Mornin' Coffee, Aaahh

I wake up around four every morning. The horses are restless and bang around a bit, nicker softly, and cause just enough commotion to make sure I'm up. AS soon as my feet touch the floor, they stop and wait while I pull on some clothes. When I open the door, they begin to fidget and move around in anticipation of the hay I am grabbing to throw in their mangers. They try to steal a bite from the flake of hay as I'm tossing it in and I waggle a finger at them to move them back. It's dark in the barn and I use a flashlight to see what I'm doing. When I have the horses fed, I go outside and turn on the solar lights that provide just enough light to see what I'm doing. They were intended for use outside along a path and we use them in the barn and inside the cook shack. They provide a low, but usable light level,
that seems to fit the early morning hours better than brighter lights would.

After the horses are taken care of I go inside and start a fire in the cookstove. I sit and tend the fire until I'm sure it's caught and then put water on for coffee and fill both tea kettles. I love this time of morning. The night chill slowly leaves the room while I sit and next to the fire and let my thoughts wander. Soon, the kettles are making noise and the water for the coffee is boiling. I have a french press and it makes good coffee. It is completely out of place, but I broke the glass bulb that sat in the old coffee pot and couldn't find a stove top percolater in Ellsworth. When you don't have a working coffee pot, you only have 24 hours to solve the problem. Now that I own it, I'm going to use it until I find an old percolater in a yard sale.

Sitting next to the fire, I take the first tentative sip of coffee. Does it get better than this? I am not hurrying to get ready, I don't have to remember what I need to take with me. I just sit and enjoy myself. I could turn on brighter lights and start bustling around, but that would be like swearing in church. Today is particularly sweet because we have a blizzard coming. Accuweather actually has blizzard warnings posted. It is supposed to start around 7:00 AM. Kris will go into full cook mode and I will enjoy the storm.

I kind of feel bad for the rest of the world-- not real bad, just kind of bad. We have figured out a way to play at living. Almost everyone else is heading off to work at a job. Perish the thought. Yesterday, I scrapped snow off enough wood to make the shelving for the pantry cupboard. All our home canned food is stacked in the boxes the canning jars came in. Finding what your looking for in the stack requires moving lots of heavy boxes. Today, I wiil continue the process of cupboard construction by clearing a spot in our heated storage to stack the boards. They need to dry enough to run through the planer. Moving forward on projects that directly enhance your quality of life is the secret of our happiness. Everyday things get noticeably better. Sometimes progress is slow, sometimes things happen quickly, but we can see life getting better. Making things better is satisfying and this makes things fun. Life isn't fair, but it can be fun. Your probably headed to work and I am sitting by the fire. I find that pretty entertaining.

It's getting light and its starting to snow. I don't want to miss the blizzard--gotta go.