I'm only happy when it rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrains

Not really. I'm generally a happy person with a couple of short circuits in my brain that lead to depression, so I'm not "only happy" when it's raining. It sure does help, though. There's a special staccato rhythm to a hard rain, and a lot of excitement in thunder and lightning. Plus I love thinking that all my plants are getting a good soaking, and I always remember mid-August of 1995.

I had moved into the house on Curtis in April of that year, and as happy as I was to finally have a house of my own, around June I started discovering that it's difficult to sleep in the converted attic of an un-air-conditioned house during an Ohio summer. My bedroom had only one window, so there wasn't much air circulation, and even with a fan, the heat in there would build up and pretty much remain through the night. I tried sleeping in the living room, which didn't work, because I couldn't sleep on a loveseat, and the floor was a concrete slab under the carpet. I tried putting my mattress on the floor of the bedroom and putting the box fan at the foot of the mattress, but that just got me sore eyes from having dust and whatnot blown in my face all night. I'd gotten in the habit of lying in bed, crying slightly from being so uncomfortable, counting off the days until autumn and waiting for exhaustion to claim me.

One night in August, I was going through my usual desolate counting routine when there was a huge CRACK of thunder and then the sound of rain hitting the roof. I threw on a minidress, ran downstairs, flung open the door and danced out into the storm. I played in the rain until close to one in the morning, and finally slept a full eight hours, blessedly cool and slightly exhausted. A day or so later, we were back to no rain and high heat, but I could hold on because I knew that the misery was finite. The next year, my dad got me a window A/C for the bedroom, and I never had to go through that again.

So now, even when my garage floods because the driveway drain is full (and let me tell you, unclogging whateveritis that's washed onto the driveway drain while it's pounding down rain and you don't know what you're grabbing is GROSS), I still smile, and think of that wonderful August storm that saved my sanity. And then I peel my Chow/Shepherd mix off my leg and make him take his fraidy-cat butt into the other room before I kill him. *grin*

Blatant plug--if you're at a computer where you can access an erotic stories website, click on the link for my NWS stories and read "Tail of a Summer Thunderstorm." Then read everything else, and vote, and comment. Thanks.