I’ve always been lucky enough to get a window seat in most of my workplaces.  Sometimes it’s only a frosted piece of glass that shows shadows.  Sometimes there’s a sky blocked by an apartment building.  Sometimes it’s 20 feet away and doesn’t really count.  But there’s always something there that gets me to look.  It’s the TV channel that only ever shows the burning log.  I don’t look at it for more than few seconds at a time.  But it’s there and I like it.

There is a hedge separating my window now and the parking lot.  Short skinny trees grow in the hedge.  It’s a nice sparse wall of fresh green.  But it’ll probably be gone soon.  Squirrels live outside my window during the summer.  They’re always running around but never carrying anything.  They’re so much leaner than the squirrels I usually see.  They should see all the obese squirrels on UBC campus.  I’m sure they’d get jealous and want to migrate.  The chance of becoming roadkill is probably about the same.  That is, not very high.

There’s a ballet school next to our office.  There are always adults walking by with little ballerinas in tow.  There is this particular chubby man with a belly who always wears a baseball cap with a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.  He always takes this slightly chubby girl to class and then comes back to pick her up.  He looks just a bit too old to be her dad.  They always hold hands.  And they are always chatty and look happy.  It makes me teary-eyed because that little girls is going to grow up to be a teenager one day and start acting bitter and bitchy and be breaking his heart.  I hope he’s her grandpa.

I see the sun, and I feel like the entire day is mine to conquer.

Then I see it pour.  And there are squirrels no more.