My mom didn’t watch much TV when I was growing up. In fact, I rarely saw her just sitting around doing nothing.
“No real work is done when you’re sitting,” she’d remind me as I’d take a seat while folding laundry.
Still, she did turn on the TV for background noise when she ironed. Most of the times it was the afternoon newscast. That was practical. She could get an update on rush hour traffic and know when to expect my dad and get the weather forecast.
In listening to these newscasts, I mistook the anchors’ “Southern California” for “sunny California.” This made much more sense to a kid growing up in the drought years as Tony! Toni! Tone! sang “It Never Rains (In Southern California)”.
I write all this to give you an idea of why I’d complain after four straight days of rain during dinner with my advisor and fellow grad students.
While my fellow advisees — tired of sloshing around campus, traffic and taking the bus in the rain — felt my pain, my advisor did not.
“You need to leave California, Cindy.”
She had just returned from a work trip to Michigan and surely some rain and lows in the 40s were little to complain about.
I pouted.
Lotería Chicana 