Thank you, sun, for the billions of years of heat and light. I was sorry to hear you'd gone away forever.

Okay, that's enough. The idea that it's going to rain like this for the next week, getting a little worse each day, just isn't going to fly. It's been one day so far, and I'm pretty well saturated. I'm not absorbing any more of this.

Yeah, it's not ice and snow. I realize that. Geez.

It's not that I'm afraid to drive in the rain. That's not the reason I bagged all my morning errands and stayed home when I should have been out getting a haircut and filling my gas tank and checking the post office box. It's everybody else that I'm afraid of. When it rains, they all forget how to drive. You'd think they'd be more careful, not less.

Last night on our way home from the theater (and I don't think Mom knows this), just after it had started to come down hard, I had another car following so closely that my rear view mirror was filled with nothing but headlights. I was going the speed limit and not prepared to go any faster. So I went slower, just to be safe. And he got even closer.

My excuse for not pulling over is that I was so tired I wasn't thinking clearly. Besides, he'd just try the same tactic on someone else, maybe someone who couldn't handle it as well as I did. I probably saved lives by slowing this maniac down for a few blocks.

Only because I had an essential errand that couldn't wait, I finally did get out this afternoon. I happened to open the garage door at exactly the moment water was starting to pour underneath it, so I re-dug the trench I made last winter. I'm no longer as amazed by the engineering as I am by the timing. Another hour and I'd have had big problems.

The storm must have kept some people off the streets, because as far as I could see the traffic wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Of course, I couldn't see very far, what with the rain pelting directly at my windshield. A few people made stupid maneuvers, changing lanes to try to get an advantage, but there weren't many. And nobody got much of an advantage, because most of us were trying to stay alive.

The Boss and I had been working all morning on getting a bid package ready to ship. It has to be in San Francisco by Monday, so I took it to the friendly little FedEx store. I covered everything with two layers of plastic, and I got it all the way into the store without letting it get soaked. That turned out to be the easy part.

One sheet had to be notarized, and while I was pulling the pages apart to find it, I was dripping all over everything. I left little puddles on the counter, and I learned pretty quickly that wiping it off with the sleeve of my nylon jacket wasn't a solution. It's the instinctive thing to do, but it just made it all worse. Plus, I was splattering the other sheets and smearing the ink. At this point, I wasn't really caring much any more. I just wanted it all to be over, so I could get home where it was warm and dry.

So I took a step back, ripped off the jacket and threw it on the floor. Finally my friendly notary took note of what was happening. She took everything off the counter and wiped it with a paper towel. That helped.

By the time I'd walked across that parking lot to my car, I was drenched from head to foot. I was even wearing a hat (and I never wear a hat), but my hair was wet, my glasses were streaked, and my shoes were soggy. My Levi's weighed about ten pounds with all the extra water. I made it home and changed into dry things, but the feeling lingered.

Meanwhile, I didn't get to the gas station, so I can't go anywhere. Not that I intend to, not in this mess. (I hope there isn't an emergency.) And I didn't get a haircut, but no one's going to see me. I didn't get groceries, either, but I think I'll survive. I plan to settle in and stay as dry as I can until at least Monday.

Last night Mom and went to see "Gypsy" on the local stage. It closes this weekend, so my opinion wouldn't keep anyone away, but I think I'll just say that it's a great show. See it some time, after this weekend.