The Owl

The other night I was driving home after dark and when I was going through a sort of sketchy part of town I noticed some miscreants, as there usually are, up ahead crossing the street. I knew I was safe in my big car with doors locked and everything, but I was annoyed because the two men seemed to be walking as slowly as they possibly could across the street--the middle of the street, no crosswalk in sight. Jaywalking always irritates me, because my number one fear when driving is that I'm going to run over a person, but this made me even madder, because they seemed to be walking slowly on purpose, just to taunt traffic. By the time they got into my lane, I was feet away from them, and hoped they'd hurry on at the thought of impending death, but no. They ignored me and actually stopped in my lane, stood there and started talking to each other. My car came to halt, my hand hit the horn, and for a few split seconds I gave them the evil eye, then swerved around them to continue on my way. I suppose the three cars behind me had to do the same thing. And with incredulous anger, I ranted to myself about how annoying and stupid those men were.

 Almost home, I drove through a quiet neighborhood with street-lamps lit. Recent rain made the streets and trees glitter. Suddenly a large and spectacular owl swooped down from the shadows of an oak tree and attempted to land on a power line. It wobbled as it grasped the line, and beat it's massive, silent wings. Then it turned it's mysterious face towards me. All anger forgot, I was suddenly in a world of awe, contemplating the wonders of nature at night.

 C told me, "See? If those men in the road hadn't slowed you down, you might have missed seeing that owl. Isn't it funny how life works out sometimes?"

Best birthday present ever! My awesome sister made me some banners for my etsy shop and my spoonflower shop, and so I decided to use one for my blog, too! And it's high time I wrote something here, anyway. I was trying to think of things to motivate me to write, and one of the ideas I had was to read all of my husband's books (he has a lot of classics that I've never read!) and review them here. Or, I could just ramble on about whatever, like I usually do. Right now I'm too busy reading self-help books about how to manage people, because I'm being promoted at work to a management position, something I have more enthusiasm about than experience with. I want to be a good manager! However, a few pages in to "The One-Minute Manager Builds Dynamic Teams" or something like that has left me with a few more questions than answers. I might need someone to explain all the jargon. Maybe I just need to keep reading. Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the promotion, even though it will be a lot of work. But I'm kind of sad that I'll have to give up my 7-3 schedule in lieu of regular business hours. Getting off work at 3 every day is wonderful! On the other hand, it might be nice to be able to stay up past 11 pm without feeling like a bus ran over me the next day. Still, I'm going to try and continue the "early to bed, early to rise" thing, and try to be really productive in the mornings before work so it will feel like I'm still accomplishing a lot.