Still Dark at 6

Yet mad I am not...

and very surely do I not dream.

~ Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat

"Why the heck are you up at 6," you might ask (followed by "I thought you were retired"). I might ask it too. I was actually up at 5:20, but I did not attempt to leave the house until 6.

I've been getting up regularly to walk - to leave the house - about 6 or 6:30 and so my body thinks that is "normal."*  After 6 or so I do not sleep and I do not dream. And if I am not walking with friends, I guess I still need to take Z around the block.

So I do. The neighborhood is pretty busy at 6 a.m.  Some guy had his truck driven up into his yard. He was playing music on the truck radio...low volume, but still loud enough for neighborhood karaoke had I been "in voice" today. The yard was full of rain lilies and the fragrance distracted/overwhelmed me. It gave truth to the idea of an "intoxicating fragrance."

One of the ubiquitous utility trucks was at the end of one street. The bucket was in use. What kind of wire are they running now?** So early a start made me think it was something essential and not just an attempt to make some progress before the sun.

One more utility truck

The neighborhood black cat ran across our path. Too lazy to walk back around the block*** we captured its soul. That should be sufficient.

I lightened the photo so you could see I was not joking.The cat sat at the fence until it realized we could see it too.

Good Thursday morning.


NOTES:

*I used to walk Paddy and Scruffy at 5, but that was a whole life (or two lives, or three) ago.

These days I am up "drinking coffee with Mom and Dad." The china Mom and Dad got when they married had strange brown coffee mugs with a small circular handle. Over the years Dad dropped every one of them on the concrete while doing his morning chores. It wasn't really Daddy's fault. The design was defective - too heavy a mug for the handle - out of balance (trust me - I know these things). They recognized the problem and redesigned the mugs. The redesign is ugly. The "early" mugs are rare. I found four (different color - "apricot" not "nutmeg") in a junk store when I was in college and made a gift of them. He eventually broke all of them as well. I've recently found them again - eBay is a dangerous place - and have 4 (3 nutmeg and 1 apricot). I try to be careful with them, but what good is something if don't use it.

It is a lovely looking mug, if poorly balanced

Before Daddy broke all the mugs.

**They have been "running wire" all summer long. They have cut down tree limbs and left plastic ties and wire ties along the edges of yards. They have made noise and blocked traffic. They have deployed spools of cable and orange cones here and there with no apparent rhyme or reason. They need to be done. Soon.

***I like cats. Black cats do not bother me, although I know some who would have doubled their morning walk. We snapped the photo of it - it watched us/we watched it - then everyone headed for shelter.

Someone left this bouquet of rain lilies on the sidewalk in front of the house. It seemed a little creepy yesterday. It was still there this morning.