It seems I haven’t lost the knack for talking myself out of extra work. All it took today was waking up to dingy gray skies and a few drops of rain. It wasn’t that pleasant spring rain that doesn’t really get you wet. It was that pinpoint-fine mist that soaks you through as soon as you step out into it. I didn’t need any more discouragement than that to give up on my planned trip to the bank this morning.

Still, there was another good reason not to go to the bank, whether I needed it or not. This being the first day of the month, I would have expected the lines to be longer and the place to be more crowded than it might be, say, next Tuesday, which is the day I now plan to make that trip. Who needs the sniffling hordes these days, right? I’ll stay home and dry and healthy. You know, given the option.

By the middle of the afternoon, it wasn’t fooling around any more. No more of those needle-sharp, BB-sized droplets. Uh uh. It was coming down so hard that I didn’t even feel like walking to the end of the driveway to get my mail. It can just stay out there all weekend, if this wall of water doesn’t let up a little. I have enough vegetables stockpiled to withstand a long, long siege, if necessary.

And another thing. This is the kind of weather that the posted speed limits were made for. It hadn’t rained for long enough that the streets would be slippery this morning, so we (the other drivers and I) made the collective decision to forgo our usual tendency to go five miles an hour over what the sign said. That’s the de facto speed limit almost everywhere I drive regularly, except for one stretch of road that’s posted at 40 mph. For some reason, everybody goes 35 there (except me, when there’s nobody in front of me).

That’s where I practice my zen approach to driving. Or anyway, I try to remember to accept what is and not try to do more than the possible. “Try” being the key word, because I’m not a master of acceptance by any means. But as always, life is a work in progress.