunshine as some people with way too much optimism like to call it? Have I done my job as a writer?

Maybe that class is paying off...