LAUGHTER AND MOTHER NATURE PISS

Winter in New England has totally sucked this year.  For real.  The snow has been just about nonexistent, but this is actually a plus when I meet my sister (each of us driving about forty-five minutes to meet in the mid-point) to tag-team babysit her grand-twins.

My sister and I meet early, act like idiots in a store by trying on a slew of dresses that are not flattering.  (One of the ones I try on is a flower-printed dress that is the color of stomach bile.)  Next, we have lunch at Panera and play cards for about an hour, entertaining the occasional nearby patron and employee with our Cribbage and Rummy mastery.

When the time comes, I insist on following my sister in my own car to the grand-twins' house, about a ten minute ride away, so that she doesn't have to return southbound (my home direction) yet again, just to turn around go northbound to her own home.  After all, the weather is supposed to turn and rain quite a bit later on.

Rain.  Not snow.  No big deal, she convinces me, so we leave my car behind and head to our babysitting gig.  After we are alone with the babies for a while, we hear the wind pick up (not unusual; the house is on an inlet) and then we hear the rain start.  It's a hard rain, a steady rain, but by no means is it an unmanageable rain.

This is New England; weather changes are what we do.

Eventually my sister and I are kicked out, sent packing so the babies can be put back on schedule and re-oriented to the correct parenting and not the Snap-Chat filter, photo-bombing afternoon we have enjoyed, turning the babies into princesses and bears and puppies and clowns and lipstick-wearing hotties.

To leave, my sister needs to back her car up so we can drive back to my car, still parked at Panera.  I wait patiently in the driveway in the slow but steady cold drizzle as she unlocks her car door, gets into her car, and ...

HOLY SHIT ON A SHINGLE.

The sky opens up.  In the minute it takes my sister to get into her car, start it, back it up, and position it so I can get in the passenger door, I am soaked.  I drip all over her car and all over her and basically just plain drip every damn where.  As usual, with our mad adventures of dress-shopping and Panera lunching and card playing and pseudo babysitting, we start laughing uncontrollably.

Thankfully, Panera is still open when we return, and, also thankfully, it is near-empty.  We sit in front of the fireplace, mostly so I can dry off a little bit, but also so we can split a tuna sandwich and enjoy a tiny bit more quality time together.

It rains and rains and rains buckets upon buckets the whole way home until about ten percent of the ride is left, which also cracks me up for some reason.  It's almost like Mother Nature is taking an hour or so to just piss all over.  Rain or not, it doesn't deter the fun.  My sleeves and knees are still damp from the deluge when I arrive home, but the only ache I have is in my stomach from the laughter.