Kissing in the rain isn't all it's cracked up to be

I was lying awake last night listening to the rain.  It's been raining hard the past couple of days, for March in Southern California.

I like the rain.
It makes me cold and wet and uncomfortable.
It makes me wish I didn't have to go outside to get food or go to class.
But mostly, it reminds me of home.

Everyone thinks I came to California for the weather.  People from Seattle are jealous of me, people from California say "oh, you must love all the sun down here!"  I don't know how many times I've heard that.  I don't know how many times I've had to say that I don't, in fact, love living here.  It's too dry, too hot, too everything Seattle's not.

Even when it rains here, its different.  The infrastructure isn't designed for rain, so everything floods.  Sidewalks don't drain, sprinklers stay on... sprinklers exist.  Nobody uses sprinklers in Washington.

I don't know if I've ever owned a pair of rainboots until now.  I didn't really even mean to buy rainboots.  I wanted a pair of boots I can wear in the snow, since I like to go skiing and don't have any good shoes for before and after ski boots (wearing ski boots around is too dreadful to do for too long).  There were boots that looked warm, and then there were boots that looked waterproof.  This is Washington snow I'm talking about.  I went for waterproof: rainboots.

I convinced my mom to buy them for me under the premise that I could bring them down to college and wear them in the rain.  God forbid I should be caught wearing rainboots in Seattle.  You don't need them.  There's never any puddles.  I didn't expect to use them much.  But it's been raining plenty.  And suddenly I love walking in the rain... jumping in the puddles.  Sloshing in the streams.  Enjoying childhood pleasures I swear I never experienced before.  Then going to bed to experience the incredible silence that comes with a rainy night, because when its raining, nobody goes outside.

Of all of the Hollywood romantic moments that I've ever dreamed of, I think kissing in the rain has been there the longest.  It's strange, you'd think with a few and a half relationships and a dozen and a half years of living in Rainy Seattle under my belt that I'd have covered that already.  I suppose you'd think a lot of things that aren't true.  I suppose Hollywood should have been one of those things.  But a girl can dream.

I still like the rain.
It makes me cold and wet and uncomfortable.
It makes me want to go inside and snuggle up by a warm fire in a pile of blankets, after splashing through puddles with the love of my life, whoever that may be.