shovelled the older one out of bed today to keep me company for my sporadic 30-minute morning walk around the neighbourhood. i never did like the leery stares from strangers that hang around by the side of the road for no apparent reason than to freak you out with their trailing looks. maybe i am just delusional when released into the wild.

barely 2 minutes into our walk, we strolled straight into a dense fog. right in the early morning sun, a fog out of nowhere, so thick that you can barely see beyond. it would have sounded like a scene from a ghost movie if not for the smothering fume of pest control spray.. despite holding our breath and using our shirt as a filter when our breath could no longer hold out, we couldn't help but inhale some of the toxic fumes. why they are carrying out the spraying during rush hour peak traffic time when most people are on the streets, i assume they are trying to reduce the population of pests, as well as human residents, in the area to improve traffic conditions.

barely 15 minutes into our walk, we made a planned (hers, not mine) detour into the neighbourhood big M for her breakfast. i get the vague feeling that i have been conned from the word go. my morning exercise is very rapidly turning into a stroll to get her favourite breakfast. she settled on her breakfast menu in a jiffy; sausage mcmuffin (without egg), one milo ice and a cup of hot coffee for dear ole mummy to sip on whilst the little bunny gnaw at her food at the speed of grass growing.

apparently, mcd doesn't have 'service with a smile' on the menu anymore. we were offered it's latest introductory menu instead: 'service with a scowl'. there was some friday fashion thing going on: the man stacking the utensils was wearing a shocking pink plastic party hat whilst the fries man was wearing bunny ears. the lady behind the counter serving us was wearing the latest face-black-like-the-bottom-of-a-pan look from paris' winter fashion look. whilst we were halfway through saying our order, she turned her attention to her colleague. i looked straight into her eyes but it didn't bother her one bit. perhaps she's used to getting stares from people. our order turned into one sausage mcmuffin, with egg of course and the coffee turned into a cup of tea. they do magic with mcd breakfast now too! quickly we took a table and started on breakfast before she started pulling a rabbit out of the milo. no drama whatsoever. i seem to mellow with age.

the walk back took another 10 minutes. my half hour morning exercise turned out to be a one and a half hour outing with 25 minutes of exercise and almost an hour of dawdling in between. the day didn't turn out as expected but it was still a good break from the monotony. daughter and i had a nice time together to add to our little memory bank. this is probably the first and last time she will wake up at 8am to have a walk with me.