9-5 Smiles fer the world, oatmeal coffee, reading your lips

Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky

Last night a group of campers came in together and settled in across the way - a couple tents …and two separate campfires.

That was puzzling.

Wouldn’t one communal fire bring all together into the night?

Caught myself from pouring coffee into my bowl of oatmeal this morning. I’ve done many a strange thing in these mornings.

It’s fascinating how brains can be scrambled after waking up.

(I’m shocked my morning writings aren’t word soup, too. Maybe they are and I’m clueless to it?)

That smell from the river? It’s back. Nose wrinkles.

Lip-reading is exhausting. After a couple hours of it I’m done for the day, battery depleted.

For those curious, lip-reading is very much akin to puzzle solving in real-time on the fly as the “information” streams in.

Even for the best lip-readers there’s missing gaps to fill in between words and sentences silently uttered.

So not only does one’s eyes work in overtime to decipher what sound-less lips are saying, the brain puffs invisible smoke out the ears to process and clunk the incoming information into something mostly (and not always) coherent.

Word of advice when speaking with lip-readers: Don’t alter or slow down or exaggerate your lips or speech unless asked to.

It’s way harder to understand altered motions and cadence (and frankly, annoying too).

When I looked up while walking down to the boat ramp, a lanky young gal - perhaps of middle school age? - smiled so big her entire face lit up and what a beacon of joy it was! I returned the favor with a grin and a wave.

Those unexpected kind of smiles are the best, aren’t they?

I wish upon our world more of these for all of us.