The Price of Living in Eden

I considered calling this entry, "Bloggin' in the Rain".............We are in the 3rd or 4th day of one of a series of winter rain storms and it is forecast that we will have 2 more days of downpours, then a weekend respite followed by a new storm next week.  I think we had some rain a week ago and possibly the week before that.  In Southern California terms this is a wonderful winter/rainy season but I have to tell the truth......already I am sick, sick, sick of it.  There.....I have just broken the #1 So Cal rule..........to complain about rain is not only  a sin but a crime punishable by death (or waterboarding at least.)   Now, it is difficult for outsiders to comprehend, but in southern Cal we definitely have a thing like a tropical rainy season AND a dry season.......Rains CAN start around the end of October and usually end around March.  That doesn't mean that it will rain for sure....only that it is possible a rain cloud will appear during that time and, if any do happen to gather, they are allowed to dump their load.  For the other six months of the year .........nuthin', not a single wee drop.  We are so far into a cyle of droughts that our normal water levels will never catch up but every 10 years or so we have a really wet winter that helps a bit and I guess this is one of them. There is no way to depict a Brave Smile using a keyboard so you will have to imagine me baring my teeth in one right about here.  That is because I just had to go out into the garden to fill one of my 9 or 10 hummingbird feeders and had to wade through huge puddles about 5 inches deep to get there.  Soggy bedroom slippers for the rest of the day.

Incidentally, I have read that after the first few dampenings all of the precious rainwater simply runs off the soggy land and gushes down the storm drains to the ocean.  What a revolting waste!  (don't get me started on what they shoulda done......but it does seem like there might be some way to save all that good stuff...)The main thing that keeps us all from drying up into raisins is the snow pack that builds up in the mountains when the rain is falling on the flatlands. 

So we have occasional floods and mudslides in the winters and disastrous forest fires in the late summer and fall and, of course, there IS the San Andreas Fault which shakes us up every now and then with an earthquake, and I have to consider those to be the Cost of living in a Weather Paradise.  After all, the folks in Kansas have to put up with tornados and I do not see that they get many perks in Kansas for having to do so, whereas we have a gazillion days of sunshine and flowers and even when it is burning hot, it is, as they say, a DRY heat and I do not know a single soul in this vicinity who owns a snow shovel or a windshield ice scraper...( a lack to be devoutly grateful about).

So, I may be a bit grumpy and soggy and a bit exhausted from runnning back and forth from door to door at the behest of hysterical cats who want to go out and get some air and, who, when I let them out onto the porch to see for themselves, slouch back in glaring at me balefully, convinced that it is my fault everything is so wet, but I am still not really complaining.  I consider it all the price of living in a kind of garden of Eden.

Now you must excuse me.....a loud, merciless, complaining  cat is nudging me to open the door and prove to her that it is no drier than it was 5 minutes ago........." Wassamattawithyou........I promise you it is still raining...........why can't you take my word for it????? ..........Stubborn like a mule as my sainted Mama used to say"......sigh.