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2002-06-11 - 12:35 p.m.

I awoke early this morning to rain pounding on the roof, beating on windows and gushing over eaves. A dark and dismal morning, and my mood quickly plummeted to gloomy. I grumbled at Emma, curled up next to me, rolled over and buried myself under the sheets. When I awoke again at nine, the sky was still drab and rain was still falling. And I was still grumbling.

I don’t like rainy days.

Although there are dozens of things I could do on rainy days, I fight with myself over doing them. I don’t have a list of things I like to do on rainy days, but I probably should make one so I don’t continue in my vegetative state when it rains. A problem with a list of activities-- other than the obvious, I would lose it--is rainy days seem to suck energy and motivation right out of me.

Even though I’m dormant when it rains, I’m not one to take naps so a daytime snooze wouldn’t make my list. But the house, for instance, could use a little tender loving care, i.e. housecleaning. Still, I can find a hundred excuses not to clean. On rainy days I convince myself it’s too dreary to see all the dust so the task should wait for a bright sun shiny day. Like that’s gonna happen!

Daytime television, in my opinion, is ridiculous and not worth the time to click the remote, so my television sits dark and quiet. A look at offerings on movie channels always makes me wonder what the hell happened to good movies, and I’m not going to make the trip into town for a movie rental, especially since nothing in new releases holds much interest.

I do like to try out new foods, and some rainy days will find me in the kitchen making a mess, which I then growl about having to clean up. And I like to read, and usually I read my way through the rain.

If I think back through the years, I realize I never did really like rainy days, but I was a little better at entertaining myself when I couldn’t get outside to frolic and cavort. I was much better at writing little stories in my Big Chief tablet than I am today at using rainy days for any serious writing. And if I go to pulling out chairs and draping sheets over them, creating a campsite in my living room where the dogs can snooze while I build things out of miniature building blocks (Legos today), my friends might finally know I’d gone round the bend or wonder just how much ale I’d fallen into for breakfast!

I used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother. She lived the next house up from us when we lived in town and served as my babysitter. She had some really neat places outside to frolic and cavort on sunny days, but her kitchen was where we ended up when it rained. We’d bake cookies. Well, she’d bake and I’d decorate sugar cookies. Decorate is probably not accurate...making messes is probably accurate.

I can still feel the heat from the oven, smell the sweeten air, taste the buttery cookies and see all the tiny multicolored sprinkles on her cracked black and white linoleum floor. And, of course, Mickey, my cocker spaniel, was there with us licking up either what fell to the floor or what I dropped down there for him.

Maybe baking sugar cookies with the dogs should lead the list of things to do on rainy days.

“Raindrops keep fallin' on my head...And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed...Nothin' seems to fit...Those raindrops are fallin' on my head, they keep fallin'...So I just did me some talkin' to the sun...And I said I didn't like the way he got things done...Sleepin' on the job...Those raindrops are fallin' on my head, they keep fallin' -- B J Thomas

(Since writing this, Velda and SueSue and I have decided on a matinee to see the Ya-Ya Sisterhood thing. At least one new release is worth putting on duds to go see!)

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