I walk each morning with the dogs before it gets too warm.
That means just before sunrise!
I see beauty and yesterday morning this took the biscuit,
It actually had me tear up for a sec, it was early after all and I wasn’t quite awake.
Do you know what mist smells like to me? A walk in freezer.
Because of the loveliness of my walk through pasture lands (well along the road bordering the pastures) my eye is caught by the rubbish along the wayside and a sense of propriety clicks in.
I resolved, after a week, to pick it up because there weren’t going to be any work crews assigned to my little corner of the boonies.
As I filled my Kroger bag, initially taken for those mornings when I scoop three bags of poop, I caught sight of my grandmother, in my mind’s eye, stooping for brown paper bags and ticket stubs dropped carelessly along her stretch of London road. My mother and I would round the corner on our weekly visits to come upon her in the gutter racing the wind for litter…
Yesterday I prodded myself good naturedly.
I now knew exactly why my grandmother had picked up rubbish all those years ago. (She soaped and swept her doorstep too, I will not be going that far!)
In a different setting, almost half a world away and a quarter of a century passed, here I was stooping for glass and paper flung carelessly along the verges of my Turkey Creek neighbourhood.
When I got home with my booty I set it out for a still life photo,
and a little ponder on The Things They Dropped.
Two styrofoam cups, one held coffee once, the other an iced soft drink.
An empty Illy bottle of coffee.
A Coors Light beer bottle, let’s hope the ex-owner of this beverage wasn’t the driver.
A Smirnoff ready mixed drink of some sort, ditto the above remark.
An empty box of horse de-wormer, a must in this rural area although cows are much more prevalent.
A promotional card, one you wouldn’t want your child to find.
A to-go Chick-Fil-A carton with honey mustard sauce, the dogs visited this piece of trash on every walk…no more!
A box that used to have a microwave meal inside, it looked quite good but would you really eat one on the go?
An empty sleeve of French Fries by Burger King another fast food doggie favorite…
And to round things out, two recyclable (visions of emptying them of their filth, washing and re-using them dance before me), bio degradable bags with deposits from my canines, join the line up!
The title’s a play on Tim O’Brien’s short story collection, The Things They Carried.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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