megfowler.com

It’s raining in Vancouver.

HOW NOVEL.

I know that no one needs to read another post about how soggy it is here, but GOSH.

I can’t believe — even after spending years and years and years on the West Coast and breaking at least 30 umbrellas in windstorms (and one in an escalator, but that’s a long story) and owning galoshes and even sporting a yellow rubber coat when it was less than chic to do so in my high school years — just how WET our winters have become.

Every morning sky is gray like a sodden wool sock. Every patch of grass is a mini-swamp, roiling with ecstatic worms. Every street is a minor river system with lakes born of leaf-plugged gutters.

If you have to be outside in it at all, you’re going to get a little damp, even if you have a GoreTex “system” you bought at Coast Mountain or MEC for $700.

Why?

Because it’s also WINDY. No matter where or how you stand, you’re guaranteed a shower of droplets across your face and body. You can’t hide from it under awnings or overhangs, either, because the wind will blow the rain in at you. My open bedroom window even offered a small weather system this morning, with sprinkles of wet across the side of my face not squished into my pillow.

It’s COLD, too. Why is it so cold? According to the temperature, it’s not that cold, but I think the wind and the rain sink into our bones with a special kind of penetrative power (did I just say “penetrative power”? I think I read that phrase in my Spam Folder) that facilitates a day-long chill.

All in all, I’m kind of done with it. You can’t arrive at work dry unless you go from underground parking to underground parking, you can’t walk across a sidewalk without drenching your shoes straight up from the soles (goodbye, sweet Pretend Uggs), and you can’t make plans to do anything outside unless you’ve got towels ready for the drive home.

Ergh.

I’m lucky to work inside, I know. And I’m lucky that my city is so green and fresh and alive. Really, there are lots of people who LIKE the rain, including my wonky upcoming Californian house guest. I don’t even hate it when it’s more of a mist or a shower… or anything other than a fire hose as soon as you walk out the door.

But I wouldn’t mind a bit of nice, fluffy-dry snow and a nose-rosy day that didn’t send rivulets of water down my neck into my underwear.

(I know. Mental picture. You’re welcome.)

I’m not planning to move anytime soon, so I guess I’m going to have to learn to deal with it more effectively. I just have serious resistance to capitulating to weather systems I can’t stand, much like I have serious resistance to buying books with the “O” on the cover.

But this is the city I live in, and they put it on Faulkner. So.

Someone pass me a blow dryer. And a robe. And some waffles, just because.