Chillin'

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.

I woke up this morning.

It is finally my time of the year.  The house was cool, almost cold, this morning.  I refuse to fire up the heat pump when the daytime temperature approaches eighty.  So it was a chilly walk from the bed to the kitchen to conduct the spiritual discipline of grinding the beans and re-enacting the original creation story.

Let there be life.

As the coffee began to brew I stepped outside.  The grey cloudiness made it seem even chillier than it actually was.  The frigid concrete, like a natural defibrillator, shot a wake up jolt through my bare feet, radiating all the way to my still sleepy brain. All was quiet except for the rustle of the first harvest of leaves that have fallen the past couple of days. Everybody was moving a little slower than usual.  The deer down the way snapped to attention for a moment, briefly staring at me like I was a headlight, but quickly dipping their heads back down, as if saying, "oh, it's just you."  My cat, which shares my need to save the world, has taken in a friend, and they lie at the edge of the trees, waiting for the breakfast alarm of the rattling of the cat food bag before they bother to get up. Now they have a little kitten with them, apparently adopted. It is beautiful, sporting a light gray suit with a white shirt, and a bobbed tail.  The kitten is the only thing that seems to want to move.

I hated to come back in.  On the other hand, the coffee was ready. And my feet were cold.

I don't know what it is about the fall that energizes me.  It seems counter-intuitive, as the season is generally identified as that time of the year when things begin to go to sleep for the winter, or even die. And yet, when the coolness finally makes its way to the southland, it wakes me up. I feel more alive.

Things seem clearer without the heat. Without the sudden storms.

So it is good to be back on the sofa on a cool Saturday morning, drinking coffee, thinking about the possibilities instead of the problems, even though they may be the same things.  It just seems that the way I approach them depends on the temperature, on the heat.

So, at least for this moment, the heat is off.  I see more clearly. I breathe more deeply.

It's going to be a great day.

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