Cold Snap

I get up this morning from under the not-goose-down comforter and waddle through the house to the front porch door. I never can walk in a straight line in the morning because my arches hurt and I am half blind upon awakening. Sunlight is pouring through the beveled windows and down next to the computer like sparkling champagne. I can tell from the cars sliding into one another in the street that it is not spring yet. When I go out on the porch to greet the day it is so cold that when I spit into the frigid air it comes back down as cold spit. I know because I got some on my bathrobe. This is not Greenland. There is piegon shit on the porch railing and when I buy some bee-bees there will be little bloody pigeon heads there too. I walk back into an ether of perking Colombian coffee and take a pork chop out of the fridge, flour it lightly and put it in a skillet to brown slowly. Lay a couple eggs out on the side and slice some parmesan Italian bread and put it in the toaster. I pick up my copy of Johan Theorin's new novel which I thought last night was dumb as owlshit and find that it is hard to put down now that I am into it. The cops do things differently in Sweden and talk in a funny way but it's a damn good mystery!

I have been waiting for this day for a week: no cleaning to do, no dishes to wash, no visitors, no place to go, just me and my cave and projects and reading and naps and being comfortably in the warm while the rest of the world outside gets a skim of ice over it. you can't do this at work. I tell people that I would retire a second time if I could just to feel the world becoming my own oyster again.

After breakfast and a sneak peek at Theorin I glue and sew the sides of a lunch case that's going to become a traveling pipe and tobacco carrier then settle down in the kitchen again. The second warmest place in the house. I know you can guess the first warmest place because you have one too unless you live way out in the country. Then my rising breakfast blood sugar catches up with me and I get sleepy and suddenly drop the book right at the point somebody's saying that the mother of the kid they're burying looks less like a mourner than a satisfied landowner. This is undoubtedly a sign from God that it is time for a nap, which I hasten to accomplish.

Now it is writing time and lunch and I am going to have bologna on yeast rolls with mayo and a side of slaw while I try to figure out what supper's going to be. I am smoking some Gawith's Brown #4 in a small Amadeus pipe and the aroma is curling around the remains of pork chop and coffee. The place is beginnning to smell deliciously of a barn. No I won't smoke it at your house, but you probably like the smell of gin too. Gin or barns? There is a question that takes some time and coffee to ponder as the sun keeps sliding ever westward.

I guess my brain chemicals are unscrambled for a day. Definitely not the winter blues today. Wish I could just push a button to turn them off. Failing that, I rejoice in such an uncomplicated day. THE BOOK will figure in tonight's plans as well as some more coffee and the as-yet-unknown supper. And more tobacco, probably not quite as disturbing as Brown #4. Tomorrow appears to be going to be the same kind of day but colder. When I spit tomorrow ice pellets will be born. You sure as hell can't do this at work! Ta!