14 January 2007

Sunday Morning

dawn, n.

The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to arise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk on an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

The Hammer woke me before dawn as usual. After failing to fall back asleep I made tea, filled up the bread machine and the crock pot and did a few other boring Sunday morning chores. By this time I had long since let the Hammer back in and watched her fall back asleep. Now it was my turn to wake her up.

At the park she played with a few other dogs and their early rising masters. Steepleton is full of early rising people and their dogs. Very few people stay up past ten o'clock in the evening. Those that do so are hunted down by our crack police squad and beaten senselessly.

When the Hammer was good and ready to take her shit she did so very far from me. I watched her do it from the opposite end of the park. It was a big, brown and steamy pile in the white snow. But by the time I walked across the park with my plastic bag to pick it up I could not find it. I could smell it but I could not see it. I looked and looked. How can a brown pooh be harder to find on white snow than green grass? After quite some time I found it and picked it up in the plastic bag. It was still warm in my cold hand. It felt good.

It was a hot shit Canadian dawn.

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