Celebration or Seattle?

By the amount of rain we've been getting lately, I've been wondering whether I'm in Celebration or Seattle. I can barely remember the last rain-free day we've had. Every afternoon and evening (if not earlier), we're enveloped in the midst of the thunderstorm. I'm beginning to forget what a blue sky looks like since I'm so used to puffy gray clouds.

Really, it's not all that unusual for this time of the year, and it's much better than a dry spell and increased fire danger. I can handle the thunderstorms as long as we don't have any hurricane threats. So far, all has been quiet out in the Atlantic.

The rain is much preferable to the snow that I had to deal with in Chicago. I'd rather tote an umbrella than a shovel and drive on wet pavement instead of ice, and you don't have to scrape raindrops off the windshield. Also, our rainy season whizzes by much past than the typical Midwest winter. Summer always seems to fly, and with it go the daily thunderstorms. In contrast, a Chicago winter drags on for months and month. Then, just when you think you're safe, you get a March blizzard. I'll take the storms and the lightning light shows any day!

The only bummer about the rain is that it inhibits our theme park visits. We avoid Disney like the plague in the peak season, other than an occasionaly brief visit in the morning or evening. But we have our Universal Premier Passes, which means front-of-the-line afer 4 p.m. Unfortunately, for the last couple of weeks the rains have been here after 4 too. It's just not worth it to slog around the park in a soggy rain poncho...yuck.

My husband's early afternoon water park visits have been curtailed too. He waits until much of the tourist crowd has gone back to their hotel rooms to nurse their sunburns. The last couple of hours usually mean managable lines, even in the summertime. Rain isn't a problem since you're wet already, but the water parks get shut down at the first hint of lightning. Since most summertime Florida rains are accompanied by copious amounts of thunder and lightning, that means a frequent call of "Everybody out of the pool."

I feel sorry for the tourists who are pretty much locked into summer visits. Usually you can work around the rain; when hubby and I were visitors ourselves, we were very good at working our meals around the afternoon storms. They would whip up, rage fiercely, and be done by the time we had finished our meal. Unfortunately that wouldn't work with our current rain schedule, which starts in the afternoon and runs through the most of the evening lately.

Oh well, I know it's just part of the cycle and the price of living in the tropics. Whenever I get too depressed about being housebound by a deluge of rain, I'll just remind myself that it could be snow!