Umbrellas.

Yesterday, I was at Wal-mart with Leah and Daniel, Leah's boyfriend. Daniel and I have coupons for McDonald's, so we go every Tuesday to get our free value meal, then go to the Wal-mart behind the McDonald's for our weekly shopping excursion. I had a caramel iced coffee, which was the perfect balance of coffe, caramel, milk, and sweetness.

Anyways, the weather has been frightful these past few days, what with tornado warnings, rain, thunder, and the like. Did you know tornadoes on average have a 500 foot diameter? Some get to be over a mile. This is something I have often wondered and only recently remembered that I wondered it within range of the internet. Now I know. Anyways, as we go to walk into Wal-mart, we open our umbrellas to the drizzly water falling from the bland gray sky. Daniel's umbrella does not open properly. It "works," its just one of the spokes is broken.

My mother always gets the words "jump rope" and umbrella confused. Even to this day, she'll tell her students to play with the umbrella and reminds us not to forget the jump rope. I always assumed that she learned these words in the same vocabulary lesson as a child and her brain filed them next to each other, like me always confusing Leah, Mary, and Judy. And alot of other words. My friends tell me that I talk oddly. I get caught up on words, I talk so fast that I can't physically form the words, and sometimes I use the complete wrong words. They can usually contextually tell what I'm saying, so they don't correct me, and so I never know. Also, I confuse beginnings, like Chepsi Perry (cherry pepsi.)

So, Daniel decides to buy a new umbrella. As he stands next to the stand of umbrellas, I think, Ive been here before. Deja Vu! Actually, it wasn't deja vu, I had in fact been in that scenario twice before. Daniel is on his fourth umbrella this year, and the handle on the fourth is already breaking. He has the worst of luck with umbrellas, poor guy.

For Christmas somebody should buy him an umbrella with a lifetime warranty, Leah and I decided. My umbrella, which I got at the beginning of the semester, is beginning to break. It gets jammed when I try to open it. It still works well enough for me, though. Maybe it'll get sunny again and I won't have such a need for umbrellas. This weather is crazy. I like the rain unless I'm trying to walk across campus to my class.

At least the weather fights the pollen. Whenever it doesn't rain, all the cars everywhere on campus, even the ones in garages, are covered in a sheet of yellow powder. It's not exactly pleasant.

I hope Daniel's new umbrella lasts a good long time.