I saw a pigeon in a red light today, and it looked at me like it knew I hadn't posted here in DAYS AND DAYS.

well, no, it didn't really. but I was glad to see the pigeon, since I hadn't seen any of the stoplight crew for a little bit.

Over the weekend and Monday I was kind of sick. Not laid flat out with a fever like the last time I missed work, but your basic energy-sapping just-bad-enough-to-be-annoying coughy scratchy-throat sniffly cold. Welcome to winter. or "winter", as anyone who gets snow would say.

On Monday, as I sat on my bed folding freshly-laundered T-shirts, I had another one of my moments where I felt I could almost but not quite comprehend the universe. There was the sun, coming in my window and warming my back; here I was, one sentient creature among six billion on this particular lump of rock, doing a household chore typical of my culture in this place and time. No way to tell for sure whether our species will muster the will to grow beyond the planet of our birth in the several billion more years before our sun dies. I can't remember off the top of my head whether our sun is the type that expands into a red giant as it gets old. If so, and we have not established any colonies elsewhere, then all trace of Earth will be obliterated, and even if there had been any way for anyone else to tell that I'd existed, or that Beethoven had written his 5th Symphony, or that a person or persons referred to as Homer had created epic poetry, it will be gone then.

But I know that I had a moment of enjoying the warm sunlight on my back, as I sat on my bed folding laundry on Monday. How long this or anything else about me will be remembered I don't know, but it really doesn't matter, because I had that warm little patch of sunlight all to myself.

contents of the purple tricycle are copyright 2003 carrie lynn king unless otherwise noted.