Blowing the stink off

Our family has a saying: "Go outside and blow the stink off."

As a kid after hours of watching Kids Are People Too, Bugs & Daffy, Scooby Doo, and Thundar the Barbarian, I'd roll around on the floor and moan about how bored I was. "Why don't you go outside and blow the stink off, then?" My mom would say. Although it started with a "why" and ended with a question mark, it really was more of a gentle command than a question.

Last week, we went outside to blow the stink off. Now, this is no mean feat. Portland has seen steady rain for something like 30 of the past 33 days. We had just a narrow window in which to operate.

I don't mind going to see what we can see. Meegan, on the other hand, needs an objective. Our objective this time: a printer/scanner.

As we were walking out the door, Max ran over to one of the rhododendrons and starting climbing it. This is remarkable because this is not the sort of physical activity I would expect from Max. A few branches up the tree, he yelled, "Hey Daddy! Look at me. Take a picture."

So we hopped on the MAX train and went downtown to Office Depot, where we bought our brand new HP printer/scanner. As we were walking past Pioneer Square, Max climbed on top of a beaver and shouted, "Hey Daddy! Take my picture." Jack climbed on and shouted, "Me too!"



From there we stopped at Rock Bottom for a snack. As we left, it started raining sprinkling again. In my meteorological wisdom I prophecied that the MAX train would beat the rain to our house. Just as we walked up the sidewalk to home, it began sprinkling again. Within minutes of hunkering down at home, the house was bombarded first with hail then torrential rain. It was almost poetic. In fact it was poetic:

The sun is shining,
The sky is blue.
But I can't write that
Because it's not true.

Not only did we blow the stink off, we nearly washed the stink off, too.