Bouncing Back (Patricia Potter)

THE BOUNCE IS BACK . . .



Took my usual walk first thing this morning. It’s mandatory. My Shih Tzu, Ting Ting, demands it. She’s an elderly little thing who hates my Aussies (rescue Australian Shepherd sisters), and she makes sure I feel properly guilty about imposing them on her life and person.

There’s a definite routine in the morning. I wake about seven. The Aussies are on the bed and demand ten minutes of petting, then out they go to the back yard to take care of their bodily functions.

I turn on the coffee pot, return to bed with Ting Ting this time (she prefers the floor at night so she can get to her water dish), and tell her what a fine dog she is. A few quality moments, and she’s ready for her walk.

She loves her walks. She lords it over the others. MY person takes me for a walk. She just lets YOU outside. Truth is she simply won’t go out in the back yard. She’s perfectly housebroken unless forced to go in the backyard. Then she informs me in her own unique way that it’s the front yard or the carpet.

But I digest. Time for the leash. No matter if it’s raining, snowing, sleeting or 110 degrees. A walk is a necessity to her well being. And at twelve or thirteen -- not so sure which since she, too, was a rescue -- she deserves it.

So I pour coffee into my cup, the world’s most wonderful thermal cup with a big interior and a cover. I grab a couple of newspaper bags to pick up whatever she might leave along the way and out we go.

It’s been a chore the last month. I’ve been dragging, the result, I think now, of caring for a fading and desperately unhappy mother and working on a particularly difficult synopsis for a new book. But because such down moods are so unlike me, I feared something else was going on. Thus, a long needed visit to the doctor last week.

But the pricking and poking and peering that I described produced a preliminary verdict of good health. Everything is working in the way it should.

And wouldn’t you know . . . I felt great this morning.

The bounce is back in my steps. Maybe it’s the beautiful weather. First frost, and the nip in the air is exhilarating. Vivid blue skies so pure they make you ache. The gentle falling of orange and gold leaves. And that tangy – almost smokey – scent that comes with fall.

I love it.

Every season is my favorite season when I’m in it, but even so, perhaps fall kinda edges them all out. It’s a reawakening after a slumbering summer.

I love the ocean, and I love the west, but I think I love the four seasons of the east and midwest best of all. Something new all the time, and I’m always ready for the next turn of the seasonal clock.

So the bounce is back in my walk. The unsinkable Mollie Brown is back. I can conquer any thing.

Last week, maybe not. This week, bring it on.

I am woman. Hear me roar.
***
And a quick word for Anne Stuart’s new book, “Ice Storm.”

Sister Krissie couldn’t blog this week because of family responsibilities, so I decided to prod you to run, not walk, to the nearest store and buy it.

Like the others in the Ice series, it’s terrific. A most unusual hero and heroine. You’ll love them. And you won’t forget them!