It's Raining, It's Pouring...

Aside from the four-foot long leak in my classroom ceiling, the six inches of water I was driving through in flooded Far Rockaway, the bucket catching water from the ceiling in our kitchen, and walking around in the rain in our grand apartment search, it's been a pretty dry day. At the moment, the rain is nice. It's that calming background noise to a quiet evening spent avoiding the last minute cleaning I need to do before my mom gets here.

Today I was talking to my students about natural disasters. We were discussing the recent earthquake, and have also been reading a Time For Kids article about tornado chasers. This led to questions not only about earthquakes and tornadoes, but Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that hit earlier this year. One of my students said, "I wish weather had never been invented." My students are right around the age I was when I first began to really be aware of what was happening in the news. I wonder what it must be like to have that first awareness come in a year such as this one, with natural disasters consistently in the headline news.

I, for one, am glad that weather was "invented," I just wish I could pick and choose what I got and when. I definitely wouldn't choose the four more days of rain that are forecast, but at least I have my fun rainboots, and my mom packed her own pair. If you see two women laughing hysterically as they run and jump into puddles throughout Manhattan, there's a good chance it's the two of us. Feel free to join in the fun.