The Bench

So each day, well most days anyway, I take a walk early, except for the times when it is too cold or I just don’t feel like walking early because I didn’t sleep well last night, which rarely happens to me because even though there are plenty of things that I am not great at sleep is one of the things that I am great at, yes I am a great sleeper and glad for it because I know how important it is to get a good night of sleep in order to do your best or even average that day so I try to get seven to eight hours of sleep every night and now I am finding that to get that amount of sleep it is not what time I get up at that matters it is what time I go to bed that makes all of the difference so for me at this point in life I know that I need to get to bed before midnight, or at least not a long time afterwards, if I am going to get the seven to eight hours of sleep that I want to get and even then there is no guarantee that I will get that much and yes it is possible and sometimes it happens that I go to sleep after one a.m. and I still get my needed rest but that happens less and less so as I get up well rested I am able to get out of my front door with my earbuds connected to my phone and listening to a book as I go for a morning walk and if it does happen to be cold I can put on a light jacket or if it is colder I can wear a heavier one and sometimes, just sometimes mind you, when it is really, really, cold, I put on a winter coat, one that I brought from where I used to live in Pennsylvania where it is much colder than where I live now in South Carolina, and sometimes, especially if I recently had a haircut from a salon not real far from our condo where we moved to and enjoy living in now, my ears feel very cold and I wear not only a winter coat but a hat, not the kind with a brim but the kind made out of cloth that is snug on my head and covers up my ears, and of course if I need a hat, and sometimes even when I don’t, I wrap a scarf around my neck and it keeps me warmer and I know I must look a sight when I am out walking and some people are running in running pants or shorts that are tight on them and I suppose keep them warm as well and they have a tight kind of jacket that must warm them up as well and I walk by them all bundled up like Nanook of the North if there is such a person in the South and in particular South Carolina perhaps instead of Nanook of the North I look like Kook of the South but in any case that is only in the winter but in days like in this picture of leaves on the tree and sunlight shining down I don’t need a coat at all or a scarf or a hat for sure but rather I wear shorts and a shirt and shoes and socks and I walk past this bench, and the one that is not seen here but is right across from it, and sometimes I sit on this bench, or the other one depending on which one is cleaner and which one does not have sun in my eyes which is more likely the one pictured here in terms of not having the sun in my eyes and I take a rest there after walking twenty minutes or so from my home and before I continue along my walk for a while after the rest but really I have not sat there a lot yet because during the pandemic which lasted over a year, well of course it actually still continues but at least I am vaccinated now, fully, and I am willing to sit on this bench without having to go home and immediately change clothes, so now I can sit if I wish for rest and especially when I have walked by this area the first time and then walked on for another half hour to forty minutes before arriving back at this bench and by then I am very glad for a place to sit and relax for several minutes and this is great to do and I really wanted to sit here many times the last year but Covid-19 and thoughts of it kept me from sitting down even though looking back there was a very miniscule chance that I could ever have gotten the coronavirus from sitting on this bench so I could have been resting on it all this time but I did not but still I am Okay with that since it is better to be safe than sorry but in this case I am both because I was probably over safe and now I am sorry that I did not sit down on it for all of that time but in reality I made a good choice because it was the one I made and it didn’t matter that I could have sat on it for a year now and in any case now I appreciate it even more that sometimes I rest on this bench on the way which is, as I have said only twenty minutes or so from my house, and I don’t really need to sit on it yet but I do because it is just pleasant to do so and I know that I can still sit as well on the return voyage also on The Bench.