This morning, I forgot my umbrella.

Actually, I should redact two elements of that statement, as I suppose filling one's blog with lies so early on in the process is a slippery slope. Firstly, I did not forget exactly, as I never intended to grab an umbrella in the first place. I didn't even realize it was raining. Secondly, I don't own an umbrella. But saying "This morning, I forgot my raincoat" is so unromantic. There's nothing exciting about a raincoat; it is, in fact, just a regular coat made out of a different material. An umbrella is a whole, delightfully indulgent apparatus whose only function is to keep water off of your head and torso and dump it directly onto your knees. (It also provides you with a five foot radius of personal space that your enemies, or indeed complete strangers, cannot penetrate without getting their eye poked. Very useful for high level spies, or for those of us who were rudely forced to leave our beds even though we were having a very lovely dream about a certain British comedian and are a bit grumpy now, thank you very much.)

Anyway, I was upset that I had forgotten my wearable umbrella (nailed it) this morning not because I don't enjoy the rain, but because it puts me in the class of people who are unprepared. I am not, for the record, an unprepared person. I check the weather daily, and dress accordingly. Upon exiting public transportation, I make sure I have already studied the route I need to take, having noted important landmarks (if you start walking towards Binny's Beverage Depot, no matter how tempting it is, you are going in the wrong direction). I order GrubHub while running on the treadmill at the gym, to ensure that it will arrive at my house at the same time I do after my workout. (This both puts me in the class of prepared people, and the class of people who are total losers.)

However, nature is the prepared person's mortal enemy. Having been foiled by the hourly forecast upon which I rely too heavily, I quickly started pretending that I had forgotten any sort of rain-related accoutrements on purpose. I walked through the early morning drizzle with a carefree confidence, looking up at the sky and smiling slightly as if to say, "I'm so glad that I purposefully planned to get wet; what a perfect way to start the day!" When the few other sopping people on the street would look to me with their miserable faces, as if to acknowledge our mutual place in the brotherhood of the unprepared, I averted my gaze and tried even harder to look like I had purposefully decided to eschew umbrella and raincoat, perhaps for a more spiritual connection to Mother Earth. I am on a higher plane than you unprepared idiots. In fact, I am even on a higher plane than you people who did prepare; I do not trouble myself with such trifling details such as weather. I am above weather. In the end, I think instead of achieving the look of someone on a different plane, I merely looked like I was on a different planet. One where it is perfectly normal to bound through the streets, grinning like an idiot and looking wistfully at the grey, dripping sky. Perhaps the businessmen and women of downtown Chicago thought that I was signalling to some high-flying UFO that I was ready to return home; most likely, they didn't notice me or give a shit about what I was doing.

To be fair, pretending to enjoy being caught in the rain wasn't that difficult for me, as I genuinely enjoy days like today: monochrome and spitty. I can almost hear the collective sigh from my nonexistent readers (what would that sound like?). Good god, another faux-artistic twenty-some-year old who waxes rhapsodical about the beauty and mystery in thunderstorms? I can just see her now, red Hunter boots and a bright yellow, vintage raincoat, giggling as she splashes in the somehow perfectly azure puddles in the somehow garbage-free city street. Or snuggled up in a men's sweater, nicked from some terribly gifted painter boyfriend whose Warby Parker bespectacled soul just couldn't give her what she needed, writing bad poetry and sipping on some kind of fruity tea with multiple names while gazing out the window at the steady stream of rain. 

I will not lie, I'm a little bit that girl, minus the killer fashion sense and the string of cute, artistic boyfriends. However, the true reason I love rainy days is that they instantly lower expectations. When it is a beautiful 70 degree day with a perfect sun, so perfect that you can almost see its stupid little grin and its fucking adorable sunglasses that shield its nonexistent eyes from itself (a completely befuddling image that continually pops up in children's books and advertisements designed by the Florida Tourism Board), you have to match its perfection. Those are the days that people expect you, and you expect yourself, to get things done. Take a walk or maybe even a run, assemble a picnic basket for a perfect afternoon with friends or if nothing else, get those pesky errands done that you've been putting off for weeks! The good weather stands in for your mother, forcing you out of bed at a decent hour (oh the horror) and passive aggressively reminding you to fix your life, to call that guy about that job, to find a boyfriend, to lose some weight.

A rainy day, however, is your friend. All that is required of you on a rainy day is to snuggle and drink tea. If you do anything beyond that, it is a victory. Because the expectations are low, I always get more done, although I suppose you could argue that because the expectations are low, I just think that I'm getting more done. And I would tell you to shut up, this isn't the Matrix, and I don't need to have some existential crisis about what is perceived reality and what is reality. Even if I don't get more done, the not getting anything done feels better.

And just look at me now! I managed to get out of bed, go to work and write this blog post! I'm like Superman, Albert Einstein and Jane Austen rolled into one, slightly damp person. Just don't ask me to do anything else, 'cos I'm pretty tired now, and I have to get down to some serious rainy day snuggling.