My morning walk

Often in the morning when I walk from my house to work at the Family Place, I formulate a blog entry in my mind. It is a very short walk, maybe less than 5 minutes but it is full of sights & sounds & smells that need to be described for you in order to fully comprehend what I experience each day. On the corner down from my house is a cafe (there's one on just about every corner) where men line the sidewalk, drinking their tiny cups of espresso, playing cards and smoking their cigarettes. Two feet from them is raw sewage running in the middle of the street and I have to gingerly walk way around it to avoid stepping in it. The smell is so gross and I try to imagine what it must be like for those men sitting there drinking their coffee! How can they possibly be enjoying it with that smell?? There is a sidewalk from my house all the way to the FP and the safest thing would be to stay on it so I don't get hit by cars speeding by on the narrow little road. But the sidewalk is full of cars and garbage so I usually have to walk in the road. The other day one of those fast cars actually knocked my purse off my shoulder.  The garbage situation in our city has gone from bad to worse. On the other side of the narrow road is a train track. Along the fence that separates the road from the train track is where people hang their garbage. Large, mangy cats rip open these bags and spill the contents out into the road. Some of those mangy cats can be found dead on that narrow road, having been hit by those speeding cars. I find myself thanking God every time I arrive safely at the Family Place! Just another day in our crazy lives...