Ramble with Storm: Black morning & Silver Linings Playbook

SHARE Ramble with Storm: Black morning & Silver Linings Playbook

Mulling things on my morning ramble with Storm, our family’s mixed Lab.

Ten or 12 degrees colder and it could have been truly miserable this morning.

As it was, the light rain began about the time Storm and I reached downtown, then picked up as we crossed the side rail track into the “town pond.” And it was right around 50 degrees.

It was a perfectly miserable, dark fall morning. The kind only Labs and duck hunters could love.

Fit into everything.

My wife and I stayed up late to watch Silver Linings Playbook last night. I expected a harsher ending, instead of the sit-in-the-lap one. All the same, a fine movie and a fine performance by Jennifer Lawrence.

Wow.

The movie was made from the first time she and the character played by Bradley Cooper laid eyes on each other at a rocky dinner gathering.

They played two tortured characters struggling with forms of mental illness, either triggered or accented by life’s circumstances.

Jacki Weaverand Robert De Niro turned star roles as the mother and father.

Other than outstanding acting from those four, the movie also nicely captured how much impact mental illness has on the extended family. Maybe nicely captured isn’t the right wording. Maybe accurately captured would be better phrasing. That might have been the truest part of the movie.

When it comes to fall, I am more of a black clouds building than a silver linings guy.

And this morning certainly fit that. We set out after 6 a.m. and it was still pitch black. With the rain, I didn’t try taking any photos. With the darkness, not sure what would have turned out any way.

On the east side of the south old clay pit, I counted 14 hedge apples, which meant at least four fell since yesterday morning. Of course, in the darkness, i might have missed some.

I picked a small one to top off the pile of hedge apples my wife has stacked in an old ceramic bowl on the dining room table.

Pretty poor morning ramble when the highlight is lugging a hedge apples home.

By the time we reached home, the darkness had only lifted slightly. It reminded me of being on the deer stand in November on a gray morning when it seems like shooting light will never come.

Then all of a sudden you realize that the bad light you see is all you’re going to get.

Life is that way sometimes.

hedge apples


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