I awoke to the sound of my wife telling me the heat wasn’t working. “It’s 59° in the house” she says. “No thanks, I’m good”, I start to reply, but notice she’s already burrowed back inside the burrito of blankets she has and back to sleep. I drag myself from the warmth and comfort of sleep and blankets and get up. I find a jacket and shoes, disarm the alarm, and go outside to see if the breaker has tripped. I’m not sure what time it is “because daylight savings time” but it’s somewhere between 3:00 am Friday to 4:00am on Monday. I step outside and shut the door behind me and notice how everything is so quiet and serene. There is that magical layer of frost on everything and you can sense Jack Frost has only recently finished. I walk across the porch admiring the beauty and majesty of this cool early morn making sure I fully appreciate nature and all of its splendor. As I reach the top step everything goes horribly wrong. My left foot touches the newborn layer of frost and decides to sprint hard to the left. In my mind I hear, “that little piggy went to town.” The world doesn’t seem as crisp, the darkness seems less natural and more netherworldly. My right foot looks over, unsure of what the danger is, panics and decides to launch itself over my head to escape from the unseen danger. I can hear tiny laughter in the distance from a frost sprite. From there it was about an hour long progression of falling down, hitting alternating bones on each and every one of the steps. I almost arrive at the bottom but somehow manage to fall back up the steps so that the entire process can begin again. The second time down I hit all of the body parts I missed on the first trip. I can hear a small child crying out. Eventually I stick my landing. My body parts have all mostly reassembled themselves and in the proper order. I lie on the ground, my head “resting” on the final step, my elbow in a potted plant and I’m staring into the sky. The stars are beautiful, it’ll be light soon and they’ll go unseen. Above me I can just make out the history of my recent journey written out in the frost through prints of shoulders, ribs, face, feet, kidneys, sadness and future doses of naproxen. The child must be closer because the crying is louder. I still have on both shoes but somehow I’ve lost one of my socks. I’m gonna have to get some of those no slip bath strips to go on my shoes. I now know that the crying is coming from my soul. My inner child is disappointed in this old body that it now rides around in. I am able to get up and go check breaker. Sure enough it’s tripped. Now that I’ve conquered the heat pump and once again narrowly, yet heroically escaped death I decide to make a quick trip to the store for coffee creamer. No one is awake and I can be back in my chair resting with coffee in 25-30 minutes. Plenty of time before the pain sets in. I arrive and maneuver the store quickly, get creamer,sit down in car, ready to leave and receive a text from my wife. It’s a grocery list. I close my eyes and go back to a time when I was lying on the ground, cold,alone and having just had an early adventure with time,wood,bone and frost. Things were much simpler back then. An hour and a half later I make it home with 112 bags of groceries and everyone is still asleep. Wives have the power to know where you are and text you grocery lists in their sleep. I still don’t know what time it is and with daylight savings time I probably won’t know for sure for six months. Two more alleve for now and maybe some epsom salt later. Fall and winter are my favorite seasons but they’re making me work for their love.