The Perfect Song Blog

I have spent my life trying to learn how to relax.  To do this, in good weather, I take the dogs to the creek.  Sometimes I play ball with them.  In winter I’m not good a relaxing at all.
My brother Dave was here for the weekend and brought a bag of movies on DVD.  It was a quiet Sunday morning.  Dave and Leigh’s mother were watching Caddy Shack  I had gone through my emails, favorite Web sites and RSS feeds.  When it was time for a break, I pulled out the coffee, put three scoops on the hopper and closed the lid so it would brew automatically.
I lit my pipe and stood smoking by the sliding glass door listening to the Caddy Shack dialog.  The dogs were lying in the living room sleeping.  It was a perfect Sunday morning and I appreciated the fact that I wasn’t running around, worried about things that needed to be done.
It was a perfect Zen moment.  I was appreciating the present.
Then Leigh came around the corner, and stopped with a look of horror in her eyes.  “Oh my God!  What are you doing?  What are you DOING?
Since I really wasn’t doing anything, this was a confusing question.  I looked in the direction that was the focus of her shocked attention.
Hmm.  I have made coffee at least a thousand times in my life.  Apparently I was so relaxed this time around that I forgot to put the coffee pot on the coffee maker burner.  Coffee was flowing down onto the burner, through the burner, onto the counter, down onto the dishwasher and onto the floor.
Ten cups of coffee, when not contained, covers a lot of territory.
Leigh shoved the pot onto the burner.
Without a word I grabbed the sponge and Leigh took the dishcloth. She also picked up my cell phone which lay in the middle of the caffeine tsunami.
“What were you thinking?”  It was a question Leigh has asked me hundreds of times over the years.  When I was young and had more energy, I’d offer a lot of things:  “I was thinking about Einstein always having a bad hair day. . .I was thinking about how amoebas divide in half and are complete amoebas again.”
But anymore I just shrug and state the obvious.  “I wasn’t thinking.”
We’ve been through this two-line dialog a lot over the years.  “What were you thinking?” and “I wasn’t thinking,” seems to be enough.  Marital poetry, as it were.
There was enough coffee now in the pot for one serving.  So I poured myself a cup.
“Would you like coffee?”  I asked.
Leigh thought a moment.  “Yes, and I’ll make it.”
I nodded.  “I thought you might say that.”  I took my coffee and went downstairs to try and relax.

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Don’t forget to check out my novel, The Perfect Song, (written under the pseudonym, Damon) available at amazon.com