10.23.2012

Flannel Sheets

Changed the bedsheets last Friday. While I always enjoy fresh bed linens, there are two times a year when I really enjoy the task of stripping the bed and making it up again: early Autumn when we switch to flannel sheets, and late Spring when we switch back to cool smooth cotton sheets. Perhaps I could convince the legislature to quit monkeying around with the clock and instead declare specific days when we are required to Fall Back Into Flannel and to Spring Forward Into Smooth Cotton. I dread the monkey business with the clock, but I do so love Falling Into Flannel Sheets every year at this time. And I love Sipping Hot Sweet Beverages. And consuming Creamy Carbohydrate-Laden Meals. Fall is full of so many small pleasures.

Flannel sheets bring back happy childhood memories of wearing tights to bed on cold winter nights and making "lightning" under the covers by pedaling my legs rapidly against the tented up flannel sheets. Oh, the simple joys of discharging static electricity in the dark. But inevitably my sister and I would get too joyful and stern parental voices from the living room would warn us to settle down and go to sleep.

I'm the stern parental voice now. Well, I was before the nest was so rudely emptied anyway. The point is...I'm the boss of me now. Not even the legislature can tell me to settle down and go to sleep if I want to make sparks 'til the sun comes up.

I think I'll wear tights to bed tonight.

I love Fall.


10.21.2012

Earthquake

Last night a 5.3 shook the ground beneath us (epicenter near King  City about 90 miles south of San Jose) and woke me to heart-pounding attention just before midnight.

Sometimes one needs a good shake to awaken one from unconsciousness.

As a native Californian I've been shaken before, and I expect to be shaken again. Unlike some, however, I cannot just casually shrug and return to life as usual without some time to reflect and respect the awesome forces of nature that will continue to shape Our Home.

We talk about being "grounded" or having a certain steady reliable base upon which to stand, but perhaps we would be wise to consider that nothing truly stays the same. Not you. Not me. Not the Earth. 

Yet we can wake up every new day in what seems to us to be the same place. But nothing stays the same. The ground beneath us shifts. With or without our approval. A shift may be slight or it may be catastrophic and reform our world in unexpected ways.

Humans possess endless creativity in the ways in which they respond to change. Some deny it and cling to what was. Some ignore it and carry on as if nothing happened. Some welcome a new or different way of being. I've tried coping with the shifting ground of my life in all those ways and more. And what I've come to know is that I have within me whatever it may take to withstand the terror of my feet going out from under me and to scramble to the next place that is steady.

Until the next earthquake.