Do I Look Crazy To You?

The temperature dropped to almost sixty degrees this morning. We are all walking around feeling as if the universe has conspired to make us happy. We are nodding our heads, we are smiling, we are practically drooling with the pleasure of it.

Well. Maybe that's just me.

My four miles felt easy and good and strong. What an amazing difference a few degrees of temperature can make. We slept last night with the window open above the bed and every time I woke up, I snuggled down further under the covers and smiled in the darkness. Yes. Oh, oh, yes.

A damn cat tried to mess with my chickens this morning. I heard a huge commotion and looked up to see the hens scattering and a smallish yellow cat leaping away with nothing in its paws or jaws, thank goodness. I've seen this cat twice before in the garage and on the kitchen porch. Both times it lept when it saw me to run and hide. I wish he or she would figure out where the cat food is. I don't mind feeding the feral cats that come into my yard but they are not allowed to go after the chickens. I understand hunger but there are so many lizards and frogs and a dish of food in the pump house and besides that, I don't think a small tabby could take one of my hens with the exception of Baby who is still, remarkably, with us even though her husband has long since disappeared. She flies out of the tree where she roosts to meet me every morning when I go to let the big hens and Elvis out and every morning I am surprised all over again to see her.
"Hey Baby!" I say, and she waits for me to throw the corn. She hangs with the flock all day but she does not sleep with them and when the yellow cat made his move this morning she flew up onto the porch roof, startling me. Maybe she'll survive. I hope so. I still haven't figured out where she's laying, if indeed she is. She is not much to look at, that one, but she has come to represent something brave to me.

I need to get moving in the direction of town. My mother needs a few things and she has the name of a doctor who supposedly helped the friend of a friend who has the same dizziness that she has and I told her I'd help her call and make an appointment. We shall see. It would be a miracle if they could do something about her constant vertigo because every other medical pathway we've taken so far has been a complete dead-end. I miss my boys but they're going with their parents to the Jr. Museum and what a perfect day it will be there with this crisper and cooler weather. They can pet the cow and the horse and see the bears and the alligators and the deers and the foxes. Sort of like being at my house, without the bears and alligators. And deer which are only represented as trophy heads in their grandfather's den and the meat in the freezer in the garage.
We are a bunch of crazy irrationalists, aren't we?
Oh, look at the cute little deer. Here, eat your venison meatloaf. Well, same with cows, dammit. And even horses in some parts of the world. And pigs everywhere.

To be human is to be irrational. That's what I think.

I feel irrationally happy and optimistic today and I have to admit that since I have been exercising five days a week, I have not fallen prey to my daily despair nearly as intensely. I have my moments of it but they are just that- moments- and that alone is reason to keep it up.

God. I need to get going. I'm procrastinating. Well, if you could see the world I am looking at right now from my back porch, you wouldn't want to move very far either. I am paralyzed by the sheer green, sweet beauty of it and the thought of getting in a car and driving to town just seems...irrational.