Nine PM and Counting

There is a specific kind of tired that closing shift produces and it is completely unlike any other kind. It is not the tired you get from running or from sitting through a long class. It is the tired of having been on your feet and present and available for several hours straight, and then suddenly, not. The shift ends and your body gets the message before your brain does.

I got home tonight and stood in the kitchen for probably a full sixty seconds before I remembered I had gone in there to get water. The whole summer has felt a little like that, honestly. The structure of the morning running club dissolved once everyone's schedules went weird in June, and without it the days have this soft, unstructured middle, work in the evening, runs whenever I can make myself, the blog when something feels worth saying. I have been doing solo runs most mornings now, which I wrote about briefly a while back, and they have quietly become the thing I look forward to most. But the closing shifts are their own opposite universe.

apron off. almost human again.

I almost didn't post anything about this because it felt too small. But then I remembered I have a draft sitting on my desktop titled 'not for the blog' that is literally about what this blog is supposed to be, and I think that is a signal. The small things are the whole thing. The apron-off moment, the standing-in-the-kitchen moment, the 'I can see my car from here' moment. That is the summer.

the 'i can see my car from here' energy

(Also, a couple people have asked about the parenthetical from my last post. The 'something that has nothing to do with spreadsheets' thing. I owe you that explanation. I am working up to it. Bear with me.)