Shh -- don't tell anybody, but the windows are open

Up at 6:30 a.m. in San Pedro, still on Michigan time, I'm sitting on the couch, laptop warm where it belongs -- on my lap -- reading about all the snow back east. A photo comes up of somebody cross-country skiing on the National Mall in D.C. Mother Nature taking charge: airports closed, holiday shopping and highways all tangled up.

And here I sit in my pink bathrobe on the couch, watching a red sunrise bloom up over the harbor (yes, we face east on this hillside) and yes, it's so mild that we've left the windows open. I just heard the L.A. Times plop onto the porch -- a reassuring sound -- I wonder how much longer we'll have this part of morning. I'm not complaining, not disposed to let myself sink into melancholy nostalgia before its time.

No, I'm not complaining at all. I know enough to be grateful. Because it's a quiet, serene Sunday morning and I'm reading poems in the new Driftwood Review, and the whole day is ahead of me, and my husband is still snoozing peacefully in the next room, and I'm facing the sparkling ocean and...the windows are open.