Fucking weather forecasters.
No, really. I've put
up with their bullshit for the last year.
It started last fall when they kept saying it was going to be too
dangerously windy to go outside during a hurricane. Schools were cancelled all over the state,
adding to the school year. And what did
we get? Wind no worse than a normal
windy day. My trash cans didn't even
take flight. I call bullshit.
The same thing happened a couple of times over the
winter. They predicted a blizzard; we
got barely six inches of snow. They
predicted six inches of snow; we got two frigging feet of the shit.
It's not frikking rocket science. Boobs.
Idiots. Charlatans.
Last week we had a forecast for cloudy, rainy, and cool that
turned into sunny, blue skies, and hot.
Missed a beach day. Today the
prediction is for partly cloudy with sunny skies by noon, but I am awakened at
6:45 by the pounding, driving, shattering rain.
The forecasters claim the storms are passing, but I can see on the radar
that they are not. Another missed beach
day.
Based on my ability to read radar, I know this time that the
forecasters are lying. LYING. There really can be no excuse. They have radar and sonar and satellite
equipment, and still they get it wrong?!
How in the hell they get to keep their damn jobs is something I
seriously I want to know.
This thought is still pissing me off when I decide that I
might as well be productive. I have one
broken mini-blind that needs to be exchanged for a newer, better one. I also need some of the minutiae that can
only be found at a cheapo department store.
I make peace with myself about abandoning the beach and decide to hit
Home Depot and WalMart and get those off my list.
As soon as I leave the house and reach for my car door
handle, a bird shits on my arm.
In some cultures, this is considered good luck, so I say to
myself, "Aha! It's going to be a good day!" Yeah, right. I promptly get behind a Jeep doing 20 mph
under the posted speed limit, which is 30 mph.
This scenario repeats itself several times during the day as if there is
some cosmic joke I've managed to miss and my car and I are wearing targets.
Surprisingly, though, it really is a good day. I find what I
need, for the most part anyway, there are no lines at the stores, and I even
remember my usual route home (which is not the same as the way there) is full
of traffic detours so I jump on the highway instead. The laundry all gets done, and the washer
doesn't even unbalance when I put through the giant quilt. I manage to hang the blind and some pictures,
and the cordless drill doesn't run out of battery until I am driving the final
screw into the plaster wall to hang a mirror.
The weather forecasters may have shit on me today, and a
bird truly did shit on me today, but so far everything else has gone relatively
well. I might even get to bed before
midnight, which will be a first in the last few weeks. I may not have gotten to the beach, but my to-do
list shrunk immensely today.
Though this is all fine and well, I am reminded of a
poem.
I'll bet you think I'm going to go big or go home. Well, I already am home, and I already got
shit on today, so here's the poem that ran through my head as I was opening my
car door:
Birdie, birdie in the
sky,
Why'd you do that in
my eye?
I won't laugh, and I
won't cry,
I'm just glad that
cows don't fly.
