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A Woman's Journal

Warm Fuzzies

By Maggie Turner

November 29, 1999

Warm Fuzzies

The sun was shining just moments ago. I have been composing email and just generally getting to the day's business. I just looked up and it is snowing! Big beautiful fluffy flakes moving across my window's portal from left to right. I love the snow. This of course is a luxury. I don't shovel it and I don't have to venture forth onto treacherous roads when it makes its presence known. I can afford to love it. In some ways I am an extremely wealthy woman. This wealth is invisible for the most part, but I know about it and that is all that really counts. At the moment I am in my counting house, counting out "my money".

I find that now, several hours after it started to snow, I am feeling quite chilled. The temperature has not dropped. I wonder if my discomfort is a result of automatic internal responses to the visual cue of snow. Certainly in my childhood snow meant cold; we lived in an uninsulated, stormless old house that literally whistled with the wind. Small drifts of snow could be found near the clattering windows if the wind drove it hard overnight. We would play in the snow for happy hours and pay dearly as the returning warmth stung us for our infidelity. I love the snow.

I know I'm not supposed to take naps. It is not that anyone ever told me this; I have discovered it through experience. As a small child I did not take a nap during the day, I regarded sleeping as dangerous and a complete waste of time. As a teenager I did not experience the increased need for sleep that plagued my peers; I spent my time reading and reading and reading. As a young woman it didn't occur to me that time might be spent napping. Only when I became a mother did I discover the value of a nap; by then it was too late. Like myself, my children didn't think much of the nap concept; and like me they were far too adventurous to be left unattended for more than ten minutes. There were no naps for me.

The youngest is a teenager and my current fantasy is that I will sneak in a little nap from time to time. This remains a fantasy. My nemesis is the telephone; I cannot ignore it. Today, for instance, I was just nodding off when the phone rang. I am not a "phone person" and when the phone rings it is usually an important call so I answer it. I leapt from my horizontal position, ran to the wall phone in the kitchen and picked it up before the answering machine got it. Wrong number! "Sorry", says the woman at the other end of the line. Sorry just isn't good enough, I want to say but don't. How did she know I was falling asleep? This happens every time I fall asleep during daylight hours and if a coincidence it spans years. I don't believe it is a coincidence, I believe it is "The Force". The Force is present in everyone's life; it visits my life at naptime.

My belief in The Force has nothing to do with logic. Logic has its place; most often it should be seen but not heard. The best kind of logic is "fuzzy logic". When you are winning an argument with someone who considers themselves more learned than yourself they will often accuse you of fuzzy logic. (This is only one of the weapons they resort to, to catch a glimpse of the complete list accuse them first). I have my own brand of fuzzy logic and it works for me!