My Fascinations with Sunday Mornings

This week was not what I expected. The Woman focused her time on her computer and cleaning the house. The weather was cold and windy. Our favorite paths, icy and slick. Both of us fell while trying to walk; once the two of us fell simultaneously becoming tangled in one another, each of us blaming the other for the tumble. So the walks have been short, safe, and mundane.

I have been bored this week.

But today, everything looked bright and cheery. The Woman decided that we could take a different walk to downtown, and mail a few letters. Nothing urgent, but at least it was something different. When I realized that we were taking a different path than our normal morning routine, I jumped for joy.

Sunday mornings are an interesting moment of Time. The squirrels are still out, being busy. There are plenty of birds seeking feeders and flying in between trees. We counted five cats sitting on their front porches, waiting to be let inside. There was one cat lying on the roof of his car, sunbathing, gently rolling and enjoying the beams hitting his belly. We could hear dogs barking from behind their fences, and saw one other dog being walked in an opposite direction from our own.

Smartly dressed neighbors getting into their cars while several others were returning home after having breakfast with their families elsewhere. There were no children playing, but the evidence of sleds, skateboards, and the lost mitten in the street suggests that the banshees had been released into the wilds recently.

But all throughout our walk, there was a sense of peace, of calmness, that comes with the early morning hours when the snow is still covering the lawns but the sidewalks are clear. Newspapers were still on front porches while some opened their doors to quickly grab their treasure, holding either a cup of coffee or the bathrobe. Each one waves to us in greeting; the neighborhood knows that we walk every morning, even Sunday mornings.

The Woman and The Man have their own routine. She does not awaken him nor make his coffee, allowing the hours to tick by while she enjoys the quiet of her kitchen. She reads her paper. She makes a breakfast and feeds me mine, usually including parts of hers.

And then we walk. Today was a good walk because for the first time in a week, I got to travel somewhere different and enjoy the smell of bacon permeating the street corners where both diners and households gather to bask in the glow of the morning. There is chatter and busyness, and then as we turn the corner, it returns to quiet and the sun glistening upon the snow.


I Am Shiba. I Do Not Like The Mundane, But I Enjoy Observing It.