rubbish and rain

The grass is always greener on the other side, so I have noticed. Having a job has made the island living experience noticeably less exciting. I am sorry for the lack of blogs lately, but Speedo Lady has kept me running for the last week straight- but alas, there is some good news, she has left the island for a week, so I am able to go to work stressless and get my job done without a million ideas being thrown at me simultaneously.
This weekend Blake and I were signed up for an Earth Day "rubbish" Cleanup. We decided that it was a good way to give back. Every school year I take my students out with gloves and garbage bags and we do a thorough clean-up of the school grounds. It is a nice break and the students enjoy it- so I thought this year we should continue the tradition- minus the kids. Here is one thing I have noted from this experience. It is significantly more fun to hold a garbage bag and bark at the kids to pick up the pieces of trash while gossiping with fellow staff members than it is to actually bend down and pick up the garbage yourself. I'll keep that in mind for next year... Luckily there were plenty of us suckers out there at 7:15 am on Saturday morning delving into the jungle to fish out old toilet tanks, tires, umbrellas and mix c.d's. Except for the humid air, early start and numerous dead chickens and iguanas the experience wouldn't have been half bad. Today we are paying though. It turns out that an hour and a half of garbage pick-up is quite the workout and our hamstrings are killing us! Just as we finished our section of road the rain began to fall. Blake and I, being hardy Canadian souls, decided to brave it and head over to Public Beach for the Clean-Up Brunch being offered. As we headed west the rain began to beat down harder and faster. By the time we were a few blocks from the event it was so heavy that we could hardly see in front of us and it was too loud to talk over! In a moment of pure genius earlier that morning, I had packed an umbrella into the trunk (In hindsight I should have grabbed the one I found in the bush during clean-up too) We ran around to the trunk and grabbed it but we were too late. We were already soaked to the bone. Stepping out of the car was like stepping into a river. You know how when it starts to rain, you always try to cover your head and jump around the puddles trying to stay dry, and then there is that defining moment when you realize there was no point trying to stay dry- you are going to get soaked either way? That was pretty much the situation from the second we left the car. We ran over to the food tent and arrived 5 pounds of rain-water heavier. Now here is the biggest disappointment. The meal sucked! The ackee and codfish was overly salty, the cheese omelettes were made of processed cheese slices (and I question if there was even an egg in there), the juice was Tang (which mom used to use in the dishwasher for it's acidic cleaning power), and the buns were hard. We scarfed down what we could while we sat huddled together with fellow KPMG "rubbish-pickers" while keeping our feet off the pond in which our chairs stood. The second the last crumb was finished we bolted out to the car while failing miserably at dodging the ankle deep lakes. The rain by this time would be classified as torrential and stung as is hit your bare skin. Upon reaching the car we flung ourselves in to the seats and began our harrowing drive home. Thankfully it was Blake driving, since I tend to get scared when it rains too hard to see the road and the wakes you leave splash into the oncoming vehicles. We had to blast the AC on high to avoid fogging up the interior, and as a result were freezing. Upon reaching our place we were greeted with a huge lake in our driveway that reached up to the bumper of our car! Blake and I looked at each other and both thought the same thing.. what is rainy season going to look like?