MILDEW AND MENTAL HEALTH

It's remarkably difficult to avoid talking about the rain. It's all the rage around here, and by "rage" I mean that we are all raging that it is raining on another weekend. Friday it pours several times, and we are surrounded by thunderstorms and flash flood warnings all day long. 

By some grace of Mother Nature, high school graduation in the district where I teach seems to avoid the evening rain. A massive wall of thunderstorms miles and miles wide barrels east then turns north, circumventing the small town where chairs have been set up on the field and an audience gathers in the metal stands. 

A true recipe for disaster should the Thunder Gods deem it to be so.

It's one thing to plan a weekend of umbrellas. It's quite another to set ourselves up to be human lightning rods. To be honest, this Weekend Wash-Out routine is getting stale, although it does cultivate a certain appreciation for the good weather days should we ever get to enjoy any of them. Of course, it also cultivates mold and mildew, but I digress.

At least all of this rain is good for the flowers and the trees and the lawns and the weeds. Not so much for our morale, but, at this point of the school year, morale is in the tank, anyway. Perhaps that's why it's raining every weekend -- so those of us who are miserable at work can be equally miserable when we're not at work. 

The seniors make their getaway, though, and they do it under cloudy skies without the storms. Western Massachusetts and New Hampshire are getting drenched, but our students are like the Weather Whisperers. If we can just harness that and sprinkle it on Saturdays, we might make it through summer with some of our sanity intact.