Pleasantly Surprised

Pleasantly surprised, I got up to pee and it was very cold outside. Put on your red dress, baby, we're going out tonight, put on your high-heeled sneakers, wear your wig hat on your head. And it's a great blues set on the Athens NPR. A wonderful anodyne. Buddy Guy, "Mustang Sally", rocking the ridge. This is so unexpected. The complete opposite of seasonal music. Puts your big fat feet on the ground. I've spent 40 years with the blues, ten of those, I had access to the archives in Mississippi, but this is a great set, goes on for two hours. I stoke the fire and get a drink. John Lee certainly had the greatest voice ever, but I love that delta guitar playing, almost slack, it seems pregnant with emotion. Someplace in the middle, a Dicky Betts riff with Dwayne Allman. Then Clapton covering Lightning Hopkins. The greatest Xmas gift ever. Early morning, I've gotten nothing but the blues, and it's oddly perfect. I open a red wine, a blend from Napa, Three Lions, and I want to let it breathe for a couple of hours. I always taste the wine right away, to get the level of liquid down in the shoulder of the bottle, so there's more surface area; and this wine is good off the starting block. Bodes well for the day, because I'm short on whiskey, having never gone back to town. Later though, having cleaned up and shaved, I was following the fox. I was cleaning out the fridge, washing storage containers, and on one of my trips to the compost pile, she was standing at the edge of the clearing, flicking her tail. I go back inside, get her an apple, and roll it over to her. She pounces on it, flattens out on her belly, and holds it under her front paws; rolls it around with great dexterity and eats the whole thing in about two minutes. She grooms herself, not unlike a cat, and prances over to the driveway. I decide to follow her, but go back inside and get the things I never leave laying around,:my wallet, my keys, my checkbook. She leads me right down to the Jeep, then slips off through the brush. When asked, as I will be "what did you do over the holiday?" I'll be able to answer that I followed a fox down the driveway. Since I was down at the Jeep, and I had my keys, I decided it was a sure sign that I should go to town and get some whiskey. Everything was closed, even Kroger, which houses the only liquor store in town. So I went to museum and borrowed some whiskey, filled a flask, got a couple of gallons of city water, which is supposed to be safe. Town was deserted. The drive back home was post-apocalyptic, not a single vehicle in 17 miles. I called Joel, in Atlanta, and he sounded good; then I made a risotto and a small pone of cornbread. I thought I was supposed to be at work tomorrow, but TR thought the museum was closed, either way, I'm going to town, I need stuff. I want to make either a pork or shrimp fried rice, and I need to check my mail. This is survival mode. The wood boxes are full, all's right in the world.