Around 9am this morning, as Mason played Xbox and Susan and I watched, Morgan hid in the hallway coloring her legs, arm and face with an ink pen. Shortly after the budding artist was discovered, she was whisked away for bath time. With Mason content with his videogame, I decided it would be a good time to sneak in a quick morning walk. It was raining very lightly — somewhere between a mist and a drizzle — before I left. I threw on my hoodie sweatshirt just in case.

It’s a good thing I did. By the time I was halfway around the neighborhood it was pouring. I could tell I was soaked by the feeling of wet pant material on the back of my calves — without even looking you can tell you’ve walked through water deep enough to soak the bottom of your jeans. While walking I realized that the sides of the street where I normally walk are actually for water drainage. Turns out you become quite the water-runoff expert after walking around the neighborhood in a rainstorm. The further I walked the less dry path options I had. The water draining from the sides kept moving in toward the middle of the road, leaving me with two options — walking down the middle of the street, or walking in the water (which is what I was obviously forced to do). The first splash is always the worst. The cold water rises and then sinks into your shoes, soaking your socks. Wet socks are the worst.

Instead of getting upset, I just thought of the rain as a challenge — like someone saying, “oh yeah? Maybe *this* will get you to stop exercising!” (Leave it to an O’Hara to take a rainstorm personal.) With that in mind, I marched through the inch or two deep water like it was nothing. By the time I made it back to my block, the rain began to let up. Like a cartoon, the clouds parted and the sun began shining. Yeah, that’s right — might as well give up, rain. It’s gonna take more than that to stop me this time.