The rain today is so friendly, nice and warm. It has been raining steadily throughout the day, sometimes drizzling, sometimes pouring. I wonder sometimes if atmospheric pressure can be felt before the rain because I usually get a bit stressed and headachy before it rains, then when it rains I always feel nice and calm (or maybe its just the sound of the rain and the beautiful fresh smells).
Here's the rainy day story that I promised...
All day Daniel and I had been working on our box house. Dad had brought home several large refrigerator boxes and we had been happily putting them to good use.
I ran into the house for more tape and scissors while Daniel was happily cutting away at some parts of the boxes.
I ran quickly dashing up the stairs, opening and closing the drawers that you could usually find scissors in. Until finally I found some in my moms room in the little tin that she kept on her dresser.
I was anxious to get back out again before Daniel did something that I didn't want him to do, so I ran right past the refrigerator where we kept the tape. I stopped with my hand on the door knob and turned back quickly, scraping over a chair as I walked over to the refrigerator.
Standing on tip toes I searched the top of the refrigerator hoping to spy the tape quickly, there was so much stuff that I had to move it around.
Frustrated I put the scissors down and the anxiety in my stomach built as I imagined Daniel having all of the fun while I was rifling through the stuff on the refrigerator.
I had to take some of it down and put it on the table, in order to open the cupboard door. Finally I found some tape, hiding in a basket, so I snatched it up and heedless of the mess ran outside with my tape and scissors.
Daniel had cut out several windows and an opening for a door. I cut strips of tape to make hinges for the door and deftly applied them. As we worked we imagined all sorts of amazing rooms for our house, a second level, and a kitchen.
Then when we ran out of cardboard (and not finding any more after several search missions), we excitedly formed a plan to sleep out in our playhouse. Energized by our idea we cleaned up all of the stray pieces of tape and brought tape and scissors into the house, where we dumped it all on the kitchen table.
We ran up to our moms room "Mom! Can we sleep out in the playhouse we made." Mom gave us a stern look, "Did you clean up the mess?" We unabashedly told her we had (with the thought of quickly cleaning up the kitchen), then we heard the familiar words "Go ask your Dad." Which we generally liked to turn into a vote in our favor.
So we ran out to the backyard searching for our Dad. Daniel stood back and let me ask him, "what does your mom say?" I immediately answered that she said that we could. He warned us that it looked like it was going to rain, but we shrugged it off, sure that our fantastic house would keep us dry.
"Alright, I don't think you'll make it through the night. You'll come on in if it starts raining, OK?" We scoffed "were not going to need to come in the house, our play house is water proof!" Then we ran into the house to gather up our stuff, blankets, sleeping bags, pillows. Plus some books and snacks (in case we got hungry).
After dinner, we helped Dad locate the remote so that we could watch the news with him. This was a generally enjoyable thing to do because he liked to tease my mom by flipping the channels while the commercials were on and it was funny to hear bits and pieces from the different shows and commercials flash past.
"Friday!, well!, in other..., amazing, travel abroad, only $19.95!, carpet." Mom would huff at dad, "Jon, stop!" and his sly grin told us that he was teasing her.
When it was time for bed we went to get our pajamas on and brushed our teeth. Then made a big show of going off to our own home, our parents ignored the dramatics, "alright, have a good night."
We marched out to our "house" and settled in, snuggling down in the blankets we started talking and imagining things. We told a few ghost stories, then knelt down on top of our blankets to say a little prayer, acting as grown up as possible we thought.
Finally we settled in and dozed fitfully for a while in our uncomfortable positions. The next awareness that I had was the sound of the rain pitter pattering upon the roof of our little house.
Then the smell of the rain and of damp cardboard, I turned over and snuggled down in my blankets a bit more, ignoring the rain since I didn't want to go into the house. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, drowsily snuggling against my pillow.
Then I felt a drop and this served to wake me further. I lay there ignoring the drip, drip, drip coming down onto my shoulder until I couldn't stand it anymore.
"Daniel," I whispered. "Are you awake?" I kind of knew the answer since I had felt a shift in his awareness. "Yeah," he answered. "There's a leak, what should we do?"
He shuffled around and I shuffled around looking for a piece of extra cardboard to slip in the roof to cover the hole. Finally we got the hole covered and shivering we huddled closely for warmth, but we were stubborn kids and didn't want to go in the house.
We dozed a bit, until we heard another drip, drip, we shoved a blanket in that one. Then settled in again, drip, drip, another blanket was put into the hole. Our teeth were chattering, and we were clinging to our blankets in cold desperation.
Finally an idea came to me, "lets move the house under the carport." We got out and felt the downpour in full force. Stubbornly we picked up our little playhouse and brought it under the carport, then climbed back in.
Our blankets were wet, our pillows were damp and cold. We lay there a few minutes then almost simultaneously felt like going in. "Let's go in!" I told Daniel. He was already scrambling out of our cardboard doorway and I followed closely behind him, the sky outside was starting to lighten through the rain.
The house was silent in the predawn hours, but warm. We congratulated ourselves for making it through the night. It was five in the morning, we sat down at the table all full of childish happiness at our feat then decided to pour ourselves some orange juice.
Sitting across from Daniel I drank my juice and grinned at him, then rubbed my cold nose, "I'm going to go back to bed, how about you?" He enthusiastically agreed and we ran to our rooms. My bed never felt so warm and cozy to me then it did at that moment. :D
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