Give me a blessed break...

I have to keep reminding myself that while I sit here on this rainy day and complain about an outside temperature of 48 degrees (after a very warm and very sunny day yesterday).... my cousins in New York are still dealing with below-freezing weather and another onslaught of snow.

When I lived up in NY, I hated to go out in bad weather to be at work before nine o'clock in the morning.  As I scraped ice from my car windshield and tried not to slip and slide on the snow, I vowed that one day I would be on no one's time-clock but my own, and if I chose not to go out in bad weather, then so be it.

I've been on my own time-clock since 1993..... and I have often chose not to go out in the cold, or drive in the rain.  Today is one of those days. I had a list of things to do in town today, but one look at the blowing wind and the falling rain has kept me in the house.  So be it.  This current cold-snap (due to disappear in two days) is another frightful slap in the Texas face by the weather gods. Give me a blessed weather break...

But on the bright side, and there always is one, I've been doing a lot of reading.  I go up to the third-floor library to choose a new (used, really) book to read, or pick an already-shelved book to re-read...  and I look around my bookshelf-filled room with awe.  I have a library. I have a library. It is warm and quiet, with leaded glass windows looking out onto our property.                                                  
I can choose a book and sit on the sofa, or in one of the two vintage rattan chairs that were originally on my grandparents' enclosed front porch up in NY.  The two chairs are identical, but I can tell which was my grandfather's, and which was my grandmother's.  On my Grandpa's chair, dark stains are visible on the wood of each of the arms.  My grandfather smoked Di Napoli cigars for years (very dark tobacco, rolled very thin and gnarled-looking). With each touch of those cigars, the dark tobacco would appear on his fingers, which would then be transferred to the rattan of his chair.  On days when I sit in Grandpa's chair, I rub my hands along those age-old stains and in my mind's eye, he's still up there in his chair.

There are days that I look at my ever-growing stack of books that I find in used book stores and thrift stores... and then I look at my shelves filled with great-books-to-read-again... and I have to wonder if there will be enough days in the rest of my life for all of that reading.

When the angels come to get me, hopefully years after my 100th birthday (my goal is to beat Aunt Dolly's birthday-record).... no matter my age, I will probably be asking the angels for more reading time.  "I'm not ready to go yet.... I still have books to read.... and many more books to re-read! Give me a blessed break!"