RAIN ON THE BRAIN

For the past five days our area has become latent with the wet stuff. It has come in the form of hail, snow, sleat and ice and the ordinary "wet stuff." Do I like it? With an amazingly surprise, "Yes!," I say. This stuff has made me realize I can live in it very comfortably, after all, as one realtor I spoke to said, "It's not like back east, where the bad weather just sticks around for months at a time with very little breaks in between." It's true. Knowing first hand about that weather, since I was born and raised in that "stuff."

Although I'm unable to attend a lot of activities I enjoy, i.e., walking, hiking, photography, plein air painting and getting back to bicycling; putting these interests very near and dear to me on hold is OK. It's a trade off and a good one. At least I'm not in the house with the temperatures from 106 to 109 degrees for four months at a time. That really restricted me. At least now, I can put on a jacket and still get out in between the storms and do what I like doing twelve months a year. You know what they say... you can at least put a covering of appropriate clothing on the not so good days, but you can't alter your covering on really hot days.

I'm here to stay; up here in Northern California. I just in no way see myself living in Southern California again.

Have I given serious thought to moving to another state? Why yes, I have. I've researched all of the western states to see if home prices were any cheaper like people say they were. Who are these people anyways? According to my research, California home prices are not high at all. They say our taxes here are more. More than Oregon's, where they have no sales tax but really get the homeowners to make up for it?

And the weather in all of those other states. A lot, lot worse than California's. Maybe if the weather here wasn't as great as it is, the home prices less, I'd be out of here, that's for sure. The beauty of this state, the weather and the positive attitude of the people (in most cases) of this state, makes me want to stick around.

Places on TV depicting the beauty of other lands across the world, maybe except for Paris and a couple ohers I plan to see one day, have nothing or maybe equal to some of the most beautiful places I've seen here in California. Everytime a beach, a countryside, a city is shown, I have to say, "Just like California, why do I have to go there?"

It's true that now I can only live in the northern half of this state due to the illegals, crime, gangs and the hot weather in the southern half, but it's not as bad up here and there are still many places, not only here in northern California, but in other states, which I want to see. The news here is mostly of the weather and politics and hardly do you ever see the monotony of whose shooting who 24/7 on the news.

So, is a little rain going to chase me out of here, or do I wish the rain would go away? No, hell no. It's alive and well up here and I want to keep seeing it breathe with the rain and its heart pounding with the hail.