It's raining, it's pouring.

Last summer, in order to help with my depression, I took up cycling. I got to the point where I could ride more than 25 miles straight (through the lovely one-horse town of Hamilton City, California, and halfway to Orland, the podunk town beyond that, then back to Chico to collapse for the rest of the day...and oh yeah, that was on a 95+ degree day). This time last year I'd have been riding already, to work and back, or wherever.

But this year, it's still raining. Raining on an irregular enough basis that I can't ride to work. Today was laundry day at our house - five loads of laundry at the not-really-close-by laundromat I go to because they have wi-fi and because it was the first place I went to and because I hate change and am not interested in figured out a different laundromat. When I walked in, it was sunny; when I was done, it was raining cats and dogs, (insert weather cliche here).

Since I haven't been able to start biking yet, I've started gardening. Jeff and I have talked about getting fish, but I was afraid - I can hardly grow plants, how on earth will I keep a little life, even just a Betta fish, alive?? How will I deal with that? I've felt that anxiety even with my plants - I started a morning glory plant indoors, watched it grow, it was three or four inches tall, and I guessed that it was ready to move out into the Big Wide World.

Apparently not. It was destroyed by insects within a few days.

Describing what I felt as "heartbroken" was hardly an exaggeration, as sad as that may seem. My grandmother had a beautiful mound of morning glories in her yard every year, and I was looking forward to having it climb up the pole that holds our mailbox. I felt like I was letting Grammy down.

Thankfully I'd planted multiple seeds at the same time. The second one isn't as tall as the other one was when I moved it outside...but that one wasn't ready. I'll wait longer, until it's a bit taller, better able to withstand the Big Scary Bugs.

And now it'll have a plastic velociraptor and a glass saint to guard him, relics from the house's previous occupants that I found in the garden.

We all need someone watching out for us.