Walking–Talking–Squealing

Recently, my friend Stephanie posted this on her blog about our recent walks together.  We have a third friend, Ellie, who usually joins us but didn’t the day she took all the fabulous house pictures for that particular post.  Yesterday, Ellie and I took a walk without Stephanie (who is having a very busy week…wait until you see her surprise), and we had a lovely walk in the occasionally sleety, 35 degree weather.  Have I mentioned how ready I am for this doggone freezing cold, dreary winter to be over?

It’s so fun to walk with friends!  I walk so much longer than when I’m on a treadmill.  And if I had been on a treadmill, I’d have never run across this fabulous used balloon that totally matches the yellow accents in my sneakers!

Here’s a better shot of my sneakers.  You can see how close a match it is!

Sadly, we did not run across a cute blue one to match Ellie’s sneakers, which would have been totally the best! 

So anyway, we walked, and talked, and commiserated about stuff, and whined a little about other stuff and laughed a lot, and then Ellie stopped short, pulled my arm and said, “What the heck is that?”  She may or may not have used the word heck.  My memory is a little hazy because at that moment I looked up to see what she had seen.  And it was this:

Now, what was very odd was that it did not move.  I’m not kidding you, it was totally still.  I was afraid it was in some kind of a rabid, fixated state, probably drooling or foaming at the mouth, and quite possibly growling “I see you walking there and I’m going to bite you” under its evil little breath.

We walked closer.

My gosh!  It looks like somebody left a dead dog here and its sad little rigor mortis-racked face had decayed half off! 

Or…

Somebody left a chipped dog statue in the middle of nowhere. 

Hmph.  We felt a little dumb. 

But then we walked past that cute little yellow balloon again and the day just brightened right back up!