It was 12 noon or so, but brunch was not scheduled for another 2 hours. I was hungry and just missed a golden opportunity for hearty dimsum - I thought then that coffee and a muffin can't hurt my appetite. (Given my eating patterns, nothing really could.)
The past few weeks have left in in a cloud of dust. Work hours put in, flu bug battled, physical stress ignored, misunderstanding with a good friend, psyche left in somewhat of a disarray (as if I'm not already a psychology poster child) - I barely had time for anything else. So, I sat down and carefully placed my coffee cup on the bench, realized that this was the first time in a long while that I actually just.... stopped.
The Fall season flew by me, like it usually does every year. Before I got a chance to go further with that musing and a little after I broke the top of my pumpkin cream cheese muffin, a squirrel - stockier than most, climbed over the bench and crawled towards my coffee cup. The furry thing just sat there, looking at me. I took out the rest of my muffin and cut up a piece. The squirrel gladly accepted. I didn't mind sharing and after the entire Idaho field of pumpkin pies I ate at Thanksgiving, I should not be eating until St. Patrick's Day anyway.
The squirrel had some sort of a growth on the side of its face, that at first I thought was an injury. A lady walked by, stopped and we both tried to do a diagnosis. Poor thing can't possibly be hurt. Throughout the course of those 15 minutes, I have had a child come by fascinated by the squirrel, an older gentleman offering more food, a Russian tourist who took a picture of the animal (and might have inadvertently gotten me in the background as well), two women - one who commented, "Aww, look who joined her for breakfast..." Oh, and I turned my head for a second to see a duck slipping and sliding on the ice as it moves towards its crew.
I find it almost comical to write this post on that morning's scene, while not really logging in some arguably noteworthy ones in the past weeks. But I suppose this is what happens when you slow down - you notice things that you would otherwise just breeze past. That cold late fall day, I stopped - not so much to smell the roses (there weren't any), but to just sit as life happens around me.
