Ill Pleu

Okay, so it's raining in LA. And it's not so much that it's raining, but that it just doesn't rain like this here. People don't even own rain jackets, they're walking around with umbrellas getting soaked in the sideways slant-stream of downpour.

Me, I've got my trusty MEC jacket (the "other" Canadian flag, for those in the know) so the water drips down it and I only get soaked from the mid-thigh down. This, however, still sucks.

As a result of the water, everything in my house keeps breaking. One: the heat was off when I got here. I left a long-winded polite phone call to my landlady and now it back on. Two: the mesh gate door sticks against the wooden railing beside it, as that wood gets swollen with the rain. Three: the actual door behind the mesh gate door is also swollen with the rain, so much so that it is nearly impossible to close and once closed, nearly impossible to open. Two and three are direct results of our new landlady having removed the little awning over our door. Why? Why? It was ugly, but useful, and its use made it beautiful. Four: the shower broke. I was blithely enjoying the cocooning warmth of the shower, and suddenly realised I couldn't turn it off because the plastic handle had split. Eventually, I turned it off with a screwdriver. Five: while I was driving up Vermont, trying to avoid the even more numerous potholes (because of the creekbeds that the streets have turned into? Perhaps) and thinking about the broken shower, my windshield wipers broke. To be accurate, I discovered today that the problem is a blown fuse, so not too hard to fix. Still, LA is welcoming me back in the way that only LA can.

Now I'm going over to Kat's house and she's going to make me some pasta with alcohol in it. Choice.

That is, I'm going if I can make across the very deep, very wide lake of water that waits at the bottom of my stairs.