rainy day gratitude

It's raining today. It will be raining on and off all day today, and the rest of the week will be similarly dismal and damp. I don't mind wet weather in the fall normally--it's a nice excuse to hunker down and bake things with cinnamon and nutmeg in them--but this isn't a stay-cozy-inside kind of rainy day. The temperatures are in the mid-seventies, and everything in our apartment feels sticky and gross.

And so I grumbled to myself this morning, annoyed with the water running down the kitchen window screens because there's no gutter system on that part of the roof; annoyed with the water pooling into mud in the backyard because that's just how it drains; annoyed with the condensation building up on the windows and the toilet tank and the kitchen sink.

Then I saw someone's Facebook status about the flooding in their basement, their broken dishwasher and washing machine, and water leaking into their car. I thought of our car, which I sometimes complain is an awfully small car for four people, but is watertight and its biggest problem right now is two missing hubcaps. I thought of our basement, which is often damp when it rains, but hasn't flooded since our landlord replaced the water heater. I thought of our dishwasher, where I often grumble about how hard it is to fit things in the top rack, but it runs and our dishes come out clean. And even these are all first world problems.

Our apartment building is old and unglamorous, small and quirky, with funny bump-outs in the walls and outlets in weird places, and not enough insulation. But when the weather turns nasty, we are well-sheltered from the elements.

Our yard may flood easily and be full of anthills, but it's mostly private, has grass in it, and is mostly fenced in, and it's not full of broken glass, or used needles, or a heap of garbage.

With the click of the touchpad (or the tap of a screen), I can easily conjure up images of all the things we don't have--a house! a minivan! a beautifully landscaped backyard! But I can just as easily pull up pictures of poor, starving people in National Geographic who would be awed by my comparatively luxurious standard of living. The thought of it turns my rainy day grumblings into gratitude.