Waiting Game

12:52 p.m.

Week One of the Running Training/Losing Weight Extravaganza! has drawn to a close. I'm officially down 2.5 pounds, already feel better about my hips, and have stopped coughing/wheezing like an exceptionally overweight, asthmatic manatee after working out.

You know, if manatees jogged.

Yes.

Last week was dreadful, the weekend was wonderful and slippery and fast, I'm unsure of this new week. I'm crossing days off my calendar until June 9th, when my school job will be over for the summer. I have three big reports due in the next few weeks, including one I started in January. It will be such a relief to finish these, to release some of this stress. I'd like to ask off from the gallery until June, because I'm feeling very work-stress-overwhelmed, but doubt my boss would be thrilled about the prospect.

Time keeps moving ahead, however. It snowed last week and the trees still don't have leaves, but my daffodils have started to poke out of the ground, and my tulips are slowly slowly growing taller. The grass is green, I saw one more robin, the cat rolls drunkenly on the sidewalk.

Today I meant to write a story about the mouse in the women's restroom, or about my feelings during and after running, or maybe to complain about insurance. Instead I feel quiet, I feel like this waiting for time to pass is everything I currently am, that the constant longing for a lifting of stress is much of who I am when I am not waiting.

I wonder how much time I waste waiting or looking forward to events. Surely not, though, because even as I am waiting I am perfectly aware of the milky light coming through my office window, I can feel my violet's fuzzy leaves straining toward it. I hear the fitful raindrops pattering against the building, I hear the thousand hummings and scrapings and knockings and voices that make up the silence of a school building mid-afternoon. I touch my ring, I smell and feel humidity on my face. I have multiple to-do lists shuffling around in my brain along with worries about friends and my sister and money. Surely some of me, at least, is composed of the dread of going to the gallery after work and the process of trying not to think about dinner with Justin tonight (I am looking forward to it so much it must surely make the waiting seem longer).

So perhaps I am not all waiting, or perhaps I actually enjoy waiting.

That's more likely.

Then these afternoons of watching the clock and sighing as I see a bird fly by my window wouldn't be wasted. Because they are enjoyed on some level, on my waiting level.

black sheep