Cat's Turning Cartwheels Cuz It's Cold as He**

"Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought."
— Eckhart Tolle

Monday, January 26, 2009
Late evening

Just got home from the meeting. I was wanting everyone else to be the writers tonight, so here I am. I would rather be reading the NYT, or Eckhart Tolle, or just about anything or anybody else tonight than writing. So, I’m writing. That’s my call tonight. There are many other activities I would like to engage in: fiddle, guitar, singing, carding wool, knitting, starting a second (or is that third?) knitting project.

There is just such a sense of agitation from the cold weather—it’s been getting down below zero at night, and only in the oughts and teens during the day—that it’s getting hard to be inside my own head.

Fortunately, Jeff was rowdy enough on Sunday, before the temperatures plummeted, to get out with the boys and build on the snow castle that has been evolving on the north edge of the driveway. The walls are now about 4-5 feet tall when you are standing up in it—and to get up in it there are 2 stairways or a short tunnel to crawl through.

If the temp were above 20, I would simply open the windows for a half-hour, or open the big glass kitchen door to the back deck to get a few lungfuls of marvelously oxygen-rich winter air. Not today. Today is the day of the glass box. And a lovely box it is—with stove, tea kettle, woodstove, stereo, and the most beautiful children from whom I need about a two-day vacation, and they me, and probably each other as well—and so it is—a box. A nice box. But a box.

Our twelve-year-old cat has practically been turning cartwheels to unleash the pentup energy, as she has barely been making her winter run out the back door, around the house, and in the front door. Or, when the sun is out and there isn’t too much ice, out onto the back porch in the “warm” sunshine for a few minutes. These things have been off-limits.