When it rains, it pours. Except when it's only a light drizzle or just a regular amount of rain. Or all three. Long title, long title, long title, ramble ramble ramble.

The weather in California has been capital-C-razy the last couple weeks. Living in Northern/Central California, I've managed to avoid the Noah's Ark-style flooding that people silly enough to live in Los Angeles have been experiencing. Unfortunately, our weather up here has been going through what I assume are mood swings, threatening to either dampen or enhance my plans on any given day, at any given time.


In what could have been no longer than a 15 minute period, I went through nearly every type of weather you could possibly experience in the Central Valley: blindingly sunny, rain strong enough to break through my windshield, and something that I choose to refer to as "death wind," because as a child, I had an ever-present and irrational fear of tornadoes. The slightest bit of wind would send me into life-threatening anxiety attacks, and since I've always had the tendency to be a little over dramatic, I somehow found it appropriate to refer to even the tiniest breeze as the "death wind." 


I was a troubled child.


As I drove around town today, the rapidly-changing elements thought it would be fun to frustrate me as much as possible by forcing me to constantly adapt to my surroundings, over and over.


Heavy rain. Windshield wipers on high. 


Rain stops, sun comes out. Windshield wipers and headlights off. 


Light rain, sun still shining directly into my face, obscuring my vision and pissing me off. Windshield wipers on low. 


Wind picks up, blowing leaves and sticks and shit all over, causing them to stick to the mud covering the bottom eight inches of my car like some kind of six-year-old's horrid art project. Hope I don't hydroplane on the slick and muddy roads. 


Rain goes away, sun gets covered by clouds. Windshield wipers off, headlights on.


Rain starts pouring down so hard that I start to think all the sugar I ingest has finally caught up to me, I've gotten diabetes, suffered from glaucoma, and am now going blind because I can't even see five feet in front of my car. Windshield wipers on high, desperately trying to keep up with the bastard rain, high beams on because maybe they'll stop another car from crashing into me.


Sunny skies, rain gone. Everything turned off.


Couple this ridiculousness with the fact that people can barely drive properly when there aren't any adverse weather conditions hampering their ability to pay attention to what's going on around them, and you had a very frustrated driver(me) with the power to angrily run over a random pedestrian in a vain attempt to release frustration and tension. It wasn't exactly the best day to be on the road.


Had I not made plans to meet a friend for coffee, I wouldn't have needed to go anywhere today. But when I get $50 worth of Starbucks gift cards for Christmas, I use those suckers like they're going out of style. And while increasing my blood pressure to an unhealthy level probably isn't worth braving the roads for overpriced coffee, it forced me to actually take a shower today, which is the ninth day in a row I've managed to bathe myself, truly a personal best in recent history.