What a Life!

Our heat wave has come to an end with the arrival of a weather front that is bringing us rain and thunderstorms. It was raining softly when I woke up this morning. It’s cloudy and dark right now, and everything’s wet. The hourly forecast online says it’s gonna be raining on and off like this all day.

Growing up in Florida, I am accustomed to lots of sunshine. The only times when we had days that were cloudy and rainy all day were when we had a tropical depression or something like that come through. We were far enough inland that the winds were never that remarkable. Yes, we hunkered down if a hurricane was coming toward us, and sometimes it seemed a little windy when tropical storms came through, but we weren’t on the coast or anything so we never got the brunt of it.

So when rainy days like this come, my mood always shifts. Introspection. The desire to curl up in a corner and read a book all day. Normal routines fall by the wayside as though my motivation has been washed away with the rain. I don’t know why, but that’s just how it is. [I think if I lived in Portland or Seattle where it’s cloudy and rainy like this most of the time, I think I would struggle with forcing myself to be productive and go about my normal activities in spite of the weather.] Rainy days are productive, just in a different way than normal sunny days.

Today I was supposed to go to town. I had a therapeutic massage appointment this morning, and I needed to get in my second visit at the chiropractor this week. I hadn’t found anyone to watch the boys during my massage appointment (Steve usually helps with that but wasn’t able to this week), and the chaos of going to the chiropractor which I tolerate on sunny days overwhelms me today. I don’t want to go to town – I want to retreat. I was also going to get groceries. And the socks I am entering in the state fair are due today by 3 p.m., if I am going to enter them.

I’m sure if I had a J-O-B, I wouldn’t be letting a rainy day stop me from going to work and doing all the things that go along with that. I used to hate working on such days, but I always put my nose to the grindstone, did what I had to do, and somehow got through it.

But now I’m a SAHM. I don’t work 40 hours a week – I’m on duty 168 hours a week. I’m still feeding my children and supervising them as they play. I’m still reminding Ben to go potty and changing Joey’s diapers. Ben is actually outside right now, playing in the rain. It’s only sprinkling at the moment, and he’s been eating yogurt outside for breakfast. The rain doesn’t seem to be stopping him.

Going to town is a big enough ordeal when it’s sunny outside. Ben is slower than molasses getting in and out of the car, and both boys have to be buckled in to their car seats. Even if it was just sprinkling when I was getting them in and out of the car, I would get soaked each time I did it. If I was working, dropping them off and picking them up from daycare would mean getting wet twice; running errands means getting wet twice for every errand, and I had at least four on my list for today. Do you see why I drag my feet at the idea of going to town on a rainy day? Yet I still wonder if I’m being a wimp by canceling my appointments and just staying home on account of a little rain.

Then last night I had a series of bad dreams. The ones where your worst fears come true. All of them. And I don’t know if those worst fears are my intuition telling me of things I don’t want to admit or if I’m just making other’s life situations my own. I think it’s the latter, but it always scares me that it might be the former. It’s one thing to have those worries running around in the back of my mind; it’s another to dream about them and see how they might play out. I hate it when that happens. Somehow I need to let them all go. Somehow. The usual magic solutions aren’t working, though.

So today I am staying at home (except, perhaps, to take my socks to the state fair, which is on our side of town, unlike the other errands I had scheduled). I’m sure it will be a very productive day, as days like these make me see things differently and I get ideas for how to solve seemingly perpetual problems that never seem to occur to me on sunny days. But I must step back and rest if I am to make the most of this day. Yes, if I am to make the most of this day…