Alarm Clock

     Arrgh! I slap the snooze button on the alarm clock . . . again! Nearly every day, upon waking up, I mutter that I’m going to go right back to sleep as soon as I get home from work. And, every night, after I get home from work, I’m wide awake! Obviously, I lie to myself almost every day.

     Groggy-eyed, I make my way to the bathroom to get on with my day. I do all those vital bathroom tasks, with the door closed, much to the chagrin of my cat, Stormy, who is quick to voice her dissent. I don’t want her in my bathroom because she’ll try to eat the shower curtain, and this can be quite distracting for me (not to mention unhealthy for her).

     Somewhat less sleepy, and post-bathroom prepping, I step out of my bathroom. I’m greeted by a gray tabby cat who looks up at me while rubbing against my legs. She’s excited; I can tell. She’s eager for me to start my day because that means she’s going to get a belly-rub and some food.

     At the top of the stairs, I look down at her; she looks up at me and then downward, toward the bottom of the stairs. I say, “C’mon, Storms, let’s go.” At that moment, she’s off, running down the stairs while I simply meander downward, one step at a time.

     Once I’ve stepped foot onto the first floor and made my way to the front door, Stormy is already halfway down the hall. I take a peek out of the front door’s small window – to check the weather, to see if the day will be a windy one (it usually is). Then, I turn around to see Stormy lying in the middle of the hallway. Perhaps, she can get a quick rub from me before we hit the kitchen. Sometimes, I oblige.

     I open the ‘fridge and pull out the can of cat food to set out on the counter. When I turn around, I look to the floor because I know Stormy is going to be there, lying down, waiting for the belly rubs. I call her my rubbable Storms; she’s 15 pounds of fluff and fur, and the sheer act of rubbing her has an immediate calming effect on me.

     I set the timer for Stormy’s food (to warm up a bit before I add it to her bowl), grab a frozen glass from the freezer, pour in three-quarters of tea and one-quarter of cranberry juice, and take it to my computer desk. If I’m running late, I go straight for the coffee. While I wait for the timer to ring, I turn on the TV (set the night before to the Weather Channel), and then, I turn on my computer.

     When the timer rings, I feed Stormy her food. Then, I make myself a cup of coffee. I drink cold-brewed coffee that’s heated in the microwave. I add all kinds of stuff to this java: stevia, Splenda French Vanilla, an individually-wrapped Dove dark chocolate, and a splash of hazelnut CoffeeMate. Sometimes, I also squirt some Hershey’s caramel syrup in the mug.

     Finally, I can feel the dredges of sleep falling away from me. This is my typical waking-up routine. On those certain days, when I have to work in the morning, waking up takes much longer for me. I am still a tad groggy during those last two hours of the morning; unfortunately, I’m at work at that time, teaching a room full of students. They know I can’t do mornings, and I think they are somewhat entertained by that fact. When the noon hour arrives, I have miraculously awakened, and I think it’s because I know the morning is behind me.

Greeting

Hello.

This simple greeting that I utter

Is quite the way to go.

To keep you from an awful sputter,

I’ll end this ditty with perfect flow: 

Goodbye.

Animals

     “Stormy, do you want a sister?” This is a question I ask my cat on almost a daily basis. She simply looks at me with a seemingly distant stare. It’s as if she is pondering this question for a moment. Then, she resumes with whatever she was doing before I interrupted her: Licking her paws, stretching out on the stone tiles of the kitchen floor, or munching out on her dry food.

     Stormy is the only remaining cat in my home. She has outlived her three foster siblings: Moky, Gypsy, and Bella. Stormy is nine years old in cat years (52 in human years). Like most cats, Stormy is weird, but she comes by it honestly as her human is equally strange, at times.

     Stormy has certain quirks. She loves anything that’s plastic. For example, she enjoys, or rather, she is obsessed with the plastic slats on my horizontal window blinds. She can’t seem to leave them alone. She doesn’t just play with them; she tries to bite them. As a result, a few of the edges of the slats have been repaired with white duct tape. To dissuade her from further curiosity, I made a slim white box that slips over most of the taped slats. I put that on every night after I lower the blinds. During daytime hours, I raise the blinds about 12 inches and bunch them up so that I can slip a white cardboard cylinder over them. Doing that keeps Stormy from playing with and trying to eat the slats.

     Since June, Stormy stares down the hallway for several minutes every day and night. This is especially creepy at night. A few nights ago, she was so mesmerized by whatever she saw that I could not persuade her to look at me or come to me when I called her name. About 20 minutes later, after I walked into the kitchen to tend to my steeping tea, she finally jumped down from her chair and head-bumped my leg. Then, she slowly walked toward the hallway and stared, once again, toward the front door (at the end of the hallway). She wasn’t staring at the door; she was staring at something on the wall or near the wall.

     I turned the hallway light on and stared down the hall, in the direction she was looking. I couldn’t see anything. At one point, Stormy was startled when I inadvertently made a noise. Ordinarily, I would look more closely at whatever she stares at because, in all likelihood, whatever it is is probably a bug or a spider. However, when she was spooked, I thought better of venturing into the hallway to look for the so-called critter. I still have no idea what it was that she was staring at, and she has not had that same fascination since that one night. She does, however, still stare down the hallway. During the day, she lies on the floor in the hallway and stares toward the front door and stairway to the second floor.

     Perhaps, one day, I’ll discover the reason for her stares. Hopefully, it won’t result in scares.

     I know she will not be pleased when I have to be away for a few days or weeks. She’s not a people-cat; she loves me, and that’s about it. She’s afraid of the doorbell and whoever it is that stands outside my door. She’s not crazy about my friend who cat-sits while I’m away, but she is kind of used to her. Since my friend is the one who sets out the food, Stormy knows that that’s the go-to-person when she is hungry. I suppose, in the future, I’ll get another cat, but right now, Stormy and I are content to be in the company of each other.

Starting

     Starting today, I’m going to attempt to write/post an entry every day for two weeks. Today’s topic is aptly called Starting, and it’s about starting a project. The project I’m starting is this one: Write an entry every day for 14 days, a mere two weeks.
     This idea popped into my head when I found a website of writing prompts (http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/). I found this particular site while I was  searching for writing topics for my Integrated Reading and Writing students’ Quiet Writing Time (QWT) sessions. I told my students that I was considering doing this as a way to refresh my blog-writing.
     This will be a challenging task for me this semester because I’m teaching eight classes, and nearly every waking moment is spent thinking about and/or doing something related to those eight classes. Even though I don’t think I have enough time to even breathe these days, I’m going to, at least, attempt to write an entry in here every day for 14 days. Yikes! What am I getting myself into? The blessing in disguise is that each day will have a prompt – a topic to write on.