Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

I'm not always glad to see the rain, but today I am. Today, the rain means my headache goes away.

For the last two days, something about the weather gave me a lasting headache that would not go away no matter what. No amount of medicine or drinking water or resting my eyes helped. It was something about the atmospheric pressure, I think.

But today, it finally rained and I've been released.

Over the years, my relationship with rain has been a complicated one. The atmospheric thing has come and gone; rarely a problem in State College when I was going to school. There, if you saw gray skies in the morning, chances were you'd get rain later in the day.

And of course, it's always rough when it rains the day of an event you've been planning a long time. That happened to me at the infamous Monty Python Society Coke-In. But you make the best of it, like Bill Clinton did at his presidential library dedication this past week. I hope everyone managed to keep reasonably dry and then went inside, got some hot cocoa, changed into dry clothes and made sure to take care of themselves.

Then there are moments when the rain seems like a reprieve. Like today, for example, and not just from the headache. I normally take my dog, Una, for two 40-minute walks each day: one in the morning when I wake up and one in the afternoon about 2:30 or 3 p.m. When I saw the rain outside, I knew that I had a good excuse to put the kibosh on the walk and have a little extra time for other things.

Poor Una stood out in the rain, looking at me with questions in her eyes: "Why, Mommy? Why must I go out in the rain? It's so yucky and wet."

As if I'd relent and say, "OK. Pee on the carpet just this one time." Silly dog.

If you're going to be stuck inside, it's essential to have some good rain music. I highly recommend The Cure. There's something about Robert Smith's voice on a rainy day, with those funky guitars backing him up, that makes the gray day seem, well, poetic. If you want to get really poetic, try Dead Can Dance. If you'd rather be mellow, make it The Pretenders, Aimee Mann or James Taylor.

And of course, you gotta have The Doors, man. And Bob Dylan. Maybe a little Janis Joplin, a little Jimi Hendrix.

Rainy days are a great time to make mix CDs. Too bad I don't have time for that today.

Every summer from the time I was in second grade, I went to church camp for a week in the summer time. Now, when I say church camp, you have to understand. This was a regular camp that happened to be run by the United Church of Christ, which is second only to the Unitarians for the most liberal Protestants in America. We had daily meditations and evening "vespers," which included some prayers and Bible reading, but most of the day was taken up with normal camp things, like hiking and playing games.

I remember one summer when it rained the day we were supposed to go on a rafting trip. I was strangely relieved, and lay happily on my cot writing letters home and catching up in my diary. I was such a geek.

Speaking of geeks, I forgot to mention a really cool scene between my sister and I when I last visited. We got into an argument about who was geekier, with me insisting that I was, listing my credentials (voted "Most Studious" in high school, sat in classes reading and still got A's, never quite got the hang of makeup, hate to do my hair, et cetera, et cetera). She argued she was geekier. After all, she had been the science major.

So we're standing there in a gay bar drinking whiskey sours and arguing about who's geekier. Eventually, I conceded defeat: she reads more science fiction. She pumped her arm in the air, "Yeah! I'm geekier." She paused. "But I'm a cool geek."

I love my sister.

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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