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Night Walking and Bean Soup

It is four AM.  I have been up for two hours; first, because I listen politely to the Call of Nature, and second, because I have a bottle of pills that are supposed to discourage coughing.  Almost every winter I get some so-far harmless, dread disease that makes me cough until the doctor says, "Take this:  it is an antibiotic, or a placebo, or something you could buy really cheaply if you weren't so gullible."

Then it occurred to me that I had a ham bone in the freezer, left over from Christmas Eve, so I chopped and wilted a red onion and put it in a pot with the ham bone, in anticipation of adding the pot of beans, already soaking in their own pot, sometime tomorrow.

The best part of these darkened adventures is that the house is really quiet.  It is not silent, but it is quiet.  Perhaps even better is that I have a goofy, long-handled wooden spoon of sorts, with a bowl like a small lemon, that is wonderful for tasting things.  The wood bowl does not burn the lips as a metal spoon does, and the sound of scientific tasting is marvelously satisfying in the quiet of the house, which quiet I observe by wearing socks to pad around in.

Our neighbor, down the hill, who is a professional astronomer with a batalion of amateur telescopes in his back yard, must wonder what I am doing, mid in the darkness, and curse my unpredictable habits.  I know he cares.  He volunteered to provide hoods for our outside, front-door lights.  I countered with an offer to buy them myself, but he explained that people like him know all about that sort of thing.  And our kitchen windows are on that side of the house.  He has not offered to buy window shields, or to turn the house ever-so-slightly about 180 degrees.  We try to be accommodating, except in the middle of the night when I remember I have a ham bone in the freezer, and an urge for ham and bean soup tomorrow.

It is one of the pleasures of retirement to do whatever one damned-well pleases and can afford, and one of my pleasures is not to respect the norms of acceptable padding around in socks-time.  I believe it was Dr. Zuckerkandl, Ph.D.,  who cited, "I rise from my bed each morning, not so much because I am dissatisfied with it, but because I cannot carry it with me during the day."  Nor, I can pleasantly add, "during the night".  But that is partly because Mari is still lying on it, unaware of ham and bean soup.

And right at that point, Mari appeared from the quiet and darkness and said, "What are you doing, Conrad?"

I had to tell her.



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