We really needed the rain

Yesterday Mindy calls me at work. Says she's taking the kids out for National Doughnut Day. Happens to mention that it's still raining (it had rained most of the night). I respond that, yeah, it's good that we got so much rain because we really needed it.

On the surface this banal exchange between two people could happen on pretty much any rainy day across the country. (Except, I guess, for the bit about the holiday honoring the women who served doughnuts to soldiers in World War I.)

However, we just planted some hydrangeas a few weeks back, one of which isn't exactly thriving, so we've been watering the plants at every opportunity we get. And we are hosting our big annual summer party celebrating the kids' birthdays later this month, thus we want our landscaping to look as nice as possible. So the exchange I referenced may be banal to most, but between Mindy and me, it was particularly relevant to subjects in the fronts of our minds recently.

Then it hits me. One of my biggest pet peeves used to be this: after getting caught unprepared(*) in the rain on the walk from the parking garage to my office building, I'd make the obligatory complaint to a coworker suffering from a similar fate, and they'd respond, "well, at least we really needed the rain".

(*) Nowadays, I'm never unprepared. It's called the two-umbrella system, and anyone that parks in a garage in a central business district and walks more than a couple blocks to the office is (or should be) well aware of it. One umbrella in the car and another at the office at all times. No exceptions. This is easy except the occasional occurrence when it rains for one leg of the commute and not the other. Since it's not natural to carry an umbrella with you when it's not raining. If you're not careful, you'll end with two umbrellas in the office and none in the car, or vice versa. Incidentally, it seems to be easier to remember to grab the umbrella on the way out when it rained in the morning but not in the evening then vice versa. Probably because in the morning, I'm carrying a banana, maybe an apple or pear, and will be stopping for coffee, so the last thing on my mind is to grab an umbrella if it's not raining. Unless, of course, in the instance of happy hour, where I never seem to remember to return the car umbrella to its rightful place when an after work drink four after work drinks has supplanted the infamous two-umbrella system in the front of my mind.

This would set me off every time. Needed the rain? I didn't need it. I'm not a farmer. I don't care if all the (crab) grass in my ten square foot yard is yellow and all of the plants in hanging baskets were shriveled. And oh by the way, I don't care about your yard either.

But that was the then, and this is the suburbs. Now I care what my lawn looks like (not great, by the way... apparently we need do some cross-seeding have some cross-seeding done in the fall, and maybe by the spring of 2014, it'll look OK). Now I care how the flowerbeds look.

Now I say things like "we really needed the rain" out of genuine concern for a hydrangea.