A Quest for Cranberry Muffins

This morning I woke up and had a sudden pang of hunger, specifically for the cranberry muffins they have at Shaw's.  So I made some coffee, fed my starving and crying kitty, took out the trash and began my one minute trek to Shaw's.

On the way, I called my mom on the way to tell her about this book I'm reading and enjoying.  In the distance I saw a pretty large group of people huddled in front of the Planned Parenthood, one of the two buildings between my apartment and Shaw's.  Now, it's not unusual for there to be a person or two in front of the Planned Parenthood on any given day, but the magnitude of this group was staggering.  In front of the building, there is a yellow line drawn that any protesters have to stand behind.  This is a good thing, of course, but poses an awkward problem to passersby.  A very large part of me always wants to walk behind the protesters just so I can avoid their eyes, but would bring me all the way out into the line of traffic.  I would guess that the people in traffic are generally angrier than any of those protesters.

So anyway, I was on the phone with my mom and she was talking about how beautiful the day was in Iowa...oh man, that's a large group of protesters. She asked me how the day was here. "it's.... nice" whoa, that's a sizable picture of Jesus... "Are the leaves turning colors yet?" she asks. The protesters see me coming and turn 2 more pictures of Jesus my way. "No, the leaves are still pretty green here." At this point I'm right in front of the group and the leader of the group said something probably from the bible and they all broke out into a solemn hymn.  I walked past the three Jesus' (Jesuses? Jesui?) and a group of around 15 to 20 people, the spryest one around his 70's.  Some were standing, some parked in their lawn chairs, all behind a large rope to keep them behind the line.. Hm, who put that there, anyway? Someone in Planned Parenthood? Man, I wouldn't want to have to be that guy...

Anyway, in a minute it was all over and I was in Shaw's picking out the best looking cranberry muffins.  To further delay my trek back, I checked out the soap asiles and picked out three deodorants of different scents, grabbed a bag of chocolate, checked out all the drinks in the various coolers before all the check-out lines, stood in awe in front of all the fruit in the produce asile for a minute, and then went through the self check-out line: 1 package of 4 muffins, 3(deodorant), Halloween Nestle Crunch.

I won't write about the walk back. It was a mirror image of the way there, except I lost reception in the grocery store so I couldn't use my phone as a distraction while walking by them again. Instead I made eye contact with a couple of them and gave them some sort of smile assuming they must also be enjoying this fall weather.