It's one in the morning.

Only moments ago, I was outside in my yard - a leftover pancake, half-eaten in my hand, while I watched my dog run around the fence line.

And there were birds singing. Singing like it was the peak of the day!

One bird, I could maybe write off as a crazy bird, but I could hear dozens of birds throughout the neighborhood, wide awake and chatty about it. I marveled at that for a moment.
I was standing barefoot in the grass, up to my ankles in dirt and mud from the rain storm earlier. It was cloudy out, a kind of thick, muggy, dripping wet fog that draped everything in familiar gray blankets. And, maybe most amazing of all, it was warm. Pleasantly warm, and just cool enough to be perfect.

In short, it felt like the whole universe had fallen into place, just so!
The minutes ticked by into hours, but it stayed just like that. Perfect. So perfect, it's seemed all night as if time hasn't been passing. It's stuck, in this moment, forever.

I'm used to places where there's a trigger, that time of night when the temperature drops and piling into blankets it's almost a must. It's my off-button, the push that get's me to finally call it a night.

But how can you go to bed when it's so beautiful out?

The South has a so many new things for me to process. But so many of them are such little things. Who knew a warm night would be almost life-changing?

In the South, your cat is a girl and your dog is a boy. I always get a kick out of that, because mine are exactly opposite :)

In the South, those uninvited guests are "Water Bugs." They're only Roaches if someone thinks your house is messy!

...And now, even though time may not *seem* to be passing, I know that tomorrow I'll realize exactly how much time passed, and how little of it I spent sleeping. I'd best get to bed to soften that blow.

Happy Weekend, dear reader :D