Day 46 and time differences

My usual walk goes like this -- turn right, walk 2 blocks, turn right, walk one block, turn right, walk as far as the school parking lot. Then, across the paved play yard to the far end and deosil around the walking track until the park entrance, then left, left, and home. With California still under a Shelter In Place (SIP) order, there is little traffic and few other walkers.

Ordinarily, I walk around 8 am and have come to "know" the few people I encounter every day. There is a woman with her old Golden Retriever; we usually exchange a "good morning" in passing. There is a tall, Asian looking man with a huge, red hued, husky-German Shepherd-wolf-whatever mix. He only ever nods at my greeting but his dog is friendlier and comes up to sniff hello. There is a woman with an Irish Setter that refuses to chase balls; she brings a mirror on sunny days and her dog happily races from one side of the grass to the other, chasing the bright reflection. (He also, sometimes, "attacks" the moving shadows of trees.)

Sometimes, if it is a day when I get a later start, I may encounter my across-the-street neighbor strolling his ancient black Lab. He always greets me with , "Good morning, Rose", and I always reply, "Good morning, how are you?", embarrassed that he knows my name and I have no idea of his, even after living here for 14 years.

But today, due to a new resolve to get up earlier, I walked at 7:30. Same route, but new encounters. All of my old "friends" were still at home, working on their first cup of coffee. The earlier denizens are a different breed. First was a man walking his dog on the other side of the street while engaged in what sounded like a business call. At the house on the corner with a bench full of running shoes, the owner was sitting on the step, taking off his running shoes and scanning the newspaper.

Inside the park, at the play-yard ball corral, was a nice young man wearing a mask. He seemed to be on the spectrum, from the way he spoke to me. He was sitting inside the ball corral with his big Golden named Kona, playing games on his phone. There was the woman walking widdershins on the track having an angry phone conversation in Mandarin. Or maybe not angry; Mandarin always sounds angry to me.

Little things are different: the damp sidewalk at the corner of Walnut and Rose gets that way because the sprinklers are on at 7:30, so I walked in the street.

Little things are the same: The [very] loud mocking bird is still proclaiming his ownership of the neighborhood, probably since dawn.