Early Morning Rain with a Chance of Hate Mongering

I woke this morning to the radio. I don't have a clock radio, my housemate does. She's been gone for almost two months now and every morning for those two months, her alarm has gone off at 6:30 am. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to turn the damn thing off. Thankfully it's set to radio instead of alarm, that much I could manage. It's only just occurred to me to unplug the thing, which, for some reason I cannot bring myself to do. So I lay there this morning listening to early AM Irish radio. Irish radio sucks, for your information. Not as bad as Italian radio but I'm listening to that at the office to improve my language skills, not listening to it in bed at at 6:30 am. So there I was, listening to bad morning radio with some rather insipid song thinking "yeah! Daft Punk tonight!" (because there is nothing inherently insipid about French Techno Pop) and then a car drove by. It sounded wet. Really soggy wet, which took me to the window to find that it rained overnight. A lot. And all my jeans were on the line in the back garden. Downstairs I went, out the back door, to take the clothes off the line. Remember when I said it rained a lot? I now have the heat turned on and clothing draped over every radiator in the house, which makes a delightful statement somewhere between 'I live in a run down trailer with the few teeth I have left' and compulsive need to show off ones underwear.

I know it rains a lot in Ireland. I know this. But yesterday was glorious! Not a cloud in the sky! So I thought I'd be ok. When I went to bed at 10 I'd actually forgotten the clothes were out back, but the sky was clear, so it should have been ok. Evidently not. Clearly my mistake was in the thinking part of my reasoning. And what really pisses me off is that the fact that the Irish (along with most of Europe actually) don't believe in clothes dryers. Soft, fluffy bath towels? Thing of the past! Oh, they believe dryers exist alright, but they also believe they are Evil and will hasten global warming from some point in the distant "I'll be dead by then" future to next week. Please. The gas released in the pub after a steady diet of Guinness, cabbage and onions will bring that about faster than any stupid tumble dryer. So the only options in 99.9% of households are to hang your clothes outside in the sun (ha!) or to turn the heat on and drape everything around the house. Which wouldn't piss me off nearly as much if it weren't for the fact that I NOW HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR TO THE CONCERT TONIGHT!!! Which, for you information, is in a muddy field, owing to the fact that it rained last night.

So here I sit, at 7:30 am, drinking coffee and smoldering. Let's recap the work schedule, shall we? I go to work at 9:30 and I live a mere 7 minute walk from the office, 10 if I'm really poking along and stop to watch the ducks. It takes me 45 minutes to get ready in the mornings, so I normally don't roll out of bed until 8:30. Which means I was woken up two hours early and forced out of bed 90 minutes early for the sole purpose of standing in the rain and swearing. I am in a foul mood this morning.

And can I just register my discontent at the song playing in my head right now? I wake up to some weird tunes, I'll admit to that, but today I've got a Robbie Williams song in my head, however it's only one part of the song: do you need a bit of rough? get on your knees, get on your knees. Who wakes up to that?! And now I've got to go listen to it to get it out of my head. I should be listening to Daft Punk to gear up for tonight. But no, that CD is in the US and I won't get it until I meet Jenn in September. Augh! And I've only just remembered that the ATM last night kept my card after I put in the wrong pin number. So now I've got to go there at lunch and retrieve it, and the bank is easily a 25 minutes to walk from the office so I'll have to take a cab, get the card back, grab a lunch and eat it in the cab on the way back to the office. Ummm, delightful. Nothing every happens quickly in the bank Fridays on pay day. There will be 20 people in line and two tellers because the rest of them are at lunch. Honestly, you'd think they'd learn that 12-2 on Friday is their busy time and that busy times mean staffing up instead of staffing down. Call me crazy, call me a rabid efficient American, I believe in the customer part of the phrase Customer Service. As opposed to , say, lip service.

Maybe I should take a duvet day...