Fall color remains elusive at the bosque. But it’s still a fine place to ride the ol’ bikey-bike on a Tuesday morning.
The 32-mile loop I did is about two-thirds easy-breezy like a Cover Girl. But the last bit from Mountain and Broadway back to El Rancho Pendejo has about a thousand feet of vertical in it. And since most of the climbing stacks up on the back side it sorta gets a fella’s attention.
As does the ongoing devolution of TFG. When the legacy media finally start catching on, you know that shit is dire.
The low end of the speed spectrum, as George Carlin said.
Welcome to “standard” time.
It’s the time of year when I start thinking of bedtime as a delivery system to that first cup of coffee in the morning.
This is also the time of year when Miss Mia Sopaipilla starts yowling outside the bedroom door at stupid-thirty, singing me out of the bed so she can get into it. Miss Mia doesn’t know from clocks, daylight saving or standard time. And she wouldn’t care if she did.
“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” she’d say. “Now get out of my bed.”
Here be dragons.
On Sundays I strip the bed of sheets and pillowcases for washing. This is easier said than done with a cat in the middle of things.
See, once the brisk fall mornings arrive Miss Mia insists on a daily sojourn in the Winter Palace — the comforter folded over like the corn tortilla in a quesadilla, with Miss Mia as the filling — and preparing it for occupancy is one of my chores as cat wrangler, second shift. It takes priority over everything else, even that first cup of coffee.
Ordinarily, no problem. Unless it’s fall-back Sunday, the bed needs stripping, and suddenly it’s full of cat.
At this point your hardcore java junkie, nonplussed by a clock that displays a time of day inconsistent with a dopamine-serotonin-caffeine mixture optimized for basic functionality, might spiral into a twitching, hissing fit, not unlike a cat abruptly evicted from a warm bed on a chilly morning.
Not so Your Humble Narrator. I am, after all, a Professional Dope Fiend who has learned through bitter and painful experience to avoid scenes in the pale gloom of morning, before the first fix of the day. One must swiftly overcome all obstacles between one’s habit and its solution without invoking some vile keening that draws the lazy eye of the constables.
Happily, one of the voices in my head is a prestidigitator, The Amazing Doggini, a wizard of legerdemain with the supple fingers of a Marseilles pickpocket and the desperate focus of a Hell’s Kitchen smackhead.
You’ve seen a magician whisk a tablecloth from underneath a full dinner setting for four without a single crack in the crockery? Stripping a bed of its sheets while a cat naps under the comforter requires similar dexterity, but less velocity.
Also, patience. If at any point the purring stops you risk acquiring an enraged cat attached via all five pointy bits to some tender part of your anatomy, like one of the face-huggers in “Alien.”
Fortunately, this wasn’t The Amazing Doggini’s first rodeo. In a previous life he jerked a throw rug out from under the Hound of the Baskervilles and escaped unmarked to tell the tale. Thus the sheets slid slowly from beneath Miss Mia and into the washing machine.
And I finally got to have my cup of coffee. I needed it, too. Because I still had a litter box to clean out. The Amazing Doggini doesn’t do litter boxes.
Here it is November, from the Old Norse for “I’m freezing my nuts off, pass the akvavit.”
Sacred to Capilene, god of baselayers, November is the month in which one expends more time and energy unearthing long-buried sport-specific garments than actually engaging in the sport to which they are specific.
It’s a triathlon of sorts, and sportswear is not required for the first leg: finding the toilet in the dark.
“Whoops, nope, that’s not it. …”
Next leg: Not scaring the cat. This means putting on some clothes before heading to the kitchen to make coffee, because nobody, not even a cat, wants to see some wrinkly sack of snot, spasms, and bad ideas hobbling around in the dark with his leaky bidness hanging out, especially if he just peed in the bathroom trash can.
“Hm. Wool socks don’t slide smoove like butta through the old polyester jogging pants, do they? More like trying to shove overcooked spaghetti through shifter-cable housing. Shit, forgot underwear. (Do the Dance of the Sugar Plum Geezers, trying to pull the pants off over the wool socks, after which it’s time to pee again, this time in the toilet.) Goddamnit, did the little woman eBay all my long-sleeved pullovers? Nope, here they are, underneath the cat.”
And finally, after coffee, toast, and oatmeal: “The hell are my leg warmers? It’s too cold for knee warmers, but not cold enough for tights, and I can’t find those either. The wool socks stay on, if only because once I’m kitted up with winter bibs, leg warmers, and three long-sleeved jerseys I can’t bend over.”
This, of course, is when the toilet sings its siren song once again, with a tad more urgency. Flailing transpires. Superman never got out of a Clark Kent suit so fast. If this were an Olympic event I’d be on a Wheaties box for sure.
Oh, well. “Drit skjer (Shit happens)”, as the Vikings say. Pass the akvavit.
Come autumn, the first part of the day is always the hardest — getting out of bed.
Hey, it’s dark out there, man. What am I, a farmer?
Stagger to the bathroom, dispose of the next item on the agenda, pull on some clothes — the past couple mornings, with temps in the low 40s, this means a T-shirt and lightly trail-shredded Patagucci joggers, not my ancient, decaying Columbia shorts — and shuffle into the kitchen to mumble “Hell’s goin’ on in here?” to Herself and Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who do not object to early rising and consider Your Humble Narrator a hopeless slacker.
Next there must be strong black coffee, and the morning news, which is mostly what you might expect from an afterlife peek at the front page of The Lake of Fire Cauldron-Inferno (“The Hell You Say!”).
A slice apiece of homemade whole-wheat toast with Irish butter and French jam helps soak up the acid (avoid those stomach ulcers, kids!). And then breakfast gets serious.
This time of year it’s likely to be hot oatmeal with a dash of brown sugar, maple syrup, cinnamon, dried fruit and nuts, plus a tall mug of tea. Yogurt, müesli, and smoothies are generally summertime fare, while eggs with taters and chicken sausage have been more of a lunch than a breakfast in recent years.
Just now as I was finishing my tea I heard a thunk! in the living room that couldn’t be attributed to an old house slowly warming as the sun peeks over the Sandias.
It was a dove taking a header into the picture window — they will do that, especially if the neighborhood Cooper’s hawk is clocked in and on the job — but this one apparently augured in without assistance.
Dazed, the bird squatted on the landscaping rocks, blinking like an old computer slowly booting up. Slowly, the frantic breathing became more regular; next, the head swung first this way, then that; and poof! Liftoff, straight up into the backyard maple.
No harm, no foul. Fowl? No, the sun may finally be up, but it’s still too early for cheap jokes.
We’re slowly easing into the fall routine around here.
Arise, make coffee, scan the news, shriek, “Jesus Christ!” and run away. Maybe play with the cat for a while. She doesn’t know what to make of it all either.
“Cold, cruel world, isn’t it?” she murmurs.
“Well, not that cold,” I reply. “The weather widget says 52°, which is not bad for 7:50 a.m. on Oct. 11 in The Duck! City. Still, I take your point.”
We should spend more time talking to the other animals. I’m guessing you could walk into any primate house in the world, and if you understood the language you might hear something like: “You hear what the hairless ones did this time? And yet we’re the ones in the cages. Go figure.”
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