Stripping

Boom-ta-da-boom!  First to come off were the gloves, then the hat, slowly followed by the jacket...what would come off next?  Dang!  The sun had come out and it was nearly fifty degrees down in the barn, and I was still dressed as if it were twenty.  These radical temperature changes do tend to catch one off guard.  Overdressed up here doesn't mean you've shown up in sequins to a picnic. 

Rushing through the chores, I grabbed my book and Bessie and I went to sit on the deck, soon joined by Frank and Pearl.  It's my favorite place to sit in the whole world.  It seems so quiet, and yet there's always a musical score playing in the background.  Birds are chattering in the trees or calling from the skies, leaves are rustling, a truck hits the jake brake on Mt. Aukum road about six miles away.  Reinvigorated, I tore myself back to reality and got some inside tasks done.  I'm still savoring Shantaram.

I've always been a magpie, picking up bright, shiny bits from parking lots and driveways, thrusting these treasures into pocket or purse.  Might be a part from a broken earring, a nail that could puncture a tire, once a Leatherman tool (that really was a treasure!), a penny or a dime.  Among the tons of leaves in the yard, I've been trying to find a new one to turn over.  I'm trying to let go of things, making an honest assessment of whether I really need to keep the feathers from Frederick the Great's tail, is a Christmas card received from someone I barely knew fifteen years ago really important, will I ever find a project that will require that bobble from a bracelet.  I want to stop emptying my pockets of items a six-year-old boy might hoard.  A week or so ago, coming back from the barn, I picked up a little black something or other, wondered where it came from, couldn't identify it and, in my new spirit of letting go, threw it into the trash barrel on my way to the house.  Wouldn't you just know that I have discovered a missing knob on the truck radio?  It's the tuning knob.  I only listen to one station, so I don't need the knob.  I have no idea when or why it came off...I only know I threw it away.  I think I'll go back to turning over leaves, looking for a better one.

We're in the dark phase of the moon.  You know it's really dark when the tiny little light on the freezer in the laundry room shines as brightly as a night light.  Owls are working the graveyard shift.  If they are such silent hunters, how come they constantly announce their presence by the whoo-whoo?  Do they think mice, etc., are deaf?  I hear them as I'm going to bed and when I get up...they're scouting the area close to the house.  These are big owls, barn owls?, but I've never seen them.  The only owls I've ever seen were the little ground owls when I was learning to fly a small Cessna plane.  Landing at dusk, there would be an owl perched on each runway light, spectators.  "Here she comes...here she comes."  Whoosh! and the heads would turn..."There she goes!"  I always hoped they weren't making bets about my landings.

The sun's up and I see blue sky.  I'll leave the gloves and hat in the house today.