I love the sun. I like doing outdoor chores, even if I got hot and sweaty. I would go to the beach in the summer not to frolic in the water but to roll around in the sand. I love the smell of freshly-washed laundry drying in the hot afternoon sun. I even like going out during my lunch break to get away from the constant 22 degrees in the office. I love being slightly baked and browned (and not just because my Western friends envy my color).
Consequently, I'm one of those people who get depressed by rain. And in the past two weeks, it seemed that we've had nothing but rain. Today turned out to be bright and sunny, so I'm celebrating the return of the sun by blogging what I hated about the rainy days.
1. I spend my lunchtime inside the building. Although I mostly eat alone and I often eat in the cafeteria anyway, it somehow makes me feel cheated that I don't have the choice to go outside and look at shoes.
2. I leave my umbrella in the garage to drip at night, and I find out in the morning that the cat has peed on it. Not the Siamese cat, but the stray ones that come at night, and I don't have the heart to kick them out. I feed them food scraps before I go to bed, and that's the thanks I get in return. The maddening thing is that I usually discover it when I start to stink in the van, on account of the umbrella in my office bag.
3. I rush around in the morning, getting my daughter ready for school, and I can't find her frigging rubber shoes on P.E. day. I search high and low, and just as the school service comes beeping, I find them behind the refrigerator, where the nanny has hung them to dry.
4. When it's raining we have clothes hung all over the house. They won't dry right, so the nanny hangs them on door handles and cabinet handles and towel bars and stair railings in the evenings. It's a strange sight when you emerge from the bedroom at 5am and there's a line of underwear hanging from a hook in the ceiling. Clothes that did not dry in the sun just don't smell right, no matter how much fabric conditioner you used and even if you spin them in the dryer for two hours.
5. I can't wear nice shoes when it's raining. I usually wear my five-inch heels on the rides to the office and going home. I feel good in them and (I think) I look good in them. But those shoes are too nice to get ruined in the rain, so I have to wear ordinary wedge sandals (but of course, with three-inch heels).
6. Now this one I don't hate so much. I get to wear little dresses on rainy days (but then I wear little dresses four days a week, so I guess it doesn't matter). It's because I don't like wet clothing. I don't like the feeling of wet pants plastered on my legs in the one hour it takes me to get to the office, and I don't like damp pants in the eight hours I sit on my desk. I must be the only passenger in those vans who wear sleeveless dresses on rainy days. All the rest are wrapped in jackets with hoods, bulky pullovers, and pants. If I wear a dress, I can just wipe off the water from my arms and legs, then wrap myself in a thick pashmina in the office.
Some people like rainy days, because it's cooler and you can putter around the house and get all the sewing done and you can snuggle in bed and download movies to death and read a book or make love the whole afternoon. You can cook champorado at 2pm and eat it in front of the TV.
Well, yes, you can enjoy them when it's raining, but I'll take a sunny day to read a book with the cat in my lap in the garage, and eat champorado too. For me, sunny days make the colors brighter, the people more cheerful. Hot days can make tempers boil faster too, but let's not go there. :-)
It's just as The Carpenters sang: 'Rainy days and Mondays always get me down...'
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