Sunday morning arrives with grey sky and dirty white snow out the bay window. Breakfast starts with a lukewarm cup of yesterday’s decaf reheated in the microwave. Some store brand wheat squares combined with walnuts, skim milk and blackberries are my breakfast. I threw a couple of almonds in my mouth to munch on. Old tactic of mine just to clear away the morning mouth before I set upon this “feast” with ravenous hunger.
Sitting alone I am drinking my orange juice from a small jam jar. The label won’t peel off the damn thing despite repeated trips through the dishwasher. My youngest son told me I was looking like a hobo drinking from this same jar yesterday. (Don’t worry it has been washed in the meantime). My reply was that I had been drinking from Mason jars for years, so it my Crofter’s Premium Spread organic seedless raspberry jam glass was just an evolution in practice.
Wreath the cat is running around being bat shit crazy. Up one chair arm over to the coffee table and then dashing up and down the stairs three or four times all in about thirty seconds. Living with a Siamese cat is peaceful and calming-said nobody ever. I actually love the galloping thump, thump, thump of cat paws across the wood floors. In a kitten’s energy we see the life force we wish we all had. Twelve different directions at full speed in 90 seconds while sliding and caroming off our furniture claws out going straight up the furniture at times, oh to live like that.
My plan for today is simple, sort and clean. After I have had breakfast I plan to go up to my rooms and sort through old linens and towels. What is still functional but not needed will be sent off to Goodwill latter in the week. (I will wash my breakfast dishes before I get around to doing the sorting. My bed was made before I got down here. Maybe, I will read a bit before I take on the tasks in the bedroom. I have been meaning to for days now but I never seem to get around to it. Might be time to create a little space to do some reading. A chapter each in a novel and also one in the philosophy book I purchased.
(Time passes)
It is about 11:15 am now and I am starting the fifth chapter of the novel. The story is entitled, Where the Stars Meet the Forest by Glenn Vander. The tale is a first novel. Before I sat down to read it I got a fire going in the wood stove. One thing led to another and I am in the midst of a tale of a ornithologist befriending a child who claims to be an alien. So far no surprises in the narrative but still a fun read. Maybe it is okay to take some time and just read today. When the boys wake up I will send them out to get bagels for breakfast. At 20F and cloudy I just don’t want to go out. I am going to throw another piece of wood on the fire and get back to the novel now. I will check in again later.
(Time passes)
About an hour has passed. I have spent the majority of that time reading a tale of an “alien” child set in southern Illinois down along the river. In order to keep my reading space cozy I have thrown another couple of logs on the fire and used the bellows to get the fire to where I want it. Nobody else in this house seems to be moving. The youngest is lounging in my room with his phone and the cat. The oldest is sleeping like a bump on a log. I think I may take my shower now before people’s bellies tell them food requires them to make some affirmative sign to the bringer of sustenance. Yeah, a shower sounds good right about now.
The book asks a question in a round about way, at least in this first third of the narrative. What is a miracle. The alien child repeatedly states she needs to see miracles. A textbook style definition of a miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws often attributed to a deity or some holy being. Canonization for those of us who grew up in heavily Catholic areas requires a presumptive saint to be credited with a minimum of two miracles.
The book is taking a slightly different tact. Life in all its many forms is providing the miracles. The alien child Ursa, sees baby birds in a next in the wild. She announces this as her first miracle observed. Next, she sees a little of kittens who promptly get named after Shakespeare’s primary characters, Hamlet, Juliet, MacBeth, etc. The mewing little felines are dubbed the second miracle. Tagging new life as a miracle makes sense to me but the reader’s expectation given the narrative is for something more. We will see. Probably going to be a whole day of simply tending the fire and reading.
(Time Passes)
Darkness has fallen over this the most western part of the eastern time zone. The fire in the wood stove has been going all day. I have fed the kids a couple of pastys for dinner. Somehow I managed to finish that 300 page novel in the course of about ten hours lounging about in my sweat pants. Why I have sweat pants, or rather why I bought them, eludes me. However, today they made perfect sense. A day wasted. A day is gone, but it passed well for I feel mentally have recharged. The book is a fun read. The ending was okay but the rest of the book had enough twists and turns to keep me glued to it all day. Guess I will throw another log on the fire. Did I mention it started snowing again?
What are miracles. Well, love and life are two biggies. I think grilled cheese and tomato soup also qualify on a cold evening.
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