Abigail M. Schilling

Just when I think I can't get any lazy-er, I'm sent a rainy weekend. The rain hasn't changed my life at all, really. I thought I would get a good car wash out of it, and I might have, but it's hard to tell with all the leaves and gook and stuff all over my car. The national news must be giving the rains major coverage though because my mom keeps calling and emailing all worried. I assure her that we are fine and watching TV. Yesterday, when I touched base with my mom during a dry spot she asked what I was doing. Watching TV, duh! And she was all, "but you just said it's not raining!"

Mom, I was using the rain to justify the TV-watching. The rest of time (now) I just feel guilty.

This is my fifth January in California (wow!) and I'm pretty sure this is common. After winter passes (the rain) then it gets hot. Like summer-hot hot. One particular year (I want to say 2005) I was taking a softball class for the three-week January term in college. Winter lasted a little longer than usual--rain three days a week for all three weeks--and we got to "play" on the brand new synthetic soccer field. I think I was on a team called Awesome and mostly we were not. Sometimes, when the class was short a player I got to play for my team and the other team, Ruca (our coach misread a RVCA t-shirt) because I was the worst player. Evened the playing field. And! I never had to feel guilty for sucking. (I will say that the majority of the class was very sub-par at softball. That's why we were all getting it over and done with in three weeks.)

That January our dorm room flooded through the window (which took up practically our entire wall), and since the window sill was so long there was no way to set a bucket under the leak. I discovered when I woke up on a Sunday morning and realized my sheets were wet. Thankfully, my bed was only near the window and not directly under it. I had to pull away the things directly under it: our homemade table we'd made to fit between the window and the couch, the couch, the rug in front of the couch, and then I had to move the fridge since the couch was now blocking the computer (unacceptable). Once I had sized up the situation and decided that only the floor was getting wet, I called Campus PD's version of 911 because I wasn't sure if it was an emergency. My window had become a waterfall, and I honestly wasn't sure if the floor would rot through and I'd be providing a skylight to the boys on the second floor.

Campus PD said they appreciated the info and they would call the maintenance 911 and see if it was considered an emergency. I gave them my cell phone number and decided to flee campus via a friend with a car. We went to the movies (along with everyone else in the world) and then to dinner. I hadn't received a call from maintenance so I figured all was well.

When I got home that night, I could feel the wet floor before I had even opened my door. The carpet was soaked. And so, before going to bed, I jury-rigged a siphon from paper towels and mixing bowls. I pulled long sheets of paper towels and twisted them around and stuck one end the window sill and one end in a bowl. Within minutes the waterfall stopped and the bowls started to fill up from the water going through the towels. It is still one of my proudest moments.

I got up once in the middle of the night to empty the bowls. The next day I left for softball and when I came back my window unit had been replaced. They left me a note saying that everything should be okay now (they had even shop-vac-ed all the water). I was sad they didn't acknowledge my brilliant quick fix.

It's been raining enough here for that to happen again so I hope the little college girls who live there now don't have the same problem. There have been power outages and flash floods in parts of California, but those things are never in my part. My part of California is all cement and will only succumb to nature if it absolutely has to.

I know, I know, good story, Grandpa. Now I've gotta toddle back to the TV.