11,644 Pots of Coffee Later ....

Morning dawns gusty, the motion detectors are setting off the entry alarm in the studio.  I need to adjust that.  The sweet potato vines on the porch are responding to this morning’s coolness by looking full of moisture and waving healthily in the breezes.

Linda’s head pops into the doorway from time to time to update me in agenda changes.  We don’t have to stop by the store on the way to services this morning.  ** whew! ** .. I think given a choice of a lashing or a visit to WalMart on a Saturday morning, the lashing would have won out.

I have a list of pre Shabbat chores that I do to prepare for the day.  It is not usual to have every item in the list done, but this Shabbat, it was.  Of course, when you are retired, every day is Shabbat.  Almost.

Not reading much, and the last spurt of activity on the novel has played out.  That is good, though.  It is a complex tale, and each scene in the book has to interlock with every other scene.  One curse of learning the craft of writing is that you begin to see where authors you have long admired ran out of creativity and resorted to “tricks” to get the story to a completion.  Even the great writer Mark Twain resorted to a hackneyed ending in Huckleberry Finn.  He admitted it later in life.

Life today is measured by pots of coffee.  Linda is very anal about her coffee, even packing a coffee pot when we are traveling.  I will announce the departure time, and she will rise two hours earlier to do her morning bath and ministrations.  One ministration is the communal coffee pot. 

She makes the pot up the night before so all she has to do is plug it in if we are traveling, or hit the brew button if we are at home.  By my calculation, she has made 11,644 morning pots of coffee during our marriage.  That doesn’t include pots made afterwards.  We used to consume several pots of coffee a day, but now we are down to two large mugs of brew each morning.

I have been cleaning my old studio out of collected treasures, such as camera’s that ran on DOS powered computers.  I just can’t bear to toss the boxes of electronics that are outdated.  I see why those people who collect until they can’t move in their house are so resistant to tossing things.  You never know.  DOS operating system could make a comeback.

Anyway.  I have a little peaceful time to pen these missives on Shabbat mornings.  Two hours that no radio plays, the TV is off.  Just the sounds of Linda fussing with the mutts who are wrestling on the living room floor, the mornings breezes sighing past my studio window,  the gloom of the room brightening as the sun continues its relentless climb to Noon, and the coffee cup is empty.  Time for a refill.

Good morning!