November Showers bring mold (and flowers!)

My mother read that last post and called me up immediately – International Call – and told me to take it down. She said it was too depressing. She then told me to “Call some friends. Go outside. Blow the stink off of you.” Thanks mom. You're a big help.

That post was not depressing. That’s nothing.

This is depressing:

Do you see what I’m doing people? Do you SEE it? I’m IRONING UNDERWEAR. Arrrrggggggg!

We have had 20 days of rain straight. Nothing dries. I shouldn’t complain. Santa Caterina (where the yoga center is) has had over 50 days of non-stop rain. They are in a state of emergency.

Clothes dryers are nearly non-existent. They are a luxury for only the very rich. Mostly because the electricity to run them is so expensive. We pay a lot for electricity. More than in the US. So there are few dryers on the market and little demand, making those that are available stupidly expensive.

Everyone just throws the clothes up on a line. And then has to iron them to get the stiffness out, and, more importantly, the damp.

I don’t usually iron, that is if it is sunny and hot. I’m a bad housewife. I let the clothes be stiff. I remember seeing tags on t-shirts here that said don’t iron over the decal, and I thought, “well that’s stupid. Who irons t-shirts anyway?” Oh, how I learned the hard way!

In the first year or so, if the clothes were a little damp and stiff I didn’t really pay attention. I would just pull them off the line, shake and fold and put them away. No big deal, right? Wrong! One day after a particularly long rainy spell, I pulled a pair of shoes out of the closet that were covered in mold. And then another pair. And then I dug deeper. The walls of the closet were lightly moldy and so were the clothes. Item after I item I took out and found it covered in moldy spots. I ended up washing 90% of what we own and scrubbing the insides of the closet out.

So now I iron undies. Isn’t my Brazilian life sexy?

We got an almost break in the weather yesterday (I swear we moved to Seattle some days) and we took Dharma out to the college to walk.

Of course, all this rain is making things very green and what bloomed earlier in the spring has fallen and is carpeting the grass.

I worked overtime fidgeting with the dials on my camera, trying to bend it into something it’s not. But these flowers are so pretty they don’t need a fancy camera to shine.