I sat in the backyard on a tree stump. My feet were on the concrete. I thought about moving to a folding chair to have something to press my back against. In the kitchen it was four degrees cooler and upstairs it was fifteen degrees warmer. Planes moved overhead loudly. The christmas tree lights hung around the windows nicely. It smelled like it had just rained. Straight ahead in a window I watched as a woman turned a very bright light on and off. I called my mom and told her to build a veranda. I said there weren’t enough verandas being built these days. She asked me how I was doing. I told her I was getting over a cold that yesterday I thought I’d gotten over entirely. We talked about the last time we’d seen constellations.