When the stars align, we leave the house dressed, fed, and alert no later than 7:00 a.m. We pull into the school parking lot by 7:15 a.m. I’m in the library preparing for the day by 7:45 a.m. after 30 minutes hanging out in the staff lounge. Spoiler: we never leave the house by 7:00 a.m.
We can’t seem to get out the door before 7:06 a.m. We pull into the parking lot at 7:23 a.m. almost every morning because at 7:08 we get stuck in the line of cars trying to get onto the freeway heading west. Today we made it to school earlier that 7:23 a.m. and it was very, very weird. I didn’t have to wait for a pocket of space to cross the intersection. I didn’t jockey my way onto the freeway. I didn’t wait in a long line of cars to get to Starbucks. I zipped through the parking lot to my parking space. Zipped!
“Where are all the cars? I hope there’s not a zombie virus,” I joked.
The boys looked out their windows. “So weird,” they both said.
I checked my mental calendar and couldn’t come up with a holiday, federal or otherwise. The streets were just as empty when we left school 8 hours later. People were out there doing something, just not the way they did it yesterday and not where I could see it. How did all those kids get to school?!
I finally found someone willing to give me the blog design I want: comments, blog roll, full posts, and static pages (God save me from sliding images and truncated posts, please). To do this, she first asked me to find three blogs like mine with a design similar to what I wanted. I searched but could only find one. Everyone else stopped blogging last year, or the year before that. I followed links to their social media accounts and found they were mostly silent there, too. Again, people were out there doing something, just not the way they did it yesterday and not where I could see it.
I’m so happy to be blogging again. I’m feeling more present and aware. I’m still a slow-poke, choppy writer. I’m eager to build up the conversation here to what it once was, but that will come with grit and time. What is important is that I’m here, doing the same thing I did yesterday, where everyone can see it.