It's Raaaaing, it's poooooooouring, the old man is snooooooring

Welcome to Oregon, the land of perpetual winter rain.

Last year after a spring of torrential rains, my car started leaking underneath the dashboard on the drivers side. Which meant that the floorboards of the drivers side were always nice and sopping wet – a great feeling when you had to drive in heels. Since the car was still technically the property of my parents, they paid to get it fixed while I was home for Christmas break. The problem was traced back to a cracked drainage pipe that had also gotten clogged with Portland’s finest pine needles. After patching the drainage pipe, clearing out the clog and my dad paying the bill (thanks Dad!) I was on my way, to enjoy the rest of the spring rains blissfully dry in my nice warm car. I thought my problems were over.

Silly me.

So imagine my justified annoyance when I got in my car yesterday to go to work, and was welcomed with a quarter-inch of water resting peacefully on the floor of my car…this time, on the passenger side.

Sh*t. Seriously!?

And of course it’s on a day that I’m already running late. I ran inside to grab a beach towel to soak up as much of the water as I could, and then threw it in the garage to hopefully start drying out. When I finally got to work, first thing I did (after calling my dad to complain) was to call the Ford dealership to bring my car in first thing Saturday morning. My boss overheard, and his oh-so-helpful suggestion was, “Well back in the day when cars were much simpler we would just drill a hole in the bottom to let the water drain out.” Oh THANKS, that’s a fabulous suggestion. I’d rather NOT, thankyouverymuch. So, now I get to go without a car for the weekend while it’s getting fixed and pay through the nose to boot, all so that my car won’t leak and therefore smell like mold for the rest of its lifetime.

On a much brighter note, I’m getting little reminders everywhere I go about what season is coming up (or is it already here? According to the Target ad, The Season was here in October). The flower shop in my building already has decorated Christmas trees in the window, there are miniature Christmas trees around Pioneer Square, and there are twinkle lights wrapped around all the trees. I’ve decided to show some uncharacteristic restraint this year and wait for the tinsel-wrapped light-post decorations before watching Love Actually and Just Friends (the quintessential Christmas-movies of our generation, you know), breaking out the *NSYNC Christmas album, and baking Christmas cookies.

Fortunately, that basically means waiting until Monday.