Buckets of rain....Gumi

Yes....as of yesterday, the rainy season is now with us and will be for, Lord only knows how long. So, this cute little "funny" (that I borrowed from Natalie Dee) is almost right....but..you need to just change the hours.....to weeks....and yessiree Bob, that's where we'd be!!! I hate the rainy season. Oh...don't get me wrong...I like rain...I really do...but...when it rains...aaaallllll the tiiiiiiiiimmmmmmme for daaaaaaaayyyyysssss on eeeeennnnnd....well...that just gets a little old.

For example...it started raining yesterday (of course it did, it was the opening of the season!!)....and it is now almost 11:30 p.m, tonight....and it's still raining!

What's really aggravating is that if you stand still, the air is cool...but, move...just one little bit...and it's muggy....really...really...muggy. Which means that everything is wet. It really is kind of disgusting...especially if you are lucky enough to experience "the mold factor". My first rainy season, 16 years ago, I had some really nice Birkenstock sandals in my shoe box (kind of like a shoe closet that is in the entrance way of every abode in this country.) I was a newbie and didn't know that there are these really cool "dry boxes" that you put into places that help pull the moisture out of the air, thus keeping everything in those places nice and relatively dry.

Let's just say that when I took out those lovely $125 Berks....they looked like they had been totally violated and would seriously, never, ever recover.

My tan leather Berks had turned a lovely green....I wish I could find a picture, 'cause I'm sure I took one...but that was so long ago...just use your imagination.

For the next few weeks, we will see the sunshine a few times....our shoes and sox (if anyone actually wears them this time of year..sox, that is), pants, shirts, big shoulder-bags that don't quite fit under the umbrella...everything will be wet or damp. The windows of our cars are constantly fogged over because it's so hard to regulate the temperature inside the car to keep it from happening. "Bad Hair Day" is a common thing for most people. Electric "room dryers" (which pull the moisture out of the air) are going at all times of the day in most houses...and laundry?? hahahahaha....don't worry about clothes having to dry inside the house thus smelling kind of..."yech", because everyone else smells the same way!!!

Thank God for Febreeze!!!

(I'm like a breath of freaking spring everywhere I go!!!)

Okay...enough complaining...it's still early in the "season of the rain"...will leave more for later...'cause honey, you know there will be more!!!! And of course, the rain is good for the rice that has been planted lately....I don't want the price of rice to go up like everything else has...so...taking the good with the bad, I guess!!

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Do you know what these are???

The look so cute, don't they?? These little fruits are called gumi, in Japanese. I had no idea what they were in English and so....I found in my trusty dictionary that they were "silverberries". uh-huh. okay. so much clearer now. So I went to Wikipedia and found 'gumi'...it said that "Elaeagnus multiflora (Goumi, Gumi, Natsugumi, or Cherry Silverberry), is a species of Elaeagnus, native to China, Korea and Japan." (Sure...okay....)

And it said that the "the fruit is juicy and edible, with an acidic taste."

In another place it also said that the berries were "lacking a good flavour".

For those unsuspecting, innocent souls who fall prey to the mischievous ways of little boys who will lovingly say, "Oh, Mommy, these are good! Why don't you try one?"......do...not...believe...the little liars....for when you bite into one of those lovely, juicy fruit-like tidbits....

here is what you might possibly look like.....

"Lacking in good flavour".....that's the understatement of the century!!! These jelly-bean looking berries are, seriously....the tartest...the sourest...the most nasty things you will every put in your mouth...unless, of course, you like that kind of eating adventure and the puckering of body parts that follows, then...by all means...eat 'em up. Take mine. We have a very large bush in the backyard with about 200 of these tasty fruits.....Not enough sugar in the world, my friends, to make these things edible.

But of course, I'm not a 5th grade boy...Issei and 5 of his friends were back there today, standing under their umbrellas, daring each other to eat them. After rousing games of "rock, paper, scissors", the losers had to eat one. I wish I had recorded the laughter....listening to them (taking the enamel off their teeth in the process, I'm sure!) was pure sunshine on this dreary day!
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