Good Morning

It is almost 9:30 am as I begin to write this. Seems it might be a good day today.

Outside, the sun's rays glance off the snow crystals blanketing the back yard, causing them to sparkle like diamond dust. As the sun continues to rise, the angle changes and the diamond shards disappear. For the moments they are here, I am lost in the tiny flashes of brilliant color. My conscience will never allow me to own a diamond, but the refracted light off the snow lets me appreciate their allure. After all, I am Crow, for whom all things sparkly are as magnets to iron filings - an irresistible attraction and desire to possess. And, yes, it is the iron that desires to possess the magnet, not the other way 'round.

The thermometer at the backdoor reads 21 Fahrenheit, which is too-effing-cold in Celsius, I understand. My father had a number of pithy aphorisms for describing cold of this level: colder than a well-digger's butt in Idaho, than a witch's tits, than iron balls on a brass monkey...and others, most of which I'd be too embarrassed to post here - which says a lot, doesn't it?

At the corner of the carport, where the drain leading into the downspout has sprung a leak, there is one gigantic icicle dagger waiting to stab some hapless creature when it cracks loose and falls. Jeeze, I hope it isn't me! There are no icicles along the gutter at the back door, as there have been every winter I've lived here, because this autumn the kids (daughter, grandson) and I put new gutter covers on. While I am grateful there are no patches of ice for me to slip on, as I walk under the roof line to the sidewalk, I did enjoy how the sunlight danced and shattered and sparkled through the curtain of ice daggers in years past. Crow.

I am waiting for my cat - actually, I don't have a cat, it has me - to show up for his morning feed. I'd love to have him be a house cat, but he's not having any of it. I've managed to get him into the house to eat, but if I even look like I'm going to shut the door behind him, he's gone in a flash. Perhaps when it's warmer out, and I can sit outside with him while he eats, we can become buddies and he'll become comfortable inside. Since he was/is a feral cat, scared of his own shadow, I am lucky he allows me as much familiarity as he does. Funny little guy - sometimes he runs up to me when I come home, as if he's going to rub against my legs, but at the last second his thinking brain yells, "DUDE!! Seriously??!" and he veers off in another direction. Yeah, I think we'll be lap buddies by the end of the coming summer.

There is just enough breeze outside that the windchime is almost melodic in its soundings. Is it my imagination, or are the sounds sharper, clearer on frigid days than warm ones? Doesn't matter, I guess, because the sparkling sound coupled with the sparkling snow and the shiny ice dagger dangling off the carport roof have all ensured a good morning - so far.