RAINYDAYWOMAN

I bring the rain. It follows me to New York City, it follows me to San Diego, and it will no doubt be back in force when I get back to Seattle-ish. The upside to this rain thing is that I guess I am just used to it now. I don’t expect anything else. Rain has soaked through to my cells, flings out of my pores, befouls the very atmosphere. Farmers should pray to me.

Today, the rain and the sky and the ocean were all the same stone gray; the only thing to distinguish one from the other were the waves breaking in small white choppy lines, rhythmic and insistent. There were surfers out today in this. Of course there were, because serious surfers are insane. But I like their dedication. I imagine how they must feel in the water, how hard they must work for their few seconds of thrill, how they must at times feel more of the ocean than of the land, born to the wrong place. I think about the surfers getting ready to go out, the ritual of the preparation, the addiction of facing down such a monumental force.

On the highway to La Jolla, it rained so hard that the gray of the water flung down from the sky, and then flung up from the gray asphalt made it impossible to see anything for a few minutes. You could only hope that everyone would just keep going, stay straight, didn’t freak out. My eyes kept searching for something to use as a marker, straining to see red taillights. The combination of the driving rain and having to trust people that much made me really uncomfortable. But the rain slowed, and my imagined disaster did not happen.

I saw a fish called a Sarcastic Fringehead. HAHA.

I came to the conclusion that all seagulls are impudent, and all pigeons are dim.

My pants acted like a Bounty paper towel, and soaked up the rain a good 10” up my leg. The heaviness of this kept pulling my pants down as I walked and I had to keep hitching them up every few feet like a sad wet gangsta. My solution to this problem was to go to the outlet mall and buy a new pair of sweatpants, a new hoodie, a new shirt, a new pair of Nike Dunks, and more coffee.

I am sitting by the indoor pool now in my warm new gray sweatpants, sipping my coffee, listening to my children screech in the water. Two guys are running on treadmills in the next room, and I ache to run as well, but I am still a bit too under the weather to make a decent showing.

Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.