Today, after something of an Arizona spring (in NJ), the heavens unleashed a torrent that flooded sewers and made the inside of my car sweat. Some cheesy Facebook acquaintance posted a Strawberry Shortcake-type graphic: “A raindrop is a kiss from heaven.” I was seized by the grumpy thoughts that overcome me when someone is cloyingly, annoyingly sweet. If heaven kisses this sloppy, I want nothing to do with it. I like to be kissed by a kisser who knows what he’s doing.
Don’t get me wrong. I love rain. First off, as a gardener I love the lush happiness that bursts from a garden after a strong spring rain, the boost to growth, the brighter colors. But beyond that, I love everything about rain. I love the romance of it. The wonderful feeling that you’re in some fabulous novel set in 1800s England with a swashbuckling horse trainer who is really a prince in disguise, with his shirt open just to… okay, I digress. Last night, as I heard it start up, I opened the window so could hear it falling as I drifted off to sleep in my fabulous new cloud of a bed (see my Zsa Zsa post). I love the earthy scent of rain. I think smell makes me fall in love more than anything. I am a rain girl for sure.
BUT. People, I also live in the real world, a world that involves a long bus ride into New York City with a motley cast of characters. I get on early in the route, so I take the window seat and soon am imprisoned by an ever-changing roster of seatmates. One day it is the student pounding his head to the horrid music that his cheap headphones don’t muffle very well. The next day it’s the fat guy whose haunches warm up the sides of my thighs with his humid body heat. Today it is an impeccably done-up Asian woman with perfume so strong my eyes are tearing. If raindrops are a kiss from heaven, this woman’s perfume is the mustard gas of commuting despair. Mixed with the damp bus interior and the fidgeting, perspiring passengers, it is near olfactory armageddon.
