August 7th - Part I

There was a chill in the room that I felt on my face as I heard my mother calling from the kitchen getting me to wake up for breakfast. I looked over at the clock sitting on the side table it read 9:30 and was ticking away happily as if nothing was any different than any other day in the past but the weather was colder and I was going to see Em today. I glared at the clock trying to teach it a lesson with my glare letting it know that today was going to be a good.

The warmth of the bed was tempting me with a few more minutes of sleep when another holler came from the kitchen, “Joseph, get up breakfast is ready!”

Reluctantly I scanned the room looking for some clothes that were handy, the floor was going to be cold and I knew it, my face was cold enough and I didn’t want to get out from under the covers. But breakfast was waiting and I would be that much closer to seeing Em, my sweet Emily. I noticed the jeans I had on yesterday lying close to the dresser, luck, I could get some socks on just after my pants and I had to have a clean shirt and sweater in the dresser.

I took the plunge and threw the covers off jumping out of bed racing for the dresser, the five feet seemed like it was a mile. I pretty much jumped into the jeans without doing them up before I dove for the dresser opening the sock drawer and the sweater drawer grabbing the first things I could before jumping back onto the somewhat warm bed to put my clothes on. The jeans were still cold against my legs as I sat down getting my feet off the cold floor.

The sweater and socks were very welcome but by the time I was in them I was already starting to get used to the woken up used to the cold feeling. It wasn’t really all that cold, my glass of water beside the happily ticking clock still had water in it and not ice so it was just my imagination.

“Joseph are you coming!?” came the yell from behind the door.

Opening the door the smell of breakfast reached me, bacon, that was definitely bacon I smelled. Looks like dad brought in some of the food from the freezer that we got in payment for patching up the Jones’ pig house last month. This was going to be a treat, at least today.

“Morning” I managed to mumble on my way to the bathroom. My father was sitting at the table eating his breakfast looking over a piece of paper that looked like a list of supplies for today’s job. The next house that we needed to fix up was the Bergman’s, they wanted to patch it up before it got cold and they were paying in cash which was a nice change since most of the people this summer had paid in barter or agreed barter for food during the winter months which would be upon us soon.

Story: The Longest Winter