Daybreak. Coffee. The Big Two

My friend, Slim Randles is back again as Wednesday's Guest. This essay is a bit different from most of his others that are laced with lots of humor. This one is laced with a bit of homespun philosophy. I like it, and hope you do, too. Since we are not down at the Mule Barn where coffee is served in industrial-sized mugs, maybe you will join me in a cup of tea. I promise it has enough caffeine to stir the old brain muscles into wakefulness.

While Slim is entertaining us here, I am over at The Blood Red Pencil blog today, with the inside story about Untreed Reads. Never heard of that publisher? Here's your chance to find out a bit about them. Good folks there.

There’s something so satisfying about getting out of bed when the world is still dark and quiet and resting. Making the coffee gives us time to scratch and think. Well, scratch, anyway. Most of that thinking will start after about the third cup.

But it’s a quiet time. A private time. When the world is dark, and there isn’t yet a hint of pink over the eastern mountains, it’s very good. We can relax. No one is expecting anything from us right now. Our guilt can take some time off, and we can listen to music or work a crossword puzzle or turn on the TV and watch the weather guy discuss millibars and troughs.

Sunrise at my little piece of Heaven

Soon enough, we’ll have to be out there living for others: our bosses, our customers, our animals, our fields. But right now no one needs us except the dog, and she does well on kibbles and an occasional drive-by ear rumple.

We can look out the window at the eastern glow and wonder what will happen in the hours until our world turns dark again. People will be born and people will die. People will win honors and people will go to jail. People will create things today that live past them and people will disappear forever. People will write about these things and other people will read about these things.

And then the world will go dark and dormant on us again and we’ll think about what happened in our tiny portion of this huge moving amalgam and hopefully we’ll sleep easily tonight. Then, when we arise tomorrow and head for the coffee pot, we can think about what happened today, and how it has made us slightly different for taking on the next tomorrow.

Come to us, daylight. Bring us the new day. But do it gently, please, and slowly enough for one more cup.
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If you like what Slim shares here, you will enjoy his books. Check out his author page on Amazon if you have a moment. His books are a delight, and they make perfect gifts for any occasion,

In order to provide these columns for free and still buy groceries, Slim has sponsors, and the current sponsor is Beltone Hearing Aids,  so we do have to do this little ad:

Beethoven never heard his Ninth Symphony, but you can. It begins with a free hearing test. Beltone.  1-866-867-8700.

Friday's Odds and Ends

Another week has flown by, and I keep wondering where the time went. I remember when my grandmother told me how the days and weeks and months seem to shrink as you get older, I didn't believe her. But then, I was just a 12-year-old girl. Days were endless to me then, and I was sure they would always be.

Now I have to often remind myself to stop. Enjoy this moment. Make this moment count. This morning there was another spectacular sunrise. As I was walking with my dog, I stopped and admired the cloud formations, some looking like wisps of cotton pulled so thin the color of the sky could be seen through the threads. Colors that ranged from a deep orange to a light yellow, blending into a pale blue.

Beautiful.

Of course, I did not have my camera. But I do have a picture I took last year that I can share. We do have beautiful sunrises and sunsets here in Texas.

How many of you cheered when news of the settlement between Congress and President Obama was announced? I didn't cheer. I just said, "It's about damn time." Throughout this prolonged mess, all I could think of was two junkyard dogs facing off to protect their part of the domain.

Sad, and enough said.

On Monday I said I would report today on how the book promotion went, offering Boxes For Beds free for a few days. I'm going to put that off until next Friday so I can include some information from a couple of other authors on how their promotional events have worked. I found out that Stacy Juba had a special this past week also, and she has agreed to share some of her results with us.  I first met Stacy when she invited me to write an essay for her book, 25 Years in the Rearview Mirror, a collection of stories from a number of authors looking back to 1985. Stacy is a terrific writer and a great supporter of other authors, and I am looking forward to hearing how her promotional efforts went. She is so good at marketing, too.

 It's been a while since I shared a Literary Lesson, and I thought this one appropriate considering the mess our government is in. This is the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town" speaking. The play was written in 1938, but not much has changed.

"Whenever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense."

And lets finish with a joke. Can't end on a downer:

What did the math book say to the other math book? 
Boy do I have problems.

Pretty Pictures

My Liitle Barn

Instead of doing one of my usual rants about something, I thought I would just share some pictures I took this morning.

Texas has some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets that I have ever seen, and this morning was a great one. I'm glad my animals woke me up in time to see this and capture some of it.

We had several inches of snow here the other day, and it is so cold the snow is hanging around. My horse does not seem to mind it at all, as long as there is hay coming.

Our dog, Poppy, isn't bothered by the snow either, unless her ball disappears.

As any photographer knows, you can take a hundred shots before you get a special picture. Of all those I took this morning, I think this one is the best.

This one is kind of interesting. I played with cropping just a corner of a larger picture.

This process of finding just the right image is not unlike the challenge of finding just the right words to create an image in writing. Both take patience and perseverance.

More Pictures

Took some shots of the sunrise one day this week. Thought it was interesting that the pictures were all taken about the same time, yet the colors vary significantly.

I didn't change the settings on my camera, so I don't know why the variance happened. But I thought the pictures were pretty.