Jan 12 2009
Warm Welcome
I had a conference call at 6:00 this morning, so I staggered out of bed in the early morning darkness. As I made coffee and tried to remember the dream I had so summarily been yanked out of by the alarm clock’s shrill voice, I noticed that the screen door of the porch was flapping maniacally in the wind.
When the call was over and it was light enough to see outside, I went out and discovered that it was warm but very windy, much as it was that day back in November. Most of my laundry had been blown off its hangers* on the porch, and the doormat was crumpled up like a used Kleenex. Henry was watching the leaves fly around in the wind with apparent distaste. I propped the screen door open with a cinderblock and it has stayed that way all day, though as I write, the front door just slammed shut, either from the wind blowing in the back door, or a poltergeist. I wonder if these warm, wild days are our version of the Santa Anas that blow through SoCal this time of year.
It ended up being a record-breaking warm day, which I enjoyed as I strolled to Farmer Joe in my t-shirt and sandals (don’t worry, there were other clothes in between). As I walked home with my fuchsia Chico bag full of Petrale sole, broccoli, and brown rice for dinner, I enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face and thought, “Can it really be the middle of January?”
*I don’t have a clothesline, so I hang up the clothes and drape them over chairs on the porch until they’re dry. Mostly because I’m too miserly to use the dryer, but partly because clothes last longer that way. As my brother observed, when you clean out the lint trap, “That’s your clothes in there!” In addition to minimizing my PG&E bill, I have at long last discovered the solution to the mystery of the missing sock. You know, the one that somehow disappears during the laundry process. Since I stopped using the dryer, I haven’t lost a single sock. So it really is your clothes in there!