Endless rain and missing gingos

Water, water, everywhere. One dry day in the last month and already more than half of Brighton's annual rainfall has drenched Portland so far this year. Cycling through this deluge on a daily basis has, naturally enough, refocused my avarice on the purchase of a second car, but I can't see it happening as it looks like we're about to blow all our savings on...

a) turning our garage into a garage i.e. somewhere we can actually park the car rather than simply a garage sized hut lacking the appropriate aperture for a vehicle. This could run to ten large.

b) replacing the deck, which is on its last legs, simultaneously expunging the (ironically) dry rot from beneath the back of the house. This could also run to ten large.

c) offspring, or whatever the singular is - an offsprung perhaps. For those of you not yet in the loop, I'm procreating even as I write, with fatherhood looming nigh on the horizon circa July 1st. And even if you could fit a child seat in a Miata, it just wouldn't look right.

Considerably less expensive are the services of the man who has agreed to rid our home of those pesky squirrels. Humane traps to be laid in our attic in about a week or so... I'll keep you posted on progress. In the meantime here is the unexpurgated text of an email Rachel sent me at work this week. It's a great story as well as potentially fascinating insight into the very substance of our marriage -

"The craziest fing just happened. This guy from our block who I never met before named Michael came knocking on the door. He was frantic because he could not find his ginge! Apparently it is a big fat gingo who is not allowed outside. He and his room mates could not be finding him and they were getting frantic because they thought he may have escaped and gone fluffing. When they were looking for him outside, one of his room mates thought he saw the ginge go fluffing though our catflap! So, he looked for him in the basement and I looked around the house and there was no gingo to be found. Eventually I took his number and told him I would call when I found the ginge. He got home and his ficko was sitting right there on his bed! At first we thought maybe it was the ginge from across the street that fluffed in, but I think now it was probably just Conky his room mate saw fluffin through the cat flap."