What a drip

It’s raining again. Big deal, I know. This is Vancouver, after all.

I don’t actually mind the rain so much, especially after having lived through what we are now calling “Snowmageddon” here last December-January. Honestly, I don’t know how you people back East do it! But rain is okay, unless it’s combined with such great gusts of cold wind that you just can’t keep any warmth in and your umbrella constantly turns inside-out. And that does happen here.

But this is a Spring-ish rain. Spring officially begins next week, and today is the first day of my Spring Break. I have no special plans for the week, other than to sleep in every day and drink copious amounts of café au lait in the late mornings and wine in the evenings. (I lead a simple – perhaps boring – life.) So the rain won’t really affect me much, even though it is predicted to continue for most of the week.

But what IS pissing me off is the roof next door and the gutter above my back patio door.

You see, I live at one end of a triplex, and my neighbour’s roof line from the top of their three stories is a dramatic swoop down to right over one of my flower boxes alongside my back patio. It is raining so much that water is just cascading down their roof and splashing with force into my flower box. My sprouting pansies, daffodils and tulips are in danger of drowning – not to mention the mess that the splashing mud is making on the side of the house and the fence.

But I can deal with that. I put a garbage can lid over top the offending waterfall’s landing area. It’s a plastic lid, so it’s slightly noisy, but at least my plants are protected. Unfortunately, it also looks really stupid, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The gutter is another matter. It seems that said gutter is plugged (with what I don’t know. I’m loathe to get up there to check it out.) and instead of the rainwater draining politely down the drainpipe, it is rudely pouring over the edge of the gutter in a constant flood. It’s making an extremely loud and annoying sound as it hits the patio and the bottom of the drainpipe that it should be draining into – sort-of like a regular, muted drum beat. This is outside my kitchen windows. And where do I spend a lot of time (i.e. where is my computer desk)? In my kitchen. Do you see where I am going with this???

I guess the only thing to do is to get up there and fish out whatever is blocking the gutter. But it’s raining out. I’ll get soaked. And I’m scared of heights.

I’m going to take my café au lait and go watch TV in the basement. It’s quiet and dry there.

Snow vomit

Normal Wet Coast weather has returned. As I type this, it is a balmy 5 degrees Celsius and it is pouring rain out. It has been raining hard since very early this morning. The forecasters are all predicting rain until – oh, let’s say forever.

This is good because it will melt all that damn snow. Yes. Except now we are being warned about the dangers of flooding. Clear all drains and catch basins, we are being implored. Yes. Except we can’t find them under all that damn snow – oh did I say that already?

After almost 24 hours of steady rain, we now have bare and wet main streets, deep slippery slush on not-so-main streets, and lots of crunchy, icy snow covered in shallow slush on sidewalks and anywhere else from which snow wasn’t removed often enough in the past three weeks. We still have the enormous snow drifts alongside the roads. I think those may be here till summer.

It was like treading thick, deep water to walk across my school parking lot today. It’s not very nice. DD has coined the phrase “snow vomit”, because as she so eloquently put it: “Think about when you throw up, Mom. Think about the consistency of it. It’s all liquidy with chunks in it. Isn’t the snow just like that now?”

Um … agreed. But could we skip the detailed description? And could we please close the schools? I don’t care about the money any more, but I’m so tired of having to wear my boots every day.