Today felt like such a short day! A travel day home, we decided to extend our time in the hotel with a late checkout so we could enjoy some quiet time together before rushing to the airport. This gave us the luxury of time to chat about our coming adventures. Before long we were off to the airport to head in separate directions.
And then the (seemingly) theme of today of extending moments continued. A flight cancelled turned into more time to be together at the airport. Fantastic news even though it meant a bit of shuffling around of arrival plans back home. (A hassle no one wants, but it did give us more time together on our travel day, so who's complaining?)
We spent the time in a cute pub that served "only real food". (Which is interesting since the food was served in either plastic containers or Styrofoam plates!) While we were sharing this extra time together, the waitress became quite enamoured with us, even though, at first, it felt like maybe we were challenging her too much. Let me explain:
Upon her asking us for our orders, she had to deal with special dietary requests. Breakfast was on the menu and was what was being eyed. Our waitress was quick to point out that the menu stated that they only served breakfast to 11am. Deadpan. No budging. No laughter. And so, we injected some laughter. We pulled that moment back into the fun side of things and moved beyond the breakfast request. I think she rather enjoyed the banter because she checked in on us frequently (but not too much) and shared a few stories with us along the way. One in particular is a moment that EQ believes would never have happened without me being there. I'm not sure I believe that entirely given that he was the one that enticed the story from our Catholic-school-raised waitress.
In a way, we extended our moment with the waitress beyond her providing us a service and we saw a slice of her private life. It was quite a moment to share today as I love to learn about strangers, their lives and how they perceive things. It's always an interesting exercise and today I had the opportunity to do this with my man.
So what did we learn? Well, our waitress has two cats. One is quite finicky with his food, the other quite normal with her choice of food. (yes, she had a brother and sister cat). The finicky cat is also quite intimidated by her big, tall, deep voiced boyfriend. And we learned that the food from a special pet store is really the only food that Mr. Finicky would eat. Interesting in its own right. But then, EQ posed the question: "Have you ever tasted the food you feed your cats? I have." And with that, we started down a whole new path of stories. Tales of tasting dog treats versus cat kibble versus wet cat food. (I'll admit openly that I tested a dog bone and kibble when I was a kid, but wet food? EEEEKS, no way!)
What could have been a simple story about her pet cats turned into a fun and silly conversation that went a little deeper beneath the surface. It was a shared set of stories that brought all three of us laughter and smiles. All born out of an extended moment together because a flight was cancelled.
Cool butterfly effect sometimes.
Moments that are extended beyond expectations.
Moments getting to know interesting tidbits of strangers.
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