I dropped the ball this past week. I wanted to post a recap of the Autism Speaks Podcast weekend and share a new, fun arts & crafts project I did. I actually did three projects last week, but two of them were for Mothers’ Day, so I can’t share them just yet… 😉
I pretty much didn’t do much last week except go to work, do arts & crafts projects at home, and watch the news. Frankly, I was tired and couldn’t motivate myself to work out or write. The fun things that I made were a much needed change of pace. Actually, they were really good for not only my brain, but for my soul. It felt good to be creative in a new way. You’ll get the blog posts about those, I promise.
But anyway, enough rambling from me. I wrote this post yesterday (April 19) within the span of maybe 20 minutes, but in all the excitement of the manhunt for the Boston bombing suspect #2, it felt weird to post a blog and expect people to read it when WAY more important things were going on in the world. I chose the topic, however, because I thought it would be a way to document what was going on in the immediate vicinity of my world while so much crazy shit was going on in the actual world. It’s written in present tense, despite being a day late. Leave your responses in the comments, please.
“5 Things you see out the nearest window.”
There’s a snake out the window. (1) It’s long and black and isn’t shy about being out in the open. I’m looking down at it. Normally I would be freaked out to see it, but today, it is a welcome distraction from the constant news I have streaming from my second computer monitor at work. I have been glued to the news since my mom called to wake me up, urging me to turn on the TV and frantically catching me up on what occurred overnight in Boston. I swear, I took a 45 second shower this morning during a commercial break.
The snake fascinates me. I’ve never seen a snake so close to the building before and this one must be close to ten feet in length. Its head is up now; does it hear someone coming to chase it away? I call for my coworkers to look out the window. One shrieks and panics as she wonders if it will climb across the walkway, into the courtyard, and slither up the wall to her second story window. I can hear her exclaim, “OH MY GOD, Y’ALL!” from two doors down every time the snake moves. My other coworker and I laugh every time. She threatens to call our building’s administrator to go outside and kill it. It provides a much needed break in tension.
A hawk flies overhead. (2) I wonder if it or another bird of prey will swoop down and make a meal out of my new snake friend who is just out in the sunshine enjoying his own meal. Then I ponder why I suddenly care so much about a creature that I am also extremely afraid of. “Go back into the woods, little snake!” I urge. “Save yourself.”
The snake begins to slither away just as an African American man in a suit, presumably a lawyer who is in the building attending a program downstairs, walks outside on his cell phone. (3) I look back and forth from snake to lawyer, hedging my own personal bet on how the man will react if he sees the snake crawling away, merely 30 feet from him. He must be a lawyer, because he’s so engrossed in his phone call that he never even looks around at his surroundings.
The black snake slithers away into the woods. My coworker calls off the Calvary.
Moments later, it’s lunchtime for the attorneys downstairs that are attending the program. Dark clouds start to take over they sky, hiding the sun (4). On nice days, many people will eat outside. Today, there are only two women who walk outside, visiting the building for the program. (5) They sit together on a bench that’s only one bench down from where the long, black snake had been only minutes before. Each woman has a plate of food. They are huddled next to each other, engaged in conversation. Occasionally, they laugh. I think they’re friends. At the very least, they’re friendly. On days when the courtyard is filled with guests during a lunch break, I love watching the interactions between everyone. You have some lawyers socializing over chicken and salad, some talking urgently on their cell phones, and others sitting alone. I always focus on the people sitting alone in a crowd. It makes me curious about them. Today, however, the courtyard outside my window is now empty except for two giggling female attorneys breaking bread together under a cloudy sky.
I turn my attention away from this moment in time and back to the news feed. Time to get back to the surreal, real world.
