Thursday, October 21, 2021

Bright and Early

 We had our first hard frost here, and so it was a big deal for me to get to the retirement property to get all the green peppers picked. I scooted up right after work. There were a lot of them. The plants had gotten huge. I've really never had such huge pepper plants, and they were loaded with peppers. I picked them and thought I had them all, but then I'd look at the situation from another angle, and darned if there were not more of them. I picked a peck of unpickled peppers. (Later, when I was chopping them, I wound up with 4 gallons of chopped green peppers, but, I digress.)

So I came home with my peppers and my spider plant from the green house (one more plant to get, a fern). 

After I slapped together supper, I headed out the door for a meeting.

I went to bed to read for a few minutes. Steve Reed was right. Beatrice and Virgil? The more that I read of that book, the more I simply hated it. There are some things that don't need 'fable-ized' and the Holocaust is one of them. I read some reviews about the book on line, and one fellow who gave it 5 stars raved that it really 'displayed human nature'. Well. You know what displayed human nature to me? The Holocaust. I glanced through the end of the book, and stopped to read the questions at the end. 

Enough for me. I don't need a howler monkey and a donkey (not to mention a rabid dog) to demonstrate the Holocaust. (The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC did that.) The questions at the end of the book were sickening. With that, I tossed the book at the bedroom door to be picked up and deposited in the trash can in the morning. I shut off the light and curled up next to my already snoring husband. 

This morning, I woke up as the hall clock was chiming the hour. I think it is cool how I wake up before the alarm. It's as if my sleeping self is conscious still, keeping track of the time by the chimes and the bongs and the cuckoos and the music. I shut off the alarm, lay there for a few minutes and then got up. 

I made my coffee. I put my bread in the toaster (pumpkin butter today). 

I walked through the livingroom to the office sipping my coffee and carrying my plate. It is my custom to wake up at the computer sipping my coffee and reading. It's easy to keep track of the time...   I stared in shock at the clock on my computer. It was 4:26. The clocks were not chiming 5. They were chiming 4. I was up and moving a full hour early. 

I looked at the half empty coffee cup in my hand in despair.

The earlier it is, the brighter I'm not.


13 comments:

  1. I've done that too, so frustrating but funny too.

    I'll skip the book.

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  2. Wow! Up at 5 AM! that would throw my little world off for months. That first killing frost is always a downer for me.

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  3. We have had one frost, but not too hard..enough to prompt the moving in of tender plants!

    Waking when you were ready..even if you rise and get going gently..is good.
    Mind you, doing that before the clocks go back to winter hours could be a problem!

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  4. Oof.... I can't remember the last time I was up and about at that time of day.

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  5. When I worked full time as a teacher I often got by on five hours sleep a night but nowadays I need eight hours and feel out of synch with the world if I don't get that much.

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  6. My alarm clock always wakes me - sometimes at a far earlier hour than dawn.

    Good thing he is cute (and there are laws against booting cats, but I digress)

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  7. A hard frost? You must not live where I had pictured, which was somewhere in the eastern states.

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  8. Pennsylvania. NW corner. Hasn't happened in town yet, but out a the retirement property, it did.

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  9. I expect you're in a bit of a snowbelt there?

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  10. We fortunately avoided the frost so have another ten days (according to my weather app) before worrying about such things. But our day is a coming and quickly.

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  11. I wake up before the alarm goes off on my phone.

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  12. 4 gallons of peppers? That's awesome. I'm so impressed.
    I looked up the book Beatrice and Virgil. I can see what you mean. I guess that's one book I will definitely avoid.

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  13. EXACTLY! There are very few books that I actively dislike, but that was one of them. As you said, the attempt at a fable just didn't work for that subject.

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