I hate rain.
If you really know me, you know I hate rain. As much as I want to visit Scotland, I would never want to live there because it rains there so much.
Consider snow. It's beautiful, it piles up, and the piles of snow can be moved out of the way. You can take a walk in it and brush it off of you. If you happen to be a dog, you just shake it off and done. Your feet stay clean. You can build snow men, or anything you like. People enjoy cross country and downhill skiing, not to mention snow skating and running around the country on a snowmachine. Snow decorates all the spruces, and turns my world into Christmas Tree Land.
But rain? There is no happy walking in rain. There is only me, stoically stomping to the car and getting in as fast as I can. Knowing that Ole the Norwegian Elkhound is going to get wet footprints all over the car. As soon as rain hits his coat, he shakes, but rain doesn't stop, it keeps striking his coat, and he doesn't like that. Sure, he is a double-coated dog and he'll be dry underneath, but the sensation of being struck by little missiles of water constantly isn't his favorite.
Rain=mud. Mud is a total pain in the ass. My driveway has some pretty good (and expensive) gravel but the rest of the road is dirt. There are no dog walks when it is raining. And Ole does not want to go out into the back yard and pick through wet grass and leaves. I let him out today and yesterday and he walks verrrry slowly and verrrry carefully, picking up his feet and placing them as if to find the least wet spot.
My house has a metal roof, so there is this constant drumming, plus huge DRIP PLOP DRIP PLOP sounds from water splashing off the roof onto the rubber mat by my front door. It's so loud and so annoying because it sounds like it is IN THE HOUSE. But it isn't. But it is TRYING TO BE because that is what asshole rain does. It is TRYING to get INTO YOUR HOUSE! Fucking rain!
I liked rain just fine when I was a little child. It didn't bother me one way or the other. Back in Michigan sometimes it would rain so hard you couldn't see past your window: it was just one shining, grey sheet. It didn't rain like that all the time, just once or twice a year, and it didn't last all day. It was kind of fun, in a novel kind of way.
But I grew up, and moved to Eugene, Oregon. This is where my hatred of rain truly began.
Eugene is so humid and so rainy that when the sun comes out, people stop working and go outside and go, "Oh wow! What's that yellow thing? Sun? Sunshine?" And they hold up their fungus-ridden arms up to the sun and marvel. Then the clouds close over, and everyone wonders if it was just a dream, and resolves to tell their children about it. Then they go back inside, and back to work. It could be SIX MONTHS before the sun comes out again.
Later after work, I would (because all this happened to me) get in my car that had moss growing on all the rubber and the roof, and drive home. Since my car of the time was an old Dodge Dart clunker (one door was so smashed in you had to get in from the opposite side) it had the old kind of windshield wipers. Kids, you may not know this, but cars had three settings for windshield wipers: off, slowish, and way too fucking fast but not fast enough for a real rainstorm. In case of a real rain storm you just pulled over and swore a lot until the rain slowed down.
In Oregon, the majority of the rain was constant little drips, or mist, or something between rain and mist. This meant that the SLOWISH setting on the windshield wipers was actually too fast. I spent HOURS of my life, probably hundreds or thousands of hours, turning the wipers ON and OFF and ON and OFF and ON and OFF because the first swipe would be fine, and the second would be that horrid RRRRRBBBBBBBRRRRR noise. Who can stand that noise? Not me!
I lived in that humid hellhole for almost ten years. I do believe I have Rain PTSD. If it clouds over I get anxious. If it stays cloudy for three days I get REALLY anxious and angry and hangry and frantic and sense Impending Doom! Let it stay gray for more than three days and I'm figuring the world is not living for. We are all going to die watery deaths and I'll never see the sun again.
Now let's talk about Alaska. Winter is 9 months long and summer is 3 months long. Maybe. In a good year. This has not been a good year. I still have freaking piles of snow in my yard TODAY. But for the most part it is finally gone. However, I do not live through subzero temperatures, black ice, and DARKNESS for nine months only to have GRAYNESS and have to wear a fucking coat in MAY! I did winter. BOOM! Therefore I deserve SUMMER! Sure, it comes with mosquitoes but so what? We don't live here so that it can be cold and wet and gray when it is supposed to be 80°! Climate change is voiding our contract with Alaska! FUCK!
So I hate rain! I bought gear to be comfortable in the winter, and I'll be damned if I will buy freaking rain gear! My house isn't big enough for all this gear anyway. Between the parkas and sweaters and flannel lined Carhartt pants and T shirts and long underwear and hats and gloves and breakup boots (and that's an incomplete list, there are coats and jackets of different weight and more)....hell, my house is only 550 sq. ft. Where the hell am I going to put rain gear? My house is too small for rain gear. Not. Gonna. Buy. It.
We've had a few years where it rained all summer. And folks, if that's happening in Fairbanks, don't bother visiting. Because everyone in town is mad when that happens. We become the grumpiest town in the world. You just don't gyp Alaskans out of their summer. I know I'm not alone!
I will grant one rain day every two weeks to keep us from burning up in forest fires. Okay? But that's it.
So please don't tell me some la la thing about "Oh, the planet needs the rain," or "Rain is so important for the environment," all that crap. I DON'T CARE. I don't like it. When you say stuff like that (in the silly, cloying, trying-to-guilt-me tone) it is clear you don't get it. I don't like okra, either. I don't LIKE it. I don't HAVE to like it. If you like it, fine. Whatever. But I really, really, REALLY don't like it.
