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1.4 - Cocoon

It's finally fully fall here in central Arkansas. The leaves turned overnight, along with the temperature, which dropped from 80s to 50s quicker than I could hide all of my five year old's flip flops. It's too dark too early for evening walks and too cold for morning ones (I'm a delicate blossom with an admittedly narrow range of temperatures that I consider acceptable), so I'm turning my efforts indoors.

I've begun my yearly mini migration from the north side of the house to the south side - during the summer I sit by our deep front windows and look out at the little potted garden I have right off the front step. But as the leaves drop and the sun shifts, I move to the south side, where the double glass doors in our bedroom let in wide and glorious swathes of sunshine for me and a few sun-loving plants. I am a housecat in human form, watching the birds at the feeder, napping in the sun, and refusing to go outside when it's raining.

As exasperated as I've been by the disruptions this pandemic has caused, one good thing out of it is that we've acclimated to staying home. No library, no zoo, no discovery museum, no parks, very minimal shopping/errands and then only with masks on - while I miss the community, I don't miss having to pack everyone up in the cold and wet for a weekly meeting of some sort. We've developed a rhythm here, at home, and we've all settled comfortably into it.

So this month I'd like to explore home as sanctuary, a place to rest and recover, to turn inside out and dissolve in order to emerged renewed.

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