I can appreciate all forms of weather in most all the ways it comes at us.

The mild air of early spring, the brisk breezes of fall, the summer storm. I can admit the beauty of the hurricane in the picture while recognizing its awful, brutal strength in reality. The softly falling snow on a December Sunday — all of these I can enjoy in its own turn and own way.

I’m about done with the rain, though.

This thought came falling to me on Tuesday night, just like the heavy douse of rain covering me, the fans and the players of the Austin girls soccer team during their section playoff game against Pine Island/Zumbrota-Mazeppa.

In fact, I can say pretty specifically, the final admission to anybody within complaining distance came while I was photographing Eliana Bently casually walking through the downpour towards the end of the first half.

To her credit and I think the photo portrays this, she did it  as if not caring about the rain one little bit. Good for her. Eliana, in that moment, proved she’s a better person than I.

And that is because I complained about the rain nearly nonstop that night. You can ask Rocky Hulne, our intrepid sports writer standing next to me, or the athletic trainer, Kris Dutton who was also standing next to me. Heck, there are probably fans on the other side of the stadium that heard me.

As I was walking in before the game, the gentleman at the ticket gate swore to me he thought it was letting up and I wanted to believe him. I warned him though in the tone of an ominous movie moment, “I’ve heard those words before and I spent the next two days clustered inside a tent with my parents.”

I can’t blame him, because at that moment the rain did appear to let up and while it was going to be soggy, there was nothing really to indicate I would be drenched. The weatherman probably did, but I wasn’t listening to him so that really wasn’t in the mix.

Really, the cause probably falls on me because earlier in the day I uttered the words, “This day can’t get much worse.”

A clear challenge to those in charge of the order of the universe who apparently responded with, “Oh yeah?”

The first half was actually going okay until we got into the latter third of the half and then the skies, finally tired of my dry status, opened up and gave us a deluge.

But this is just one night. It’s been raining and cloudy for pretty much September and now October and its getting old. I’ve got yard stuff to do before the snow settles in.

Mind you, I’m not one to be depressed by the steel-gray clouds covering everything or the near constant rain. I’m easily enough entertained where that kind of thing just passes with the gentle sigh of someone bothered by a fly.

I’ve got two cats, a number of electronic fun boxes, a girlfriend who enjoys the same kinds of things I do and a number of surfaces to  nap on including the floor whenever I find a cat too tired to be bothered by me.

I’m a napper of opportunity.

But while I have all these distractions, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed by the constant rain fall that continues plaguing us. It never ends. It just keeps coming, and coming and coming and if the transition from fall to winter is anything like this spring, we’ll slam into winter like a hipster, too engrossed in his cellphone, running into a light pole.

You remember this spring: Cold, cold, wet, snow, cold — 150 degrees WITH HUMIDITY!

Humidity is the worst by the way. It’s like a warm, heavy rain you wear like a wool sweater wherever you go.

It’s portable rain.

I suppose a good thing with all the water falling is at least the investment we had to make on a sump pump is turning out to be worth it. Or at least it’s not wasted. It just goes off every other minute as it pumps the Atlantic Ocean into our backyard.

And that’s another thing, the water table is so stinking high that every time it rains even a little bit, Lake Johnson forms outside our back door which worries me more and more as we get colder.

Last year we had a bunch of rain and snow-melt and it formed said lake and then froze so every morning I skated to the garage in a parody of Brian Boitano of Olympic gold medal fame.

Except he was a monument of grace and form while I’m a fumbling monument of flailing arms and legs that resembles spinning spaghetti on a fork.

So the crux of my argument this fine — cloudy — day is that the rain can just be over. I can appreciate the rain on the roof and the sound of distant thunder, but the gallons of falling annoyance against the house is getting old. I would like to see the trees turning color before winter takes hold.

So rain, rain go away. Come back another day … you know what, why don’t you just take some time to yourself and think about where you are going in life and while you are going somewhere, try Iowa.