Down With Rain

I try to be a good citizen. I know that parts of our country has been in a drought for the whole growing season this year. Our part of the country has been baking in an oven for almost two months. Air conditioners rage in every house in the city. Hydro regulators have asked us to reduce electricity use to avoid over-burdening the system.

I do my part to reduce energy consumption because the production of electricy causes pollution and the use of electricity is expensive. So I do us a favour by limiting our use of electricity and saving us some money. For the past two months, I've done two main things: 1) I gauge the temperature outside and set our air conditioner just a few degrees lower so that the AC takes the edge off the humidity without making the house cold. 2) I don't use the dryer at all. I've had a clothes line in the backyard for two years now. I've only hung the white laundry out because the colours discolour in the sun. This summer, I moved the clothes line to a shady spot under the tree. Now I can hang up all my laundry outside to dry.

But you can never quite count on Mother Nature to do her part to get your laundry dried though. I hung up two loads of washing today. Wouldn't you know that by mid-morning, it started raining. I'm cool with that, I said to our cousin visiting from Australia, What's the worst that can happen? So my clothes get wet, but they will dry again. I'm good with that.

Later, the sun came back out, the clothes started to dry again. It's evening now. I am looking out the window. It's pouring rain. My laundry is still out on the lines.

Right now, there's a part of me saying, I do my part to conserve energy and protect the environment. Why isn't Mother Nature being more cooperative in getting my laundry dry? Damn, do I have to re-wash the laundry and put them in the dryer? What the hell is this?