There Is No I In Aardvark

It's a strange mix of sounds in the morning. There's the fountain outside our bedroom window, with its steady drip-tinkle-splash, and there's the morning trash pickup at the elementary school across the street. Nothing like living in the wild. Although, to be fair, the wild part starts in a few hours when all the kids arrive at the school. Although I don't remember this from my own childhood, it appears that children are required to scream, at the top of their lungs, throughout the school day. They start doing that as they arrive -- or, more accurately, as their parents push them (and a mound of trash) out of their SUVs and on to our lawn -- and they continue until they are dragged, kicking and screaming, back into those very same SUVs. The trash, alas, stays on our lawn.

At least I'm in the part of suburbia where the lots are small, rather than tiny, and I don't have to listen to my three neighbors have breakfast or fight over the donuts. Most of the time, that is. The morning air is strangely dense and the sounds of ordinary conversation waft over the backyard fence, only partially masked by the sounds of the fountain. And now the garbage truck is gone, but the hummingbirds are becoming more active. They'll be chirping at one another soon, fighting for the favored perch on one of our feeders. And the morning moves on, whether I'm ready or not.