Sunday Morning....

There is this friend on the Diamondville board who likes to write a "Sunday Morning Musing" to entertain herself and us. She tells us about how she has a couple of precious hours to herself then before the family wakes up and the dogs want to go out and she has to make breakfast for her brood, and how nice and silent her house is, and how much she enjoys those moments.

I don't have silent moments on a Sunday because mostly I sleep longest of all. When I creep out of bed my hubby is already doing the washing and the kid has started on one of his xbox games, but on the upside coffee is ready and the place is nice and warm. This year, winter has decided to start early, and the heating needs to go on right away. Have I said I hate winter? Maybe not here, but on twitter, daily I'm sure. Not even the prospect of Christmas helps. Well, it helps a little, but if I had something to say spring would start on the 2nd of January, and no more snow and frost after then please. Only that is when winter really starts, and it looks like this here:



The cat does not like it a lot either. There just aren't enough blankets, woolen socks or mugs of hot chocolate to tide me over. Chicken soup helps, but not every day. The worst part: It's always dark. Not literally, but it seems that way. Where we live, in deep winter you get daylight only for seven hours around Christmas, and that's just not enough. For me. I complain about it a lot. The hubby is a patient and long-suffering man, thankfully. And he agrees, which makes the whining easier. Only it does not help.

My dream is a house with a porch on the beach. Somewhere in Maryland or Virginia would be nice, closer to my friends, closer to summer. I would spend all my days on my porch. I'd have a desk there, overlooking the water, and I'd get up early in the morning, every day, and make coffee and then walk out onto my lovely porch and look out over the water, and the surf would be no more than a graceful white lacing on the pristine beach under the sunrise sky, as pale and shining as the inside of a seashell. A gentle breeze would stir my hair, scented with flowers (from the garden below the porch) and the tang of the ocean. Gulls would lazily glide on that breeze, telling each other their nighttime stories.



A painter called Lee Mothes created this picture, and it feels as if he looked directly into my mind.

My desk is right there, I always write on the porch as long as the weather is fine, and I'm a morning worker, so I settle down with my cup, stare a while longer at the lovely vista and then pick up my writing. The novel is coming along well, small wonder in this serene setting. I'm with my characters in their small town in Norway and watch them discuss their lives, watch them create the musical they will later put on stage and listen how they disentangle all the problems and overcome all the obstacles that have kept them apart for so long, and then I throw some more of all that at them, because I can. After all I'm their creator.

The nicest thing about this fantasy is that I get to write the entire day. Miraculously, there is no housework. Or maybe I have a housekeeper? All I have to do is care for a steady supply of coffee and get some lunch for myself if I feel like it. There's nothing else that I need. No music, no people, no telephone. Not until evening at least. In the evening,  The Bunny comes around.



I think we share the house. It must be so, because there are dogs around, and I would not keep a dog on my own.

With the Bunny comes the Party Time. For a while we hang out on the porch and drink a couple of Margaritas or so, and then she suggests we put on the skates... oh no not again. But the Bunny really loves skating, and good thing we have a wrap-around porch. She goes all around the house a couple of times, drink in hand, calling, "Watch out, watch out!" and then she does her dangerous triple twist... ok ok so I put on mine too, but I'm not as good and run over the dog's tail and that's not good at all....

I'm sure a couple of friends come over later. I've just managed to talk the Bunny out of going to the movies and into lighting up the barbecue instead, and you might think they would smell it all the way over to DC (from Virginia), for here comes Leslie and brings along her poppers, and Pea must have senses it too, she made the jump from Alabama. There is a faint scrabbling from under the bed and Emerenta crawls out and complains that we are again cooking her friends (she is Vegetarian), but there are plenty of veggies for her too. Being who she is she takes out the surfboard and runs down to the water, and she calls to us that it is lovely and warm, and to come down and join her, but hell, we are too old and... frumpy for bathing suits.

We watch the sun set behind us over the hills (a romantic and literary invention; I have no idea if there are hills in Virginia, close to the shore) and turn the steaks on the fire, and someone asks if there are marshmallows for later, and now the music begins too.

Oh, and since we are internet-savvy we also blip and tweet what we are listening to and doing.

And it never gets cold. We spend the entire night out there on our porch and drink and talk and laugh and we watch the Sunday sunrise, and no one needs to go inside for a jacket.

So here you have it, this is my version of the Sunday morning musings. I know where my place is.

PS: The Bunny want me to add that she was out all day at her studio crafting her lovely jewelry.