Normally after drinking coffee and walking in the morning I’m motivated to work around the house but today after breakfast I just lay on the sofa and gazed out the window. I needed to shower so I could put the anti-fungal foam on my scalp and make cornbread for dinner, get a fire assembled, wash the sheets. But all that could wait, and with it being a Sunday in late October it felt good to just laze the day away. Someone plucking strings on the radio, a frog croaking back, the heater fan. The old grandfather clock: pure heaven.

I lit some incense and settled in by the cat Timmy, who was licking his paw. He relished every stroke of his tongue along each digit, his weaponry, those claws. His tail slapped the side of the leather couch in tune with the clock.

Sunday is a good day to turn off notifications and nap. Here in the Pacific Northwest we’d passed into a different phase, weather-wise. The first of the November wind storms, a bit early, but always the same: fallen limbs and pine needles, broadleaf maple leaves, a real shit show on the roads with the storm drains clogged. Snow on the mountain passes. Trees down at the park on my morning walk. More of the forest opening up now that the leaves were getting raked off.

We lost Wi-Fi but not power. I delighted in having the generator and flashlights ready, everything charged. Even a pot of chili. I bought a battery trickler for the tractor and got non-ethanol gas for the generator, fuel stabilizer. We cleared the garage and stacked the outdoor furniture inside like a Jenga puzzle. I loved when the power went out and it was snowing and we had to keep the garage bay doors ajar to let the cord snake through. Then walking to the lake and taking pictures, everyone out doing the same. The hum of generators semi-apocalyptic sounding.

We had hummingbird stickers stuck to the picture window to dissuade birds from flying into the glass. One looked down at Timmy dozing on the sofa. I thought I should get out and winterize the pressure washer before I forgot, to protect the pump. I could drive down to the hardware store and get more fuel stabilizer. It was hard to do nothing. But when I closed my eyes and settled back to the ticking of the clock and the crooning of some singer, the incense, I felt tingly, almost timeless. Like no body at all, the way it felt in dreams flying through space. The incense came from some church in France, from Lily. The clock from somewhere in Europe—mom and John would have picked it out decades ago. It still ran. If only I could cuddle up with my things I thought, and float away.

(The next day)

It got cold. The lawn looked glazed with ice. You forget how different it feels when autumn comes, you lose your tolerance and go soft. I still took all-cold showers after I warmed up from my walk. Made orgasmic sounds in response.

When I came downstairs in the morning someone was on the sofa in my spot, Charlotte’s friend Rosie’s sibling Zane, visiting from Florida. That meant I couldn’t sit in the den by the radio on the couch with the candle and write like I normally do.

So I sat in the other room, and it was great.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, pacific northwest, prose