Time to call Dad??

"I made it through the rain.
I kept my world protected.
I made it through the rain.
I kept my point of view."

-- I Made It Through the Rain, Barry Manilow



I parked at the bottom of the hill this morning at Zoe's bus stop. It's been hitting the 60s the past couple of days, but raining like all hell. We caught a break while waiting for the bus and I was thankful, because I had forgotten our umbrellas in the garage, open and drying out.

There's a creek (aka CRICK) that runs along the road, and I remarked out loud about how high the level of it was. I think my exact words were something like, "Wow, the river is high."

Zoe, always alert, asks, "What does that mean?"

"Just that the river is high. It's been raining a lot lately."

"What does it mean if the river is high?"

Nothing really, I thought. We live up on a hill, so it's not like I'm worried about flooding. Not on my property, anyway. But this means weather stories galore at work, a constant makeshift pond in the back yard, a yucky drive into the office, muddy dog paw marks all over my kitchen...

"It just means it's been raining a little too much these days," I decided to tell her.

"Oh," she says. "So the toilets will stop working."

Zoe doesn't remember a whole lot about living in Florida, but she reminded me of one of the quirks I had forgotten about living there: Heavy rains = plumbing failure.

How she remembered this, I have no idea. But I had to laugh.

"Our toilets will work, Zoe. They didn't work in Florida because we were on the same level as the ocean. Here we're up in the mountains."

"I don't see any mountains."

Oh for crying out loud. How to explain to a 6-year-old about sea level and its effects??

And then her bus came. That was almost as stressful as answering her question the other day about how babies get to be people.

"BUT HOW DID THEY START AS BABIES?" she demanded after I answered relatively honestly about babies in mommies bellies.



OK, maybe the baby question was more stressful.