Rant: I am so done with winter

And I haven't even really had winter. But three or four days of rain, and I'm done. Ready for drought season, thankyouverymuch.

I'm so pampered, weather wise. I'm filled with indignation at the idea that I have to put something extra on to go outside?! I need an umbrella? I need puddle shoes? I can't walk and read simultaneously, the way I usually do, because the pages will get soaked? What's with that?

It's not even that I need heat. If the temperature went down twenty or so degrees, but all that water would just stop falling, that would be fine. I could grumble myself into a coat, grab the book of the moment, and charge down the sidewalk with one eye scanning the page and one watching for tripping hazards ahead of me, the way I have since I was six years old.

In fact, y'know, that's the whole problem. I say it twice, and the obvious finally hits me in the face. That's where the cranky, incredulous indignation with this weather comes from: I can't read outside when it's raining!

What's the use of an outdoors where you can't read? What's the use of any place where you can't read? That's probably why I don't like the driver's seat, either; even I can't advocate for the one-eye-scanning reading method when I'm controlling a multi-thousand-pound mobile but solid object with a belly full of explosive liquid. (Hmmm. Is this going to be a problem with the tricycle?)

I read while I walk. I have a whole etiquette for pointedly lowering the book while I cross the street, because even though I'm quite confident that I can cross at full speed while still absorbing the page, it does seem rather rude to the drivers patiently waiting me for me to get the heck across, who no doubt suffer under the delusion that reading slows me down.

I read while I do the dishes. I read while I cook. I read while I sweep and dust and tidy and do laundry and fold laundry and put laundry away. I read while I weed. I have special books for that; they can tell you their sad muddy rainy story from where they're languishing in the garden shed. I read while I'm in the bathtub. I read while I'm in the shower. Yes, it is possible to shampoo your hair with one hand while keeping the book (relatively) dry. Really. But it's inadvisable for apprentices to the art to practice it with library books.

I read while I eat. As a child, I used to be able to get my entire lunch out of the lunch box, napkin folded, peanut butter and jelly and milk carton all in their proper places, while reading, so that they'd be correctly placed while I ate. While reading.

I read. I can't read in the rain. That, I see, is what's wrong with rain. Now I understand.

Photo by Steve Harris. Wikimedia Commons.