And…It’s Warm in the House

This morning, something grabbed my foot. Okay, it was our 16-year-old daughter waking me. For good or ill, waking me by touching/grabbing my shoulder is not a good idea, so if she needs to wake me up, she comes into our room and taps or shakes my foot. I still wake up suddenly, but the added distance helps us avoid that situation where I’ve done something regrettable. Anyway, she wanted to know if school was cancelled, since it was 18 degrees (no, it wasn’t).

After she left, I was toying with the idea of going to the range. I haven’t put in nearly enough range time lately and I know my skills have slipped as a result. The problem: I don’t like to shoot when it’s really cold.* Not because I can’t stay warm. I’ve lived enough places that get real winter (as opposed to this West Texas almost winter) to learn how to dress and stay warm. It’s just that I associate cold weather with coffee. Coffee, at least real coffee as opposed to some sort of “healthy” pseudo-coffee, contains one of the major nutrients – caffeine. Caffeine, essential to proper function of Coast Guard “deck apes,” Navy officers and registered nurses (I’ve been all 3) though it is, causes “fine motor tremors.” In other words, I get a case of the shakes. The shakes, of course, are incompatible with really accurate shooting (wait a moment while I refill my coffee cup).

Okay, so the shakes are incompatible with being as accurate with a rifle (or pistol or shotgun) as I’d like to be. You may be thinking the answer is to not drink coffee on a cold morning. Ha! Silly, foolish young person. That is not the answer. No, the answer is to eat a decent breakfast, have a single cup of coffee and then go to the range. I might shake a little, but the food seems to help slow absorption of caffeine, so the results are not as noticeable. Then, once the range time is done, I can have more coffee.

So, how did my range time go? It didn’t. I stayed home. Why would I do that? Because it is 1100 right now, the temperature has risen to a nice tropical 20 degrees and there was a coffee pot calling my name.

Oh, and it’s warm here in the house.

*NOTE: My reluctance to go to the range when it’s cold does not mean I won’t hunt Bambi or Thumper in the cold. Priorities are important.