Good Morning! One thing that is a relatively new thing for me is how my sleeping patterns have changed. Some nights I can sleep a solid 9 hours and other nights I open my eyes after 4-6 hours feeling WIDE AWAKE, yet attempting to roll over one more time to catch another wink or two. But, alas, the rooster has crowed in my mind and I know I may as well get up! Last night was one of those nights. I slept like the dead for about 5 hours, from 10 pm to 3 am and then that was it!

It worked out fine for me though because Mr. B and I are driving up to our future daughter in laws mothers home today and we are going to have a socially distanced lunch out on her patio. We decided to “brown bag it” to be safe and I decided to bring some brunch type breakfast muffins. I am making them with biscuits, sausage, hash browns, green onions, eggs and cheese. They should be yummy and I plan on bringing a few extra along to leave with our dil’s mother for future consumption.

So, first things first, I made coffee and poured it into a cup that was a gift to me from a long time friend who was one of my bridesmaids in our wedding. Considering how long I have been married, I am rather proud to still be able to call her my friend. As we move into the autumn and winter of our life, we come to realize just how valuable long term friendships are. We know each other’s history and she and I kid each other about the fact that we “have” to stay friends because we have too much information on each other. We always laugh and say “If I go down, YOU go down”, meaning that neither of us must ever tell some of the things we know about each other. Lol! So I tip my cup to my friend who I call Ethel (I am her Lucy) and wish her a telepathic “Good Morning” because she lives in the far northern climate and while I reside in the south.

It is still dark out at 5:22 a.m. and I have been up over an hour already. Normally I am a night owl type, where I enjoy reading long into the night, but on these rare occasions where I am up early, I find I enjoy the beginning of the day as well.

The furnace is running this morning. This is the 4th night of a cold front that came through, but fortunately, the weather man is promising that today will be in the 70’s. I love weather in the fall where the sun is warm and the air is crisp. God knew we Texans would need variety so he blessed us with it! Today is going to be a very nice day. We will get to enjoy nice temps, a nice drive and a social outing of which there are very few in these days of covid.

COVID! That nasty invisible enemy that lurks out there just waiting for us to bump into it! We avoid doing this by staying home. It has been 7 1/2 months already since Covid turned our life upside. We went from having fun part time jobs to being unemployed because we are in the high risk group. We used to have friends over to our home often, but now we rarely do because of distancing issues. We haven’t seen our older son and his family in over a year because it would require an airline flight or a motel stop if we drove. We used to frequent restaurants a lot, and have only eaten “out” three times since we have been shelter in place, and those times we ate outside on a patio. Church has been closed for a long time so we attend virtually. The pattern of our life which used to be very busy, came to a screeching stop!

BUT, some good things have come out of this! We have been spending much more time on our property planting and trimming. I have never cooked this much in my life. By cooking, I mean trying new recipes and making delicious simple meals. It has been fun finding recipes online and creating something I haven’t tried before. Mr. B sure enjoys it! Eating out has lost its attraction for us and even when covid finally leaves town, I doubt we will ever again spend that much time or money on dining out in the future as we once did, nor on shopping or entertainment….

We have returned to our roots, metaphorically speaking. We were both raised in simpler times, in simpler homes, with simplistic needs for happiness. It does not take all that much to make us feel happy and content. We have replaced television with books and online documentaries, cooking shows, and old movies. Whatever made us think we needed so MUCH in the pursuit of happiness? We spent many years pursuing “the dream” and in many ways it worked out for us because we were able to put our children through college, move to the south, build our retirement home and so on. But, now that we are here, sheltered in place as they call it, we have rediscovered who we really are and we are happy. We recognize the imperfections in ourselves and each other and feel the love anyway. We see the imperfections of our lives and feel gratitude anyway. We see the imperfections of the world and we pray to the one and only perfect person who ever lived, and then we feel contentment!

Life is good!

Now, I have to see about how those breakfast muffins are doing! Will check back in with a picture!

YUM!

jjb/10/31/2020