The sweet song of rain

To me, rain is magical. My love for it is probably why I loved The Netherlands so much. Everything about it makes me happy.

The smell of wet dirt, grass and pavement.

The feel of the cool breeze against my face.

The sounds of rushing water, as if I suddenly live under a waterfall. The whishhhh of cars as they drive past, and the rumble of thunder in the distance.

It’s even better when it thunderstorms. The darkness to instant day as lighting streaks across the sky in it’s tree like form. The giant claps of thunder that almost make your heart stop for a split second.

The other day it thundered so loud Joel hit the living room floor. After we stopped crying from laughter he told me he thought it was a gunshot outside. Then I cried laughing all over again.

Thunderstorms change the weather in a matter of minutes. It can go from blistering hot to nearly chilly. From dry to humid. Or humid to dry. You just never know.

The unknown is the best part. There’s always a vague sense of danger. But as long as I’m home cozy and dry I know there’s little chance any harm will come to me.

Nothing makes me happy quite like rain. Nothing soothes me to sleep better.

I’m grateful for days when the skies are blue and the sun warms my face. But I wouldn’t mind if every night I was lulled to sleep by the song of rain.

A couple little snippets

Today was a long day. I opened the store this morning and I closed the store this evening. Good times. Thankfully I had a six hour break in the middle so I was able to have a nice long lunch with Joel and take a much needed nap. Instead of giving you the run down of my entire day I’ll just give you the moments that stood out.

- We have a tip jar at work. Some people drop the extra change in, some people leave a whole dollar. More often than not people don’t leave anything at all. It’s whatever. I don’t really judge you if you don’t leave a tip. Obviously I like you more if you do but like I said, whatever. Your pennies and nickles don’t make or break my day. We have several regulars though and one of them is a really nice, retired guy that comes in most days and does his crossword while he has his coffee. We’ve had several nice conversations and never have I noticed whether he left a tip or not. Until today.

For some reason, after he paid for his coffee and I handed him his 18 cents he felt the need to explain himself. His words were

“I would leave you this as a tip but I have a jar at home that I’m saving my change in. It’s about the size of your tip jar but it’s full of quarters. It probably has $1,000. I’m saving for a vacation.”

My outward response was “Oh, how nice.” What I was thinking though was “Um, good for you?” I tweeted as much.

The thing is, like I said, I don’t care that much if you tip me. Whatever, it’s your money. However, if you don’t tip me I’d like to think it’s because you didn’t think it was necessary. Don’t tell me that you specifically considered giving me a tip, thought about it and decided you were better off with your 18 cents than I am. Then you just look greedy.

-Joel and I had lunch together at an amazing Chinese buffet near our apartment. We sat next to a couple tables where what appeared to be a class of high school students were sitting. There were probably 10 students and 2 teachers at the table and they were discussing trying new food and some kind of study questions etc. Things you’d expect to hear from a field trip. I only caught snippets of their conversation and wasn’t paying much attention until I heard the teacher say,

“No, I don’t got a pen.”

And then I died a little inside. Oh god, our educational system is so broken even the teachers can’t speak proper English. I visibly cringed. Thank goodness not a moment later I heard her say,

“But I might have a pen.”

She was correcting a students grammar by being snarky. And then all was back to being right with the world. It probably shouldn’t have mattered that much to me, but it did.

And now I’m planning to sleep as long as possible. Even after taking the nap I could have slept hours and hours ago. Hanging out with my coworkers was totally worth it though. It’s such a rare thing to enjoy all the people’s company that you work with as much as I do. I’m a lucky girl and I definitely know it.

Wordless Wednesdays: Start of Autumn

Raw

A mutual friend hurt a friend of mine the other day. It was one of those out of the blue, WTF?! kind of moments. Not that I thought I was, but it reminded me how far I am from healed from my past friendship wounds. I cried and cried for her and the unfairness that had happened. It wasn’t my fight, my getting involved would have only made things worse so there was nothing I could do other than listen and cry.

People are so stupid and mean and hurtful. It’s even worse when it’s unexpected. Then I feel stupid for not expecting it. For not seeing the oncoming hurt and avoiding it. For allowing myself to be totally blindsided by the situation. It wasn’t even directed at me. But I hurt for my friend.

I’m fiercely loyal. I become vicious towards people who hurt those that I love. Most personal hurt I can move past fairly easily. Hurt someone I love and I will cut you.* Not being able to do anything makes me crazy. Because nothing I could do would make any difference.

So I just sit here, reeling in anger and feeling cut to the core. I want to shake them and scream at them for their idiotic behavior. I want to demand an explanation and if it’s not good enough (which it almost certainly wouldn’t be) demand an apology. At the very least I want to force them to look at what they’ve done, to make them feel the pain that they’ve caused. They should not just be allowed to walk away.

Then suddenly I realize in my venomous haze that the anger isn’t totally directed towards that person anymore. I’m angry at the one who hurt me. Again. It’s no longer about protecting a friend, it’s about protecting myself. Even though my situation is long over. And this realization makes me even more angry. I shouldn’t hurt this much. My friend shouldn’t hurt this much. Neither of us did anything deserving of this.

But it is what it is. Those people get to walk away and move on with their lives while we stand with wounds that refuse to heal no matter what. And part of the reason they refuse to heal? Because of stupid people that keep ripping them open at the least expected moments.

*Obviously not actually. But I’ll want to.

Faraway Friends

We picked up our passports with shiny new Indian visas in them today. Well, they’re not actually shiny but in my head? Covered in bright, Times Square like lights. So pretty.

Also, remember how I was concerned about the number of pages left in my passport? The Indian consulate was nice enough to use those “extra” pages in the back that aren’t squared off for stamps instead of taking up two whole pages. Two pages that I didn’t really have mind you. I counted, I have 15 spaces left. Not pages, spaces. Should be plenty for this trip since they used the pages I thought were useless. Such nice people.

While in the car I got a phone call from a friend of mine who lives in Arizona. They are not only in town but were wondering if we had plans as they unexpectedly had two extra tickets to a White Sox game and would love it if we could join them. Um, yeah! Not only were we free but we were like ten minutes away. Perfection.

Jenny is one of my oldest and dearest friends and it was amazing to get to see her unexpectedly.

Seriously love this girl.

We didn’t stay for the whole game since tomorrow is going to be an early morning. We didn’t even actually stay for half the game. In fact, as we were walking to our car a parking attendant was all “You’re going the wrong way, game’s that way.” Thanks dude, the giant stadium with bright lights and screaming fans was not enough of a hint.

But can you actually blame him? Who leaves a game before the 4th inning?

Us, apparently.