Countdown to Change

Snippets of early October observations

I’ve been wearing long pants for over a week now. My, how things can change.

Have you ever been told by someone to count backwards from 10? (A hypnotherapist perhaps?) Do you remember back in the Sixties when everyone would stop everything to watch a rocket launch on TV? The excitement grew with the final countdown. From 10 down to launch. And what about the countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve?

Countdowns can be exciting.

For me, today is number 10. Tomorrow is 9 and the next day 8. There are ten days until lift-off. At least I think it’s ten days. I can’t be entirely sure. Things change.

But I have officially begun the countdown. We’ll see how it goes.

Tomorrow is the last green chile roasting Saturday of the year. I’ve already stocked up on green chile but I think I can squeeze a little more into my freezer.

Isn’t snippet a cute word? It practically screams brevity. Personally, I think it would be a great name for a cat.

My morning glories look like they’ve been to the North Pole and back. They are droopy and brown yet they still put out at least a few flowers almost every day. I have started to harvest the seeds. I will have hundreds. Who knows where I might be come springtime but where ever that is I plan on planting a whole lot of morning glories. I’ve always held fantasies of doing a huge mass planting of morning glories; to cover the entire side of a building or something. Perhaps next year I will be able to cross that off my bucket list.

I am thinking of making a big pot of green chile stew for the weekend. It’s cloudy, cool and drizzly today; perfect stew cooking weather. It’s going to be an exhausting weekend so I won’t have much time for cooking. It will be nice to just put that pot of stew back on the stove to warm up. Know what I mean?

Anyway, Day 10 is quickly coming to a close. Overall, I have to say that it has been an okey-dokey day. It turned out that it was not nearly as exhausting as I thought it might be.

Nine more to go.

Will I look back at this and laugh? Will I be having so much fun and adventure and excitement and not have the time to look back?

I live just two and a half blocks from where I have been employed for the last four years and four months. I would be an idiot to drive to work — even if I had a car. No, every inch of my commute to work involves the touching of my feet upon the holy skin of Mother Earth. This is how humans are meant to travel upon the Earth.

Two of the two and a half blocks in my daily commute are down an alleyway. Taking the alleyway instead of walking alongside the municipal streets shaves about 46 to 48 seconds off my commute time. (Approximately. I don’t wear a watch so I’ve never actually timed it. I’m just guessing.)

More importantly, walking down an alleyway is way hotter and ‘natural’ than walking down a sidewalk that borders a street, what with all the traffic and noise and other pedestrians.

I hardly ever see kitty cats when I am walking down a city street. But when I walk down an alleyway it seems there is a kitty kitty lurking behind every bush.

There are three kitty cats who reign sovereign in the ecological zone of those two blocks. Walking through their territory, it only made sense that I got to know them.

Two of the kitty kitties are male. They will step out from behind a bush and glare at me, letting me know that this is THEIR neck of the woods. I barely have time to send them a bolt of love mojo before they suddenly vanish into thin air, disappearing into the shrubbery.

“Disappearing into the shrubbery.” How many times have each of us wished we could do that?

The third kitty kitty is a female and she is big and fat and orange. Whenever I see her I stop walking and get low to the ground as I greet her with smooth talking. I hold out my hand and wait for her to come forward and rub her head on my hand. Then I gently rub her ears.

Our conversations are usually rather brief. But they are very meaningful and charged with energy. It’s very different from having a conversation with a kitty kitty who seems to ALWAYS be sitting in your lap. That’s almost like talking to yourself.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been married to and was living with a cat. I often wonder if I’ll ever live with a kitty kitty again. I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be one more cat in my life before I kick the bucket.

If there is indeed one more feline in my fate then I hope it’s a girl and I get to meet her while she is still a kitten so that we can bond early and so that she will be expertly trained in bathroom etiquette and other feline protocol. That also gives us time to establish both verbal and non-verbal paths of communication.

One of the things that is important to me is that I get to name the kitty kitty. And that must be done at a very early age — preferably within 48 hours of birth.

I have named quite a few cats in my life. I simply must say that naming a cat is a thousand times more profound than naming a character in a short story! I have named so many characters. Seriously, a lot! But naming a cat abruptly brings you back into this glorious reality we all seem stuck in.

Giving a cat a name is something we do in the real world. And from the minute we suggest a name that name is out into the vibes of the real world. Within a very short span of ‘time’ the name seems to solidify upon the skein of time and space… Unlike with certain humans, cat names are permanent. They never change.

If I do ever get a kitty cat again I think I’m going to name it Snippet. It just makes me laugh a little when I say that name. It feels good. Meanwhile if anyone reading this finds themselves in a cat-naming scenario please feel free to use the name, Snippet. I’m throwing this suggestion out there for anyone to use for free. No royalties, no copyright, no Trademark infringement. If anyone reading this uses this delightful kitty name I’d love to hear about it.

Anyway, so much for brevity and snippets.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.

Speaking of naming cats: