Well Mondays always get me down. Not usually rainy days. The Carpenters (or rather Paul Williams & Roger Nichols who actually wrote the song) are on their own for that one. But the title fit for today because I'm tired and it's raining. And I just like the Carpenters.

However, I did not bring an umbrella to work today. I rarely ever bring an umbrella anywhere. This isn't because I don't have an umbrella...we have more umbrellas than members of our immediate and surrounding family. This isn't because I don't realize how adorable someone looks carrying an umbrella; it reminds me of Mary Poppins.

And this isn't because the umbrellas I have don't work, I even repaired one myself which had broken due to being flipped inside out during a strong wind. I had to rewire it, and normally I wouldn't give so much care to fixing an old umbrella but it was so beautiful, with Monet's "Water Lilies" printed on the top, so I couldn't just throw it out.

Anyway I don't carry an umbrella because I really don't see the point. First of all, it's another thing to carry (who wants more of that?) unless you get one of those smashing hands-free umbrellas that make you look like a circus performer or a hydrophobe.

No offense to the zany guy and girl shown here who just happened to come up in my search for circus umbrella hat pictures.

And when you finally get it inside whatever destination you intended to reach, all you have is a soggy plastic thing to continue carrying, or leave sitting around in hopes that it dries without people stepping on it, tripping over it, kicking it off the designated "umbrella-drying" area, etc.

Second, it rarely protects you from that much water. Wind blows, water drips down from the edges...either way you're gonna get a little wet. Toss in the fact that getting in and out of your car or building doorways requires it to be closed to fit, and without going to extreme difficulty to protect yourself from the water, you end up getting wet during that time anyway.

And lastly, it's just water! Unless you're the wicked witch of the west, you're not going to melt, your not going to get hurt, and as I said you're not going to get that much wetter than if you carried one. Maybe that's why she wore that wide-brimmed seemingly water-resistant hat, hmm?

I don't mind getting a little wet, and even if it's pouring rain and I get soaked, I'll live. The only downside to rainy weather is that my hair poufs, but that's not going to change with the use of an umbrella. But during my 10 minute walk up to the building I work in, I spotted all sorts of umbrella carriers and it was barely drizzling! Seems to me unnecessary. I think even in flood-like rains, the only thing I'd use my umbrella for would be a floatation device.

Anyway that aside, I'm very sleepy lately, physically and mentally and emotionally, and that leaves me with little inspiration for a blog. So this will have to do.

Side note, as a few may have noticed, I now have a video uploaded on here. On another website we were talking about our singing voices so I decided to record mine, and for one friend, the only format her computer could handle was a video on youtube, so I just added a nice visual to look at and put em together and viola! Ari in a box. Enjoy.