The Awakening
My friends gather round and beg me not to go.
“But I must not tarry,” I reply. “You cannot dissuade me.”
Zeus gives me that wrinkled brow thing he does. “Perhaps thou dost fear a rematch at the Chessboard,” quoth the King of the Gods.
“You wish, buddy.”
Then Haephaestus is all sulky because his forge never works right unless I’m there to show him how. Hermes Trimestigus wants to go for another jog. Aphrodite looks well satisfied but peevish (she requires constant attention.) I help Appollo tack his horses up to his Sun Chariot. He claps me on the shoulder and I wave goodbye.
I’m running a little late so I jog down the last few marble steps of Olympus’ main drag, reach the precipice and leap off into chaos…
“Ahhhhhh,” I open my eyes deeply rested from my night’s sleep. Louis the Fourteenth, the Sun King used to have an awakening ceremony. Retainers and nobility from all over France would vie to be at his bedside when his eyes opened. A Duke might hold his pisspot, an Earl his wig. The various and sundry ruling class might attend to combs, hose, tweezers, etc. An especially privileged party would announce the days doings from a scroll.
I am certain that be it the depths of Hell, the Heights of Heaven, or the oblivion of a musty grave that the Sun King must burn in envy at the glory that is my awakening. The nectar and ambrosia imbibed by my ethereal self during my repose surge through my veins like a molten fire of liquid gold!
The Sun sparkles a magnitude brighter as I sit up (a professional courtesy of Apollo,) and the birds burst forth in song.
My wife and two children sensing the sudden warmth of my cognizance burst forth from their sleep and into my arms.
Just to get the blood going it’s a thousand crunches and a thousand pushups then ten miles on the treadmill (got to get one with a faster motor,)
I shower (but that in itself will require its own thread to do it justice,) Then this truly magnificent machine that is my body requires sustenance.
The Choosing of the Breakfast Cereal
Since the dawn of time man hath cultivated the fruits of the earth and prepared them according to the teachings of Orion and Prometheus. Over the millenia this teaching and knowledge has been corrupted giving birth to such abominations as Captain Crunch and Count Chocula, Fruity Pebbles and Frankenberry.
“But Scylla,” you protest “Surely there hath been much of merit produced anon and abouts. There are the Grape Nuts, the Total, The Raisin Bran, The Special K, The Wheaties, and many others besides!”
Speak not to me os such crumbily, indigestable abominations. In the Spring and the fall I will partake of the grit! In the summer nothing but the Cream of Wheat. Today though is the blustering of the wintermonth, and for that I require oatmeal. Bring it forth! Let it be Quaker oatmeal from a cardboard tube. Cook it on the stove and before it congeals mix it with frigid whole milk and the slicings of a single banana. One must cunningly combine the ice cold milk with the near boiling oatmeal simultaneously, and stir once, twice and three times. Done properly the mixture will instantaneously reach thermal equilibrium at 105 degrees farenheit. Such is the perfect bowl of oatmeal, suitable equally well for eating as pouring into your underwear as a soothing poultice for a chafed member.
Today I eat it.
Going to the Car
Have you ever heard that song by The Carpenters, “Close to you?” Karen wrote that about me.
The hugging and the pleading and the begging not to go from the wife and children builds to a crescendo. There is no reasoning with them though, and I detach myself and bolt for the door, and lock it from the outside. They make a break for the rear entrance to go around the house and head me off to smother me with more love before I can go off to work. Nonchalantly I stide as if heading nowhere and then veer suddenly to the car.
A bunny crosses my path. I bend down and pet it and send it on its way.
From a neighboring field a fawn walks over and gently nuzzles me. Desperately I step aside and almost trip over a raccoon the grabs my leg. A flock of starlings lands in a nearby tree and the limbs bend with their weight as if striving to embrace me.
I dodge left and get a face full of slobber from a black bear licking my face. I vault over the bear and dash for the car as the starlings manuever into final approach towards my shoulder.
I slam the door and start the engine. Accompanied by various fauna my wife and daughters come streaking around the house.
Start damn you!.
The engine roars to life and I leave six feet of rubber and an acre filled of despondent family and wildlife in my wake as I journey to work.
How did your day start?
(apologies and credit to Roger Z who did it better first)