December Rain

(Do you think this snail understood me when I asked him -- or her -- "Etana, etana näytä sarves, tuleeko huomenna pouta?" I believe him, but that doesn't mean it can't rain too...)

Hey guys,

So, yesterday I returned to work and my first day back wasn't much different than my first day two months earlier. Though this time I had even less to do. From nine to five I actually accomplished one thing -- emptying the trash bins with Rami. On top of that I watched some TV with Alex, read my magazines in different hiding places and offered my help to anyone I could find with no results. It was a rainy-ish day with some sunlight. When I got home I went to McDonald's for dinner and just enjoyed the melancholic weather and "snail boulevard". Back at the house I read When The Game Was Ours all night because it was just that unputdownable. I almost finished it during the commercials of the New York Knicks vs. New Jersey Nets game on One.

I finally finished the book at breakfast, while Sascha slept in until a little over nine. I got to work and it was raining. I had the proper gear and got to -- or had to -- drive the forklift until lunch and an hour after lunch. I moved the port-a-potties or mobile outhouses from their usual hangout into the great wall of dunnys surrounding the restaurant. I didn't count them but we got two shipments of 10 extra dunnys during the day and in the end our wall extended close to two hundred meters. I should've taken a picture. During my task it got really warm so I had to get rid of my rain wear and then it got cloudy again.

After that I helped Richard move some haystacks -- we didn't look for any needles but we did get dirty -- and we finished just before the dark clouds settled in above us. And that's when December Rain started. It wasn't the craziest storm I'd ever seen but it had to be pretty close. It was a hail storm and little pieces of ice rained down on the metal roof above us making an almost unbearable sound. It was as loud as a music concert or an airplane.

The rain was so hard that at Cellar Door floor drains turned into fountains and the restaurant roof generated indoor waterfalls. Had it been someone's wedding day the bride would definitely have perished in the commotion, the groom's best friend would have had to play electric guitar at her funeral outside the church in the desert, unplugged and without an amplifier and still rocked the shit out of that solo while the groom wouldn't have been able to stop crying until he'd swum with dolphins. It was that crazy.

And after five minutes the rain returned to normal and people dried stuff up vigorously. And I had nothing to do, again. Fortunately the customers had disappeared (or drowned?) and we got home fairly early in, surprise surprise, nice weather.

When I headed out to fetch some dinner it got cloudy and then rainy again before I got back so I gladly sat down and watched some Six Feet Under and felt surprisingly good about myself. The boredom has had me thinking about the 61 days -- 59 now -- left at Rochford. I've also grown a bit too dependent on Facebook because checking my feed is practically the first thing I do when I wake up and it always makes me feel a little more homesick than I already do. I kinda wish it was winter and I'm definite that when the next one comes I won't be complaining about snow. But I'm not complaining about the sunshine nor the rain. I welcome both and I really like the variety even though it makes preparing for the day a little bit difficult. Currently I have a pair of shorts, a hat, sunscreen, a pair of shoes and a rain jacket waiting for me at work plus I can always borrow a pair of gumboots when it's raining. Wow, long paragraph... Well, I just felt like venting.

Finally I have to say that I was a little skeptical of how good my blog would be for the next two months after vacationing and being with family; I thought it would be "more of the same" and not as good. But then I realized that no two days at Rochford are alike (unless you're pulling down wires at Helmut's farm for seven hours a day) and that there's a lot of Melbourne and many movies and DVDs to be seen, many books to be read. Besides it's a little easier to write when the other people in my stories aren't reading them five minutes later. Not that I'd lie or anything...

So until next time, Don't Cry, Sweet Child O' Mine, all we need is just a little Patience and then You Could Be Mine in Paradise City. Until then stay out of the rain.

Z