There are sounds we hear every day, that are part of our lives, but that we never stop to notice. It’s easy to write fifty words about the sound of rain on a roof, because the very word conjurs up images of cozy evenings, or mad dashes between awnings, or brightly colored umbrellas on parade.

But what about those other sounds? Who waxes lyrical about the sound of attic turbines, the steady hum of the refrigerator, the soft whirring of a computer fan?

Tonight as I was making tea, I paused for a moment, entranced by the soft sizzling hiss of the sugar spilling into the mug. It’s a unique sound – sugar falling into coffee doesn’t hiss, and the sugar substitutes that come in pink or blue packets don’t either, even in tea. I smiled to myself, thinking that this was a cool sound, planning research on whether or not there was a chemical reason for it.

But I didn’t research it. Instead, I stirred the sugar into my drink watching as the white granules dissolved into the hot brown liquid. I added a splash of milk, and I watched as it formed cloudy shapes before turning the entire contents of the mug a tawny brown color.

Hot water. Dried Leaves. Milk. Sugar.
A moment of peace and possibility in a ceramic mug of tea.

I’m curled up in bed with two sleeping doggies and a stack of pillows, wearing my favorite ratty formerly-black-and-now-kinda-greyish sweatpants and an almost as ratty red t-shirt with a bow-sporting Scottish terrier on it. I look frightful, but I’m comfortable, and when I don’t feel well, comfort is key. (Actually, even when I DO feel well, comfort is key, which is why I don’t wear heels, or lace.)

We slept until about noon today, me because Nyquil is my best friend, just now, and Fuzzy because he was up til four playing with a server. While he was showering, I was outside stripping lights off the trees. About half the neighborhood still has their lights up, but once the calendar page turns, I find such things depressing. The tree will be tomorrow’s project, if I’m feeling well enough to climb up on the step-ladder and retrieve the smallest ornaments from the highest branches – when I have colds everything settles in my ears and my balance is nearly non-existant. This is bad enough, but worse in combination with tiny glass ornaments.

We ventured out to buy dogfood after that, but detoured to Barnes and Noble (in Cedar Hill), then Half Price Books, then lunch at Panera a frou-frou bakery/cafe we’d never heard of – it was cozy, with a fireplace and really good chai, as well as lots of gorgeous carb-laden artisan breads.

After lunch (I had a smoked turkey sandwich on sundried tomato and ale bread, and Fuzzy had roast beef on asiago baguette), we went to Arlington (because that’s where the dog food store is), and another Barnes and Noble – because I’d passed on a book at the first one, hoping to find it at Half Price Books.

Of course, we forgot that places close early on New Year’s Day, so the pet store was closed by the time we got there, but Fuzzy still insisted on a trip through Fry’s before coming home. I stayed in the car and read by streetlight. I just wasn’t in the mood for the sensory overload of Geek Mecca.

And so we are home, with no new toys, but a few books for me, including The South Beach Diet, because we’ve been eating too much crap lately, and we both need to be healthier, a ST:TNG novel, because I needed some brain candy, and A Faith for Skeptics, which was written by the Canon Theologian to the Bishop of Forth Worth, and highly recommended by Father Young, at St. Andrew’s here in Grand Prairie. He (the author) was one of the celebrants of the lessons & carol services, and it’s always cool to read a book by someone you actually know, even peripherally.

Many of my bibliophilic friends have been posting their reading lists, but most of mine was lost just before we moved, and then, I haven’t been keeping up with my bookblog at all, so I’ll try to be better about that this year.

I’ve already finished re-reading Memoirs of a Geisha, which is just phenomenal, even the second time around, and I’m about ten pages from the end of Star Trek The Next Generation: A Time to Be Born, the first in a nine-book TNG series that fills the gaps between Insurrection and Nemesis, and which I’m reading in eBook format, with the exception of book three, which is the one I picked up at HPB.

So, not a very exciting beginning of a new year, but a comfortable one, headcolds aside, and really, one could do worse than bread, books, and bedclothes.