Everywhere I Go it Rains

As I type this blog, I have to warn you that not only is rain falling outside, but hail is piling on the roadway. I wish I were kidding.

I left Virginia last week soaking wet, after three weeks of rain. We are breeding mosquitos in our backyard pond, and the neighbor children came over to launch their toy boats. One of them even brought a bottle with a message to see how long it takes to reach the ponies on Assateague Island.

We boarded a plane and flew across the country to Denver, where we landed in the rain. We boarded another plane to keep going to Reno, where we woke up to rain. We drove to Lake Tahoe (in the rain) to spend a full day in the rain before getting a reprieve, only to end said reprieve with a major hail storm.

Ironically, I don't own a working umbrella, or waterproof eye makeup, but I guess I will have to invest in some. There is no rhyme or reason ... just rain.

What puzzles me about rain, though, is why no matter how much rain we have, there is always some talking head explaining how it isn't enough to solve our drought. Our water table is overflowing into my sump pump, but we are always in a drought. Once, many years ago, it rained for the first time in several weeks and we were on water rations. It rained and rained and rained, but the weather man actually said none of the several inches of rain, "counted" because the soil was too dry and all the water just ran off without soaking in. Our drought remined unchanged.

The way I figure things, a long, long time ago a drought started, and we never got out of it because ever since it has rained too little or too much and there is no way out now. But hey, what do I know, right? I just walk along under the clouds remembering the sun as a distant but happy memory. I'm sure the weatherman is right, and the crops need it. If not, then we'll have a bumper crop of desert wines when the grapes rot on the vine this summer. Tasty. Hey ... maybe those are the crops the weatherman means.