a day in the life of

I took work off yesterday to finish moving in and get my Fixit ticket signed off by a policeman. Work this morning was hectic because of it. I swear, I take one day off... My phone kept ringing. I found myself answering emails that were pointlessly time-consuming. People just walk right into my office like I'm going to drop everything for them. And I do. Dang it.

I had lunch with a woman whose life has been packed with hard situations. She had taken a Lortab because her body is passing 4 kidney stones, so the conversation was a bit incoherent, but I was able to piece it together - the big picture was not pretty. But she kept saying, "When God closes one door, He opens another." I think she said it 6 times.

I tried to talk while she munched on her tacos, but anything I said sounded trite, so I kept rephrasing what she'd said in a tone of pittying surprise. "Man, you were 16 when you were raped? And he was your uncle?" "That's incredible that you found the cancer when you did!" "Geez, so your first husband was a drug addict? And your second husband cheated on you?" And so it went... and I went back to work.

I listened to "Hey ya." This line stuck out - "Thank God for Mom and Dad for stickin' two together 'cause we don't know how..."

About an hour later, someone brought me a blueberry roll with cream cheese frosting from Shirley's bakery in Provo. I used to ride bikes there with a friend in the summer. We'd sometimes go feed the ducks on the bike trail or ride down University Ave under the yellow, sweet smelling trees. We'd come back to the house, park our bikes, and sit on the porch as long as we felt like sitting.

After work, I went to the library to tutor Andressa. She told me she might be moving to Salt Lake in April. "If Salt Lake doesn't have a similar program, I'm just gonna drive down here once a week so we can still meet. I really like meeting with you." We did some practice sentences to identify parts of speech, then used the framed art lining the walls in the little gallery where we meet to make up sentences of our own. I hope she doesn't move, or that she does drive back. We work well together.

Once home, I lit a peach mango candle on my bookshelf, put on my pajamas, pulled up my hair, grabbed a yogurt, and popped down on my bed to blog.

Some days I think I'm lucky. Some days I think I'm lazy. Some days I think I'm losing it. Some days, like today, I just am.

Today was a day, and I was in it.