Six forty-five is calm in my house.
Okay, I lied. The two cats, whose combined age doesn’t quite reach three, see me exiting the bedroom, and their pointed ears and saucer eyes tell me something big was happening, and I’m now disturbing them.
I don’t care. I’m on a mission this morning. Two best friends arrive tomorrow, and Susie Homemaker is knocking on the front door and means business.
I head out the front door and stop.
The beige-and-white striped cotton mat has a black blob on it. I pull my head closer, thinking it’s a flattened bug, but it’s too fleshy. Too minced. Too wet.
Throw up.
From the cat.
But nothing about it is solid. It’s low-lying and smooshy, something fairly digested that’s come back up. I hurry past. Looking at it a second longer will trigger my gag reflex.
I peer into the holes of the extended tubes of the frog hotel, hoping to see one.
I don’t.
Since giving the frog space next to the couch where it had encroached five days ago, vacancy has become the norm.
But I can’t stop there. Nope.
I wrap a few of Evelyn’s toys in my arms—something I’d usually ask her to do—but there’s action in me.
On the way, I flip the mat over and make a mental note to solve the mystery of how to get that mush off. Is wrapping it up and putting it straight into the washer fair to the washer? At first, I think no, that the grossness will somehow leave its mark. But my revulsion is not rational, and I decide that’s what needs to happen.
I sweep up the dead flower petals and random sand and dirt from the dining room floor, then head into the kitchen.
Not wanting to wake everybody up, I consider closing the pocket doors to lessen the grinding noise of the espresso beans.
But I don’t.
Coffee can wait.
So I open the fridge and pull out two large bowls covered with a cloth: my soon-to-be bread dough. It needs to come to room temperature and grow more, so I walk through the propped-open door to the outside, where it’s warmer and will continue to warm.
I’m a door-open person. If the air conditioner isn’t running and it isn’t bug o’clock at night, the doors are open.
My friend Katie commented on it last week on our way home from taking the kids to theater camp.
“I wish I could do that.”
When I encouraged her that she could, and should, she clarified that it’s a level of chill her family just doesn’t have.
Oh, how I need the chill.
Love,
Jaclynn