Seven inches of rain have fallen here in the New South during the last two weeks. Through 7 p.m. last night, that is, and it's rained steadily since then. So we're easily past eight and probably approaching nine inches total after a bone-dry winter.

I like rain. I enjoy walking out in the stuff and getting wet. Especially when the temperature is in the 40s. Short sleeves and jeans, getting utterly soaked. Cold rain on the skin is positively invigorating. When I'm out in the "weather," I feel great.

As soon as I walk inside, I get cold. Part of that comes from not moving so much, of course, but part of it must be psychological. Kinda like when you come inside after sledding in zero-degree temperatures. You don't notice the cold until you feel the heat from the fire and hold a warm cup of hot chocolate in your (surprisingly) cold hands.

I'm not just a fan of spring showers or big thunderboomers. I really like hurricanes, too. I've been through a couple of minor ones and three or four tropical storms, each bringing along a lot of rain. More rain than we've had here recently, at least in a couple cases. But here's the thing: Tropical rain isn't omnipresent. After a tropical system plows through--typically three or four days of heavy rain at the max--there's nothing but good times ahead for the next week or so. Cooler than normal temperatures and clear skies. Just what I like in August or September.

But this is simply too much rain. And the wet is predicted to continue for most of this week as well. I know, there are parts of the Carolinas (mostly to the south and west of Durham) that have already instituted lawn-watering bans well before the summer season. A couple of cities (not towns, cities) have burnt through their groundwater and are buying water from outside sources. Hydrologists have estimated that western North Carolina will need an extra inch of rain every month for the next three years to get back to normal.

So it's a good thing for them that these rains have been slow and steady. But at this point, even the softest showers simply dance off the top of the land and head straight for the storm sewers. The ground is saturated. I have a river in my basement. Water is coming in through the walls (generally following the contour of the land) and running into my foundation drain. Our basement hadn't been wet since we put gutters up a year ago, but for the last two weeks or so I've had this moving pond sitting in the north end of my cellar. The novelty of running water (of the untreated variety) in my house has lost its luster.

We've had a very cold winter by New South standards. Not that we got any snow, of course, but just a lot of gray 35-degree days. Not a lot of rain, just clouds and cool temperatures. Today, the first day of April, generally sees a high of 68 and a low of 48. The high today? You got it. Forty-eight degrees. Just about where the thermometer has been sitting since a succession of large storms began moving through right before St. Patrick's Day.

The cold doesn't bother me. The rain doesn't bother me. The gray skies don't really bother me. The aquapark in my basement doesn't bother me. What's really starting to raise my hackles is the dull consistency of it all. Rain. Cold. Gray. Basement river. High blood pressure.

Come Thursday or Friday, we're supposed to get a real blast of the sorta weather that would make anyone glad to live here. Sunny skies, temperatures in the low 70s during the day and 50s at night. My basement will dry out. My nostrils will fill with pollen. I'll find something else with which to exercise my complaining muscle.

Something, anything different would be welcome at this point. I'm tired of having to wade through running water to get to my beer cellar. I'm tired of running the defrost in my car, particularly since that feature doesn't work very well. The unkindest cut: I'm tired, yes, of feeling cold rain on my skin. Such indifference and even annoyance at experiencing one of life's great pleasures must be nipped in the bud. Shockingly, I'm even dreaming of the sweaty, humid, mosquito-filled nights of summer.

And, more than anything, those two things have got to get turned around. Right away.

Jon Worley is enduring a cool, wet spring in Durham, N.C.