There’s more than one way to greet a new January morning. You can leap out of the bed to embrace the day, go outside and lean into the balcony, take in an eyeful of the peach and blue color changes in the sky, let the crispness of the air pull on your skin until it puckers and your nerves awaken with an exciting shiver. Add a fresh-brewed cup of coffee to that and you have Mr. W’s mornings.

Or you can do it my way. With the covers drawn up to my eyelids, I stubbornly refused to surrender the pocket of warmth in which I was nestled in fetal position. A grouchy voice in my head observed that people should not be up and about when it’s still cold and dark outside…it’s just unnatural, it’s still night for gosh sakes. In response to Mr. W’s politically correct way of asking if I’m getting up, I announced that don’t plan on getting up — ever. He said, in a tone way too understanding to be taken seriously, that okay, I can stay home and in bed and he’ll see me in 9 hours when he gets back from work, and then he turned and walked back to his kitchen.

The only thing that gave me the strength to get out of bed was the anticipation of putting on my big warm cushiony slippers to pad around the house in and finally, driving in those slippers back home to see my Dodo.