Morning arrives, with the serenade of a male Cardinal (seriously, he is at our window every morning).
Fill the kettle with water (from our well via the sink). Grind coffee beans and fill the coffee pot (ceramic, which should come as no surprise). Kettle does not whistle, but does sound like an on-coming freight train, a multi-toned alarm to alert you that your water is, indeed, at 100 degrees celsius.
Joseph turns the TV on, to the only station he will watch in the morning - Good Morning America. Watch the local morning news and then national news. Eat breakfast - for myself, I usually have old fashioned oatmeal. We don't have a microwave so everything relies on our gas stove. Add maple syrup and some walnuts.
Change and out the door (both of us) by 8:30am. We're very fortunate to have employers that don't make us start work too early. Just as long as the work gets done.
I watch Joseph walk to work, only 100 yards from our humble cabin. Sometimes in envy, most times a feeling of gratitude.
Our cabin faces the back of a barn, which houses the finished pottery on display. We also see the Hewitt's Kubota tractor parked, in what I could consider, our "front yard," but nothing is ever "ours" when you're renting. Walking past the barn, the two large kilns come into view, the Hewitt house, and the pottery. Sometimes, I see Mark outside taking out boards of recently thrown, now drying, bowls and mugs. In the walking path from the barn to the "parking lot" where I leave my vehicle, there are enormous pots the size and weight of an average man. Stunning pieces of art, reflecting the morning light, dew collecting in their scratched-in designs. What a fortunate bunch, we are.
90% of the time I drive my car to work, only 2.5 miles away. If I get the chance and it's not cold, rainy, or dark (and I don't have to haul worm food from the local restaurant), I get to ride bike. The car creaks and cranks, jars and sighs, like the ancient whale that would rather rest on the surface, the ebb and flow all-inclusive.
Drive to the Industrial plant to pick up paperwork and check on my worm composting operation. The little buggers look happy, delightfully eating their way in and out of the food that I sent through my "worm smoothie machine" the previous evening. This time of year, the majority of the food are the edible greens like chard, kale, or collards. This summer I had a lot of tomatoes. At the Industrial plant, I encounter many things, most of which have become everyday life for me: a large, 18-wheel tanker pulling in with a load of feedstock (aka chicken fat) to make the next 1.5 days worth of fuel, brightly colored doors invite you into each building, greenhouses and an organic farm hug the perimeters of the visible landscape, a bee hive, dogs playing in the grass, a grove of banana plants, a larger-than-life chess set, the smell of biodiesel as an employee drives past you in their Mercedes or Volkswagon. Again, not sights, sounds, or smells that 99.9% of the world will encounter, but have somehow become typical to me.
The day includes a lot of sitting at a computer, crunching numbers, pushing papers. Some phone calls, "We need to follow up on an outstanding invoice," I can't wait to let go of the jargon and live outside the world of admin. Occasionally, I get to sell some worms, demo some worms, or just play with some worms while it is still daylight. As long as my hands get to touch soil once per day, I am content, but never satisfied. It is not enough to justify five years of college, but it is enough for one day in the life that is me.
