"Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down" is the title of a '70s song that I think was by The Carpenters. While that may sound like I know what I'm talking about, the truth of the matter is that I first thought it was Carly Simon until I did a quick search on the Internet.

The only clouds I could find in her discography were the ones mentioned in the song "You're so Vain," which points out something about "clouds in my coffee."

Rainy days are good times to ponder on such meaningless topics as the music of the early 1970s, but they're even better times to get caught up on one's sleep.

It's really easy to spend time on rainy days in a stupor, half between awake and asleep. I don't know if a study has been done on mankind and humidity, but it seems to me that my eyelids get heavier as the humidity gets higher. The very sound of rain falling tends to put most people in nap mode.

After cleaning out the laundry room recently, I threw away our "Sounds of the Rainforest" cassette that was purchased for one thin dime at a yard sale somewhere. I had hidden it long before in hopes that it would be forgotten, since it always kind of bothered me. The soundtrack in my living room might include a crackling fire, children's laughter, electronic toys, television and computer sounds, voices talking and even a fish tank, but not lions, monkeys, exotic birds and outdoor rain and wind sounds. Every time I hear stuff like that it makes me want to get up and find that confounded cricket that's an occasional sound on the tape. Maybe it's a frog, but if I knew where it was, I'd probably step on it. But what was even worse was when it was trendy to play nature sounds to help people sleep better. I must admit that hearing jungle sounds in the bedroom is kind of disconcerting, even if one considers swinging from the chandeliers in a Tarzan outfit. (Please note: My bedroom has a fluorescent light and a drop ceiling and if I were swinging from a chandelier, which I wasn't, I would have to have been at someone else's house). While we don't have a chandelier, we do have a fish aquarium in the living room. Although it doesn't have the array of odd noises that were contained on that "Rainforest" offering, it does make its own variety of 'running water' type sounds.

The more the water evaporates, the louder it gets. It sounds more like someone going to the restroom than like soothing rain pitter-pattering on a tin roof. It is kind of like a built in alarm that the water level is getting too low.

The goldfish don't seem to mind, though. Just drop in a few flakes of that stinky mystery food and its all good. I wonder if they make that stuff out of dead goldfish? I hope not. At any rate, they seem blissfully ignorant that they're trapped in a glass cube filled with water, dependent on two forgetful adults for their very lives. At least they have it better than the last goldfish, who lived in a little glass bowl and actually died just a few days after being placed in the big aquarium. The store-bought fish did fine in the same water, so it must have been the change that got him. I've often thought that it must have been quite a shock to realize that you'd lived most of your life in a bowl that was only a few inches across and then be dumped into a 40-gallon aquarium. Since most fish are probably born in captivity, they likely never face the shock of leaving a pristine stream or coral sea bed and being held captive in a comparatively tiny tank.

I read somewhere that the average goldfish's memory only lasts about one minute. That's probably why they don't know they're in a tank. By the time they swim across, they've already forgotten what was on the other side. Since they eat, sleep and use the bathroom in the water they're swimming in, they're lucky to have any brain cells left at all.

We'd all do well to forget a lot of what's behind us, but it wouldn't be all that great to only remember for a minute. What am I talking about? Sometimes my own memory doesn't even last that long. Just yesterday I walked into the bedroom after taking a shower and actually stood there for a few seconds before I could even recall that I was supposed to be putting my clothes on. I was wearing my warm winter robe, which reminds me of a big dress with manly pictures of deer and trees in manly colors like black, brown and dark green.

At this point I would be complaining about digressing from the point, if there were a point at this point. Oh well, while the cassette and the fish tank sounds haven't been particularly soothing, I do miss the steady drumming of rainwater on a tin roof. I suppose that's one of the few things I miss about living in a mobile home. in the 1967 model that I started out my illustrious single life in, there wasn't much between inside and outside.

That was nice on rainy nights, but not so great in a thunderstorm when the roof was making occasional loud rackets that sounded much like metal being sheared away. Thankfully I never ended up 'under the stars' after such a storm, so I suppose the roof was supposed to do that.

My house currently has asphalt shingles, but I'll probably change that over to metal roofing in the near future. Right after I refill the fish tank, finish my other 700-item to-do list, write a best-selling novel and have lunch with Carly Simon.
 

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