A Wild and Woolly Day

Morning arrived, wrapped in a grey and sullen mist.

I lay for a few minutes watching as color crept into the room.

[Little Edward had obligingly pawed open the shutter nearest the bed!]

I could hear the wind whining, and the brittle rattle of branches and twigs tossed against each other.

Edward smacked the shutter again, Bobby purred encouragingly in my ear.  It was obviously time to be out of bed.

I let the kittens out through the sliding door, snatching at the curtain which wanted to follow them out into the damp.

Cat food was doled out, the fire built up, coffee perked.

J. noted a mockingbird teetering along the front walk, balancing in the wind.

Rain lashed down and the glossy leaves of the magnolia tree whipped in the wet gusts.

The bully boys, having dashed about the yard, splatted in puddles and chased soggy leaves, burst back inside, fur sparkling with damp.

Edward and Bobby tusseled and thrashed about on the kitchen floor.

Edward found a battered catnip mouse which he pushed around J's stand near the desk.

Teasel snatched the mouse and tore down the hallway, flinging herself dramatically onto a bedside rug.

Charlie who, by choice, spent the night up in the hay barn, came in, soggy-furred and flung himself exhaustedly on a chest of drawers.

I fetched a thick piece of fleece to absorb the wet and poked it underneath him.

Prodded unsympathtically by J. he opened blue eyes and wriggled himself into a sleepy heap.

By noon, the cat tribe had settled down.

J. had been in and out fetching in wood for the fire. I imbibed two mugs of green tea as I sat here addressing my few Christmas cards, penning notes.

I was aware of the wind outside, of the rain which drove against the window, slackened, pattered again.

At 3 I bundled up my stack of cards in their red envelopes, hastily wrote checks to pay the utility bills, and drove to the Post Office on the edge of town.

The wind buffeted the car, tugged my hair loose from its elastic band when I dashed for the

post office lobby.

At the market I had to park the car more than halfway down the big parking lot.

It was dark, the sky forbidding. One set of the automatic doors into Wal Mart had been braced shut against the wind.  People hurried, heads bent, collars clutched around their throats.

Home again a few minutes after 4 in the dusky gloom of early night fall.

J. was polishing off a bowl of leftover beef/barley soup.

I heated the remainder, buttered a slice of toast.

Cats lay in sleepy heaps--on the hearthrug and on the bed.

Grandson D. blew in for a few moments.

Later I talked on the phone with our son.

After hearing of his day battling snow drifts and minus zero temps in the mountains of Wyoming, I felt that we were nearly tropical by comparison!

Wild and woolly?

Its how my late Dad would have described the day.

I began wondering where the phrase originated and found this:

'like the rough, vigorous atmosphere of the early West in America: wild and woolly'.

We are headed to bed on what will be the longest night of the year but one.

Tomorrow I will fill the house with the scent of baking bread!

[I'm making a greater effort to reply to your welcome 'comments' as I post them.  Its is always a pleasure to know that someone is reading what I write!]