winter walkies

I know I am getting older. I've said it before, noticed it in so many ways already. But here's another one for my growing list of crotchetyisms. I can no longer figure out what to wear on our walkies just by looking at the people wandering by outside.

For years we didn't even have a need to know what it was like outside. Lameness & arthritis curtailed walkies for the boys in their middle years, and so we spent most of our evenings never even knowing who walked by or how they dressed.

But the little kielbasa changed all that.

Now every night we try to check out the 'hood, see what there is to see, smell what there is to smell. Chase bunnies and squirrels if we're lucky enough to see them, bark at every dog that we pass unless it's a brother or sister doxie, in which case it's sniff and ignore. That's the kind of life we live now, and so it helps to know what to wear to be comfortable on our 30 to 45 minute nightly journeys.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know that the neighborhood kids are the most unreliable group by which I should be figuring out what I should be wearing on our walkies. Kids run around and have peers to impress. Kids wear all black in the heat of summer, mini skirts and tank tops in the dead of winter. Kids are kids. But now I'm seeing grownups wearing shorts and going jacketless on an evening like yesterday, when it still seemed rather chilly out. When Baxter's dad wore a hat and a down jacket, and I wore a parka. Don't people know it's cold out?? What's wrong with them?? What is wrong with ME??

At least Baxter doesn't mind our apparent hyper-sensitivity to the cold. Tiny Chumley is more than happy to don his hoodie for walkies like yesterday. Happy, to be picked up and carried over the melting rivers of snow and salted sidewalks. Happy, I guess, that we're so dang old.