When it rains, it pours.

Not only did Morton salt jump on the idiom, but apparently Rapper 50 Cent thought it was meaningful enough to use in a pretty nasty song that you can even download as your ringtone- if you're into that.

Around here, we have had the literal problem with the rain. Downpour conditions, referred to by some locals as "gully washers" should have been a welcome respite from years of summer drought conditions, yielding the lowest levels in our lakes in decades and a whole crapload of rules and regulations we had to abide by when watering our yards or washing our cars, even taking showers.
But no, we complain. Because that is what we do.
We say the commute is longer and more dangerous. We say we can't do our yard work or repair our houses.We say the soccer and baseball game schedules will be forever screwed up. People who need to work can't and those of us easily depressed by gloomy weather don't want to.

On the other side of the saying, there's the idea that when one bad thing happens, a bunch of its friends join the poo-poo party and the shitstorm is on.

Or maybe that's just how it happens for me. Never a bunch of good stuff joined by happiness and butterflies, nor in small tidy bunches of threes like for some people. No for me, it's more like a snowball at the top of a very tall mountain, set loose by a two year old.

It may be household related: the new ac unit and hot water heater issue and water leak and sprinkler system shitstorm of last year. Joined by the dying microwave attached to the built in oven which was preceded by the death of its stovetop counterpart...
Or the way I can blow light bulbs by merely touching the switch. My best day? Three bulbs, one flood light and then I shocked the crap out of myself just by touching the metal mailbox. My doctor says I am highly electrical.

The shitstorm may be family related: a sister tells another sister who tells the other sister... and so on. Something is bound to fall out when you play telephone that way. And even in my small immediate family: the he said, she said, don't tell Dad and why did you do that? all roll into one very large and dangerous ice ball heading for the pretty chalet.

It may be financial, business-related... the stuff we don't talk about. Money and jobs and what we want to happen. How not holding on so tightly makes losing something easier.

It may be school for the children, weight and body issues for everyone, food and provision for the bread-winner, relationships for the mediator... we all have our shitstorms.

It may be predicated by something you said.
Most times ...it's something I said.
or did.
or didn't do.

As a writer, I spend a lot of time in my head. I make my own shitstorms daily. I need the downpour. It feeds me. I live many different lives and if you join me in any of them, at any given moment, you will need an umbrella.

Some days, I wish God had had enough sense to install an off switch when he made me, and given me the brains to know when to use it. And legs fast enough to outrun a speeding ice ball.