Is this the blues or Spring Fever?

I don't know what's wrong with me, I just can't seem to keep my blog updated lately. I am not particularly depressed, but I am a bit burnt out, so that has something to do with it, no doubt. I am just not feeling it.




It just finished raining for two days here, with a break yesterday. Now it is raining again. I don't really like the rain, it's depressing. I don't know why, it just is. I am a sun kid, all the way. It is why I live in Southern California. I think I have always been very sensitive to weather.

When JNerd and I were first married, he had an opportunity to work for Microsoft. (this was before they were Uber-Evil) and I just knew I could not do Seattle weather. It rains there, what? 200 days out of the year? I would be suicidal in six months. We opted to stay in Southern California, and I think we are both very happy we did so. There are certainly trade offs. For the cost of our house here, we could have a mini-mansion in almost any other state. (Except Reston, VA, which is the only other place I ever considered moving..when JNerd worked for AOL years ago. The homes there cost as much as they do here, due to being so close to Washington D.C.)

Every once in a while, I see pictures of the seasons in other states that my friends post on facebook and think, "Wow, maybe we want that. The newf would love that weather!" And then I remember as a kid, watching my mother curse the snow and ice in Alaska as she bundled up and threw hot water on her car windshield, trying to get the ice to melt. I remember her chipping away with an ice scraper. I recall my dad, endlessly shoveling snow so that we could move the car, and I know I really don't want to deal with any of that!




So, here is where we stay. The weather is temperate, the people in my city are nice, and I like it here. I don't like the political climate, but unless I move to Vermont or Berkeley, that's not likely to change. I've learned to live with it, and bite my tongue...a lot.

I am not saying we would never move; if JNerd's job took us out of state, we would go. But this is home. It is the only home the kids have ever known. I have been here half my life now, but I am not bored. I am still finding areas I don't know. It is very easy to do so since the concentration of cities is so dense. Google Maps is a lifesaver! I am still learning city names, believe it or not!

Love it or leave it, it's home. And while the sky may let loose, I know the rain will soon come to an end, and it won't require a snow shovel, or boots or wool socks. So all of you out there in Maine, and Wyoming, and Nova Scotia, though I admire your pictures, I will live where my toes stay relatively warm!

T. who has cold feet, but a warm nose T.

If I see ONE Locust, I'll Be Under the Bed

One of the reasons I live in Southern CA is for the weather. What? You thought it was the excellent housing prices and lack of superficiality? I am not a huge fan of cold weather, hence, I live where it is temperate, some might say downright warm. I like that the snow is well-behaved here. It knows it's place. It perches up in the mountains where it belongs. If I want to ski or otherwise visit it, I travel about an hour and a half. Just about right. In return, it doesn't blow cold north winds inland.

But today, all bets were off. Something was seriously wacky with the weather in Orange County and the Inland Empire today. After a solid week of ninety to one-hundred-degree days (yes, I said 100 DEGREES) this week cooled off to around the early 70s with a cool wind. It was a cold slap in the face after last week's heat wave. I know, you feel so sorry for me, don't you? Bear with me.

Today it rained. But not just rained, it did weird things as well. It started out fine, just a bit of rain, late in the season, but doable. I had to take JBug to band practice, so we all piled in the car along with about umpteen billion other hapless mortals who decided to get stuck on the freeway doing twenty m.p.h. and little else. I rented a car today because mine was in the shop. I had never driven a PT Cruiser before, but it was a bit close to the ground for my taste. With the driving rain and the backed up drains, it was like being in a boat. The roads were awfully flooded; the drains just couldn't keep up with the deluge once the skies opened. JBug said, "Now we know how people in Venice feel!" (get it? The gondoliers pilot the canals).

In addition to the heavy rain, there was lightning and thunder and I said a prayer for Shaker you don't know Shaker? Oh, he is my baby, my Macbook Pro. He is gorgeous, with a red Speck case. I love him. I was busy all afternoon, and all I could think is that lighting would hit and my computer was only sleeping and it would be fried. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

After band, we were driving down the road when JBear said, "Hey there's snow!" Of course, that's ridiculous, because, well, we live in Orange County, and it is May after all, and yes, it is raining, but really, how silly can it get? So I answered him and said, "No, honey, it must just look like snow, there is no snow here." He was insistent, and I had some time to kill, so I turned the car around. Sure enough, there were piles of what looked like snow along the sides of buildings. So I stopped. And it was ice, and did look like snow. It had hailed. But the bizarre thing is it seems to have only hailed in the THREE BLOCK vicinity of the area. This might not seem out of the ordinary for you, but I assure you, here in Southern CA, it is blog fodder. My children are 14, 9 and 6, respectively. And they cannot remember ever having seen hail. It doesn't happen here.

Found out later that in addition to torrential rains, flash flooding, lightning, thunder and hail, there were also three tornadoes in Riverside County! I am thinking the end of the world here?

T, who is waiting for the frogs to fall

Technorati:Southern California, weather, hail, tornado, global warming