When it rains, it pours

Here's a random factoid about my car you never knew before. It spits.
Don't ask me how or why, but for as long as I have had this car it has had a spitting problem. Just where the hard post next to the windshield meets the felt roof on the interior of the car (if you are a firefighter you think of this spot as the joint where you use the Jaws of Life to remove the roof off a car), my car spits. For reasons unknown, water builds up right there, and sometimes the car decides at strange moments to just spit it out.
Today was one of those days.
But let's back up to 5:30 am.
That was when I had to wake up and take my brother to the airport. Just before we left I turned on my sprinkler system (the timer is still broken, and I have to turn it off and on manually).
At 6:20 when I got home from the airport it was raining cats and dogs, and my sprinklers were still going full force. I love days like that.
The rest of the work day went fine. Until 4 pm when it is time for me to go pick up "Little" for the afternoon and we go play. The plan today was to take Kaya the Dog and go to the nearby dog park and have some fun.
That never happened.
Instead, the afternoon started with me not realizing that I had to interview someone at 4 pm. Normally when the home office tells me 4 pm, they mean 4 pm New York time, not Utah time. So just as I was pulling up to Little's daycare, my phone rang and I had to interview a candidate very unexpectedly. While I was interviewing this person, several other adults/parents/guardians were picking up their kids as well and there was a bit of a traffic jam in front of the building.
And one of them "bumped" my car with her car. I don't think she even knows she did it. But it jostled my car just enough to make me let out an "exclamation" in the middle of a sentence. I'm sure that candidate thinks I am brilliant. (And yes, Candidate, I know you will be finding and reading this as according to the challenge I issued you today. Feel free to mock me.)
You'll all be happy to know that there was no damage done to my car. Phew.

At the Real Salt Lake game on Saturday!

So I grabbed Little (also sometimes known as "The Kid") and we headed out for our afternoon. Just then it began raining. Going to the park with the dog was out of the question. So we decided to go to Costco. We opened the sunroof and left the dog in the car and headed inside. (It wasn't raining at Costco.)
Where I discovered I didn't have my membership card, AND that my membership was expired. Fun. Why does it feel like I spend a lot of money to save a lot of money??
We picked up some random items and headed for the checkout line. The checkout guy was nice and flirting with us, and then suddenly just cusses. Woah. Odd. He tells us to look outside.
HO.LEE.CRAP.
A small hurricane had come to Murray in the 10 minutes we were inside. Sideways blowing rain, carts flying across the parking lot, visibility was practically zero.
"Oh crap! I just left the sunroof open on the car! With the dog inside!" I cried!
Little smirks and laughs and says, "And you're wearing a white shirt."
The cashier dude smirked and laughed too.
Yes, blog friends, if I had wanted to win a wet t-shirt contest, I was dressed appropriately. And with no other choice, I left The Kid standing in the Costco and ran for my life across the parking lot to close the sunroof. The poor dog was huddled in the back of the car whimpering. Poor doggy!

 

Kaya in a drier happier time.

I ran back inside the Costco, with about a dozen people staring at me like I was insane. And then, conveniently, the rain stopped. I really do have the best luck sometimes.
I had told Little to buy us some "pizza, or ice cream, or something" while I ran to the car. When I came back in I found a non-fat berry smoothie and non-fat ice cream. A minute later the same Kid asked if we could have salads for dinner. Can you tell she's almost 12 years old and starting to become aware of body types??
So we get in the car and head to the organic grocery store. In the 1 mile it takes to get from Costco to the market we got soaked. Our seats were completely wet from the rain. And suddenly my car starts spitting on Little. The first time it spits on you its kind of funny. I mean, how often does water just suddenly burst forth from an inanimate object like that?
The second-twelfth times are not so funny. Just saying.
So we got the stuff for our salads and headed home. We got even wetter in the car as our pants slowly absorped everything from the seats and the roof kept spitting on us. Because yes, my side started spitting on me too.
Then, thanks to the small hurricane moving through SL Valley, it took us nearly an hour to drive what usually takes 15 minutes.
We get home at the time that I'm usually taking her back to her house, let the poor dog out of the car, and came inside. I put the Kid in an old pair of scrub pants I don't fit into anymore. Naturally they were falling off her, even cinched as tight as possible. But she thinks its kind of fun to wear my clothes and didn't complain at all.
I made us a salad, chopping up random veggies and throwing them in. I introduced her to marinated artichoke hearts, which she promptly spit out. I asked about five times if she wanted tomatoes in the salad. And five times I managed to not hear her answer. I finally showed them to her and asked again, and she gave me her "seriously, woman, how crazy are you?" look, and said, "Who do you think you are feeding exactly??"
Oh, right. Little's allergic to tomatoes. I keep forgetting that.
And then I spilled salsa all over my white shirt. (Somehow Little is allergic to tomatoes, and yet claims salsa doesn't make her sick. Little's Mother- if you are reading this, and she breaks out again, we'll know why.)
I'm really glad Little is as flexible and impulsive as I am. Because otherwise, I'd be a huge bummer of a big sister.

 

Tiny, aka Little's One True Love

Then it was time to head back to her house. But first I wanted to show Little how Kaya plays fetch. Its really pretty funny. You throw the ball, Kaya chases it, grabs it, and then runs full force back at you, not stopping. She likes to tackle you and have you wrestle her for the ball. So I grab Kaya's favorite tennis ball, chuck it across the yard, and she goes barrelling after it. She picks it up, turns, stops, drops the ball, and PEES ON IT.
Little very simply looks at me and says, "Yeah, I'm not ever playing fetch with her again."
I can't blame her.

And that my friends is what I mean when I say "when it rains, it pours."

 

Me and my one true love.