When It Rains It Pours...

Why exactly must it be true that when it rains it pours? Figuratively speaking of course. Because when it really does rain, it doesn't always pour. Sometimes, its just a mist, or even a drizzle. Often its just a brief shower. Rarely though, does it actually pour. At least not here, not lately.

Except figuratively. When it rains in this figurative world, it most always drowns me like a sewer rat.

For example, how BGE goes up 70% the same year we have a heat wave.

Or the day you decide to actually utilize your sunroof happens to be the day you leave for vacation without your car. It's also the same day they are calling for, ironically, a thunderstorm...and you get a phone call when you're halfway to Myrtle Beach advising you that you forgot to close it.

Or, like this...

Last Tuesday (I think), I overslept. I woke up just before 8:30 (that's right, almost an hour after I usually get to work.) My alarm, which I had incorporated as background noise in my dream on this morning, had gone off promptly at 6:27 am, as it has for the past 2 years.

Once I finally got in the car, I noticed, huh, empty gas tank. Fantastic. Well, this just so happened to be the same morning that everyone else in the Owings Mills metropolitan area also needed gas AND decided to use the BP on the corner of Greenspring Valley and Reisterstown Road.

Three years later, I was able to restart my venture to work. 12 years later, after travelling approximately 10 mph down 83 south, I parked in my parking lot. This lot is one where you sometimes have to double park and leave your keys with the attendant. Today is one of those sometimes. So, like a master, I back in, lock my doors, and venture toward the attendant hut.

Then I noticed the slowly building line of people. Of course! The attendant was not there. A "will return in 5 minutes sign" was there in his place though. Fantastic. So, myself, and the two nice girls I made friends with that morning chatted as we waited 20 ridiculous minutes for his non-arrival.

We waited until an older, wiser woman parked her car, pulled back the locked door just enough to drop her keys inside, looked at us as if to say "Suckers, how long have you been waiting here!" and then headed off to her daily routine. Exchanging glances, we took turns holding back the door, dropped our keys inside, and silently prayed that the man would not only eventually return, but also find and safely store away our keys.

This, clearly, is the same day that I'm at work until after 7:00. And so obviously, upon return to the parking lot, the attendant had decided to take his next break, and coincidentally, leave a "will return in 5 minutes" sign on the locked door where my keys may or may not be hanging just 2 feet away, inside.

And then it started to rain.