...Sometimes you forget the things in life that cause you go to "aahhhhh, isn't that wonderful". This morning's drive was one of those things.

I went out the door, forgetting my lunch yet again until I was about a mile from the house, when I ran across the stupid jogging women who take up the entire sidewalk and spill out into the street. The other day I almost ran over their dog because they decided they were going to run and run and run across the street against the light - they were coming around a blind corner and stopped just in time to avoid me hitting them, and I hit my brakes just in time. I got a nasty look for my troubles. Someone should tell them that they should run *facing traffic* instead of with their backs to traffic.

But I digress.

Anyway, I ran across them again this morning, and they have a new trick. They like to line up side by side, and they *don't* move when traffic approaches from behind anymore. I really need to figure out who to call about this. The street that they're on is split in two between two cities dowm the yellow line, but where I run into them, it might well be a different two cities. So which municipality to call is the real crux of the issue.

Again, I digress, and I apologize because these women really bug me. So I move partially into the next lane to avoid hitting them and am bitching about this to myself when I come over a slight rise to head for the main road I take to work when I see....

... a deer. A lone, beautiful, *big* deer. Crossing the road (no jokes, please) right in front of me. I slowed down considerably and the deer just kept on going at her usual pace (I assume a she since it didn't have a rack or the beginning of one as far as I could tell, and it seemed more delicate than a buck would). She didn't seem frightened or startled - probably used to the traffic - and crossed the road. And while I sat there for the 20 seconds that it took for her to clear my path I realized what a beautiful area of the world I live in.

I'm really near a very large city - a bunch of them actually, but the corner of the area that I live in still has a lot of woods and a lot of creatures. This isn't the first time that I've seen a deer on the way to work. Last year I saw a 3 point buck, a mature deer, and a little one, standing in a grove of trees just off the side of the road. They didn't move as I drove past them. But today's deer wasn't the only thing - I also saw a racoon trying to work at the lid of someone's garbage can on a property right before the railroad tracks that I cross daily.

It's not like I *don't* realize that there are creatures around the house. The squirrels regularly steal the walnuts off my tree before I ever get a chance to grab them. And every once in a while I'll smell a skunk, or run across a roadkill opossum (no pun intended, and I'm not responsible for the flattening of *any* of the creatures around me).

If the deer wasn't enough this morning, the 'coon was. I have to remember the little things that make me go "ahhhhh" and all the rampant nature around me. It's something everyone should watch out for despite, as I do, living in a well populated civilized area of the county, with a grocery store just over there, and a park across the street, and a major freeway about a mile away...

...and magical woods just down the road.