Always wanting

I'm restless just now; I need sorting out but I'm not sure how to get it.

For as long as I can remember I have missed living in Sacramento. When I was much younger it was because my friends and family were all there. After I realized my family was un-good and didn't like me very much anyway, and that the friends I had back then wouldn't even know me today, I just missed the city. I missed the weather, I missed the proximity to San Francisco. My mom and her husband used to take me on trips to Frisco, shopping trips or trips to see shows.

I visited Sacramento with Mr. J several years ago and saw the radiant, shiny, sweltering, muggy, beautifully dirty city that I remembered from childhood. I didn't misremember it all, the way people forget details or glamourize things in their minds. The Catholic school I went to was just as big, just as imposing as I recalled it. Sutter's Fort was just as interesting as it was during my grammar school field trips all those years ago. The trees along L Street were just as big as back then.

For twenty years I have lived in the Northwest. For twenty years I have bemoaned the climate here, complaining about the rain and the constant overcast and the mud. Oh lord, the mud. Everything here is covered in mud. People are covered in mud.

For the past couple of weeks the weather here has been typically sunny and bright, as it gets in Oregon in July, and I couldn't be more unhappy with it. Just last year I made a commitment to myself not to be so damn negative about living here. I would feel absolute hatred boil in my veins when it rained; the anger I felt would be so thick, so tangible, I could simply walk into a room and people would scatter. I was unhappy, being so unhappy. Since I couldn't change the weather, I decided to change how I felt about it.

So I made a list of all the things I could do in the Northwest, and all the good or nice things about rain that aren't true of hot, sunny places. For instance, running in the rain is just fine but you can't really run in 90 degree heat with 80 percent humidity. At least, I can't. Also, I like tea and hot chocolate, both of which are best enjoyed when it's cold and rainy out, and not at all preferable when it's hot. My list got long, and without realizing it I changed how I felt about the weather.

And now ... now I want it to be rainy. I want to put a fire in the fireplace. I want to put on the big, fuzzy, soft red socks my stepdaughter bought me last Christmas. I want to put the kettle on and listen to a Janet Evanovich book on my iPod and knit something nice in my super-soft blood red Caron yarn that has been sitting in my knitting basket waiting for a day when my hands won't sweat at the thought of touching it. When I wake up and check the web for each day's forecast and see hot and sunny again I throw up a little bit inside. Some days I can't just be happy with what I have, I have to have something different.

I haven't had dinner; I cannot possibly choose among all the options. My apartment is a mess, dishes are piled in the kitchen. I need to go to the market. I need to meditate, or do yoga, or run, or work out, or finish the payroll I brought home from the office. But I'm too hot to do any of that stuff.

I really wish it would rain.