Rain Rain Go Away

The Rain, the Park, and Other Sorrows

October 21, 1996




I hereby officially declare: I can't take it anymore! I've gone through 2 umbrellas, one left front tire, and a couple of pairs of socks. My New Balance 496 sneakers are on their last breath (umm, don't breathe to deeply there...). Rt 133 is closed in several places due to the flooding. Starbuck's, Brueggers, and everything else in the Barnard Building on Main Street is closed - flooded out. So, no morning coffee with Unitarians today.

I managed to get to Perfecto's Caffe so at least I'm caffeinated. I did accidentally inhale a gob of foamed milk and coughed til I turned blue but other than that and the harrowing ride home things proceeded fairly well. When I got home I had an urgent voice mail from an old friend on the west coast wanting me to call back immediately. Which I did. Now, this friend had supposedly moved to Massachusetts while I was in Russia (according to voice mail that accumulated while I was gone) so I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I called back and found out she wanted to borrow money in order to move here. I said no for the first time in my life. I feel shitty but I had to do it. It's a long complicated story and I don't want to get hooked into it again. I feel a little guilty, a little harsh, but she has never paid back any of the gobs of money I've loaned her to bail her out of various jams - most of which involved her first husband as does this one.

My day continued to deteriorate when I checked my e-mail and found a solicitation for child pornography! The sender claimed to have gotten my name off a mailing list of people interested in such things. I wanted to vomit. Instead I forwarded the message to the office staff of my internet service provider with a note explaining I am deeply offended. If this is somebody's idea of a joke, I'm even more deeply offended. I'm not even on any internet mailing lists and certainly not any dealing with exploitation of children! I can't think of any crime worse than exploiting children. I feel ill. I'm angry!

Now my dishwasher is banging like crazy and my toilet has started flushing itself every 20 minutes. I should call a plumber. I should call somebody to fix the left front tire, but right now it seems to be holding air well enough for me to drive it to a garage assuming I can find one on one of the roads that is not flooded. I haven't checked the basement yet. I am afraid. Very afraid. I had the condo association dig a channel in the basement to divert the water after the flood of '87 breached the santicty of the foundation, but I don't trust it to handle this much water. This is a lot of water. A way wicked lot of water as we say in Massachusetts.


Yesterday's conference/festival of environmental writers at the aquarium was excellent. I'll write yesterday's journal entry later today when I've calmed down.
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