Rain, rain, go away

We're in the middle of another monsoon/typhoon situation. I think the current storm system starts with an M (yes, I looked it up: Maring!) and it's been raining off and on for two or three days now. Funny, but after a few days of heavy rains, one loses track of time.

Lizzie and I went up to wait for the schoolbus late today. Yesterday was a holiday, and today when we woke up a gray sky pressed down on us. Every hour or so, we'd get a massive downpour, buckets and buckets of water pouring from the clouds, washing into the streets, streaming down the walks, puddling in the gutters and on the grass. I figured the bus would take a while to get here, what with traffic and flooding.

We waited for half an hour. Forty-five minutes. When it was already noon, the usual hour for her school to start, I said I'd go back up to the apartment and text Lizzie's principal, tell her she'd be late. The guard said, apologetically, "Ma'am, no school I think."

Really? But I'd been seeing buses, and school kids. True, none of the usual busses. So maybe they were all stuck in traffic. I came down here to ask the other guard, the one near the cable TV.

"Afternoon classes suspended," he said, nodding.

Crap on toast! There must be a better way to find these things out. I wish there was some way to get an instant text message from the DeptEd when something like this happens, instead of (as usual) sitting in the apartment building lobby for 45 minutes in a clueless fog.

I told Lizzie that she was off the hook for another day and we went back upstairs. I turned on the boob tube and discovered that, indeed, the Department of Education had suspended classes for the afternoon.

As soon as I got that bulletin, the rain stopped, the sun came out and all seemed right with the world.

Hah, I thought, nodding and laughing inside. Of course as soon as they cancel school for the day, the sun comes out. Rainbows and giggles for all.

Then, at 1 PM, the clouds closed in, the sun shut off, and rain poured down again in a single, relentless sheet.

Sigh. It better stop soon and blow away, so that we can get on our plane Friday morning at 6:30 and fly west to Singapore.