I can hear it already: thousands of Seattleites groaning about rain on Labor Day weekend. Cars are being packed under duress, commutes out of the city are taking a ridiculously long time for a city where it rains for eight fucking months out of the year anyway so there’s no reason people shouldn’t know how to drive in this, and the fate of barbecues hangs in the balance.

Everyone else is probably upset about the rain.

Not me.

Look, it’s not that I’m excited about the return of Seattle’s rainy season. Except I kind of am. I’m fully aware that the rain will make things like going to the grocery store and walking to the bus stop a lot more inconvenient than they already seem on good days. I’m intensely aware that I will have changed by tune come March, when even the most tropics-averse people like me are contemplating a quickie beach vacation just to get out of the fucking rain. I do remember when I’d leave the house last winter and my first words of the day, every day, would be “it’s raining again, why wouldn’t it be raining again,” although I concede this may have had something to do with living in a run-down house where mold grew through the walls at any hint of moisture. I know what it’s like for my feet to always be cold, and to have to remember to keep an extra pair of socks in my purse and a scarf in my pocket. I realize that I am currently wishing for the return of eight. Fucking. Months of rain.

But we’ve had a lot of sun already. A lot of heat (for us). It’s been extremely dry, to the point where I looked around the other day and, with the exception of parks and office building grass, everything was yellowish brown. We need the this rain.

And I kind of want it.

When Isabel posted this the other day, I sighed right along with her. In fact, I remembered that at around the same time last year, I burned a CD for listening in my car titled “When Does It Start Raining Again in Seattle.” I love Seattle summer with almost every part of my being and have declared that I will never take a vacation that causes me to leave here between July and September, but I’ve had to face why I moved to Seattle in the first place. Or rather, why I was so suited to move to Seattle in the first place.

Genetically (I think, compared to analysis of my DNA proving that the majority of my ancestors came primarily from a wet rock in the Atlantic), I like rain. I like cloud cover. I like shade, and a little gloom, and how things look when it’s been raining for a while. When the rain starts, not only can I stop slathering on ultra-thick SPF 80 (that later clogs up my pores and leaves a weird residue on my clothes) every day, but it’s as if I can start seeing things better, like my body isn’t as taxed by the sun anymore so it’s able to perceive things like sight, smells, and sounds in a more acute way.

Of course, this could be as much bullshit as people who claim that they’re 100% healthier after adopting a paleo diet or wearing a magnetic wristband. I could just be talking out of my ass here and giving scientific credence to a mere preference. I mean, obviously, I am.

But I’m still not mad about the rain today, and I still won’t be too broken up in about a month, when the sun goes away for a whole week and everyone tenses up to wait it out for the three straight seasons. But like I said, check back in March. Or even April. Hell, this past year it was mid-May. See how I feel then.