That was odd

I saw odd things today.  On my train ride home, there seemed to be some kind of commotion going on behind me.  People kept trying to look back there and try as I may, part of the train blocked my view so I gave up.  When I turned back to look out the window again, I saw an odd package sitting by one of the train doors.  You know what they say about strange packages.  Unfortunately, my phone's battery drained really quickly today and so even if I would have wanted to call the authorities, I wouldn't have been able to.  A few moments later, this older looking teenager came to pick up the package, yelled something like "God is among us", as 2 professional photographers took countless snapshots of him.  When the train finally stopped at the next station, the young guy, who looked stoned out of his mind, ran off the train, through the other train as the photographers struggled to keep up with him.  School project you think? They did get on at the community college stop.  Very bizarre school project if that's what it is.  I really was scratching my head about that one.

It was not the end of odd things I saw today.  My laziness spell ended today.  I left 5 minutes early this morning, caught an early train, got off 2 stops ahead of mine and took a nice long walk before going into the office.  I did not see anything odd, but I did hear a lot of songs that made me think of Preston during my walk.  Later on, when I was home, walking back up the deck stairs after checking on my garden, there was a white feather on one of the steps.  But oddest were the following.

Brett and I went for a 4 mile walk after dinner, down this nature trail that starts behind the high school that's by our house.  The first thing wasn't totally odd, but I certainly did notice it and thought about it as our walk went on.  There was this one little orange wildflower at the beginning on the trail.  Not close enough to the path that you could touch it, but close enough that I could easily see it's bright unique color.  It's the only orange flower I saw on the path.  I've been thinking about the color orange a lot lately.  As I mentioned in another post, I want to make a post about each color in a rainbow and be reminded of how they make me think of Preston.  As I've already done yellow, the next logical color would be orange, so I have been thinking about it.

As we continued on, I noticed a cactus growing along the side of the path.  Odd, I've never noticed any cactus growing near our house, or anywhere else I've been so far.  We then saw more and more of them.  Colorado can be arid, but I didn't think I'd find cacti growing a few miles from my house.  Even odder was the following.  We followed the path rather far until we hit a fork.  My understanding is that the trail continues on for quite a while (at least 2 highway exits).  We thought we'd take it one way for just a little bit until we would turn around and head back home.  There were several trees that had fallen by the little stream.  At least it looked like they had fallen, but when we looked at them closely, we saw that they had been eaten - by beavers!  Beavers in Colorado?  Beavers in the suburbs?  Now that's odd.  Never in a million years would I have thought we'd see a dam built by beavers, a couple miles from our house.  But as you can attest below, we did indeed see one.

 There are a lot of strange things in the world, and clearly, right underneath our noses.  It seemed like Preston's favorite blanket and onesie that are on my dresser had something laying on top of them for part of the day.  It wasn't straight like I remembered it, but most likely it is my mind playing tricks on me. 

Preston wasn't odd aside from the fact that he didn't cry too much.  Even before he was a true angel, he was an angel.  He didn't cause me to have endless nights of fatigue.  I had several, but it wasn't over and over and over again to the point that it drove me crazy.  Oddities about Preston, maybe his weird toes and ears, or should I say, my weird ears and toes.  He did get those from me.  So glad I have pictures.

Things might feel out of place sometimes, but noticing them really makes for a more interesting life.  It gives you something to talk about, something to research and learn more about.  It gives you hope of finding more oddities (hopefully not like the one on the train though).  Blessed are we to continually find surprises, gifts, that exist all around us.

Are their any oddities that you have encountered? Do they give you hope, or give your curiosity a tickle?  Do they make you smile?  I smiled at the orange flower because it really did make me think of Preston.  I grinned at the cactuses because they were thriving, in an environment that didn't seem quite right.  They were beautiful and gave me hope that even if you feel like you don't belong, you can thrive, grow and blossom.  And the beaver dam made me smile - a nice nod to my Canadian heritage :)