I can see clearly now

For the past few days, Tropical Storm Alma has been giving us the royal smackdown. It's been raining so much and so hard and it's been so foggy that visibility has been very low here in the Central Valley, and driving has been about out of the question. For a while, I felt like I was back in Seattle! Yesterday I braved the weather to take son to his Thursday morning playgroup, since he's been cooped up in the house (and let's face it, so was I), and we were both going stir crazy. The rain seemed to let up at one point, so we took off, and I think it was a mistake to do so. Once the rain started pounding again, it was very hard to drive and pretty scary in some areas. The traffic going into San Jose was outrageous, and I hit several flooded spots on the highway that scared the crap out of me.

On the way back home, at the toll booth before the airport, the ticker-sign thing said something like (in Spanish, of course), "MOPT has been responding to an average of 60 accidents every 3 hours -- Do not leave your house unless absolutely necessary!" Yikes.

By the time we got home, though, around 3 in the afternoon, the rain had let up. This morning, I awoke to the sounds of iguanas scrabbling around on the roof and a beautiful, bright, sunshiney day. Hooray!

On a side note, son asked me why iguanas don't like rain and where they go when it rains. While explaining the difference between endothermy and ectothermy to him was difficult, I actually had no idea where they go when it rains. That's on our knowledge quest for the day.

And on a related note, can I say how much it totally and completely sucks not to have a dryer in this weather? My dish towels and rags have been hanging on the outside line since before the storm began, I think almost a week now. Since the sun is actually out today, they may get dry. One can only hope. I had a load of clothes hanging on the line that is covered by the porch, and they still weren't completely dry after four days. If you are thinking of buying a used appliance from that guy in Santa Ana who imports them directly, can I just warn you against that? The gas dryer we bought that never worked properly is now sitting at a repair shop waiting for a $100 computer card from the U.S., which I refuse to buy, so it will be sitting there for a long, long time. In other words, if I had simply flushed $300 down the toilet instead of buying the used gas dryer, it would have been less hassle. So, I am in need of another dryer, and if anyone out there is selling a good used one under $300, please let me know. Not gas this time. I tried, I really did, but I'm not going that route. Unless, of course, you have all of the connections for it already attached. It took us six months to get the attachments to the other dryer, after which we discovered the dryer did not actually turn on. And of course it was no longer under warranty... asi es...