Seasons may change...
I know I’ve blogged about this exact topic before, but this time of year, the light takes on a certain kind of quality. It’s still clearly summer, the sky is bright blue and the sun is intense, but the light takes on a kind of golden quality that lets you know that fall is coming. It’s the kind of light that makes you remember things, even silly things. I woke up this morning and thought to myself, ‘Have I really had this computer for two years? Have I really been out of school for one and a half? Have I really been working a steady job for four months now?’
It doesn’t feel like it. I’m already starting to realize how much faster time goes when you’re obligated to do things. I think that’s what it is. I don’t think it has anything to do with getting older. I just think that it’s more of your day is taken up by things that you’re made to do, or even just things that you’ve planned, and once your plans are up, poof, you’re on to other ones...
I remember the summer I stayed with my grandmother. It wasn’t really a good summer for me emotionally at all, but at the same time, that was that “weird, reckless” summer that everyone’s supposed to have as a kid. I mean it wasn’t that weird, and it wasn’t that reckless, but it sure was spontaneous, and I’m pretty sure it was important to my growth as a human being. Not to mention I saw so much more of this weird little country that summer than I had before (well, it actually goes back to the beginning of that year), a feat topped only by going on tour this spring at which point I realized I actually had all of Williamsburg, Virginia completely memorized by default, just like I now have all of Sommerville, New Jersey completely mapped out in my head. It’s still amazing to me how many places I’ve been to twice - or more - by some happy coincidence. Small world, and all that. But I had no plans, really, and so it seemed to last forever.
But I digress.
Working 5 - 9 is fabulous for getting things done. Even if I sleep in until noon, I still have four entire hours to get things done, no rush, no worries. I can comfortably get four loads of laundry done in that span of time, or wash every dish in the house, or scrub the bathroom. Three days of working 5 - 9 and the house is spic and span.
But it’s terrible for getting nothing done. It’s terrible for sitting around the house wearing soft clothes and writing or reading a big thick book, because once you get into it, and the sun is threatening to set but won’t go through with its plans for another few hours, it’s time to leave. You have to kick the kitty off of your lap, put down your book, dump out your tea, and your last respite is an all-to0-short twenty minute busride to be stuck in a building while the sun goes down without you.
I miss just riding the bus and the T everywhere in this kind of light. I used to go home a lot more on the weekends, beginning of Freshman year, and it was an hour and fifteen minute busride. I just got to lay my head against the window and ride the same set of roads I’d been taking since I was four years old and going to work with my dad. I’d take note of things that had changed and feel a little sad. I do just find with personal change, in fact, I welcome it. But environmental change sometimes gets to me. I don’t know why.
I remember when I was really young; both my parents worked downtown, my mom at Children’s Hospital Montefiore (which is technically Oakland), and my dad at Blue Cross in Fifth Avenue Place, and they often couldn’t afford baby sitters, so I would just go to work with them (simpler times? Maybe I was just a very good kid). My mom was a medical records technician so when I went with her I would play in these huge rolling stacks of files and go on adventures to find vending machines. My dad worked in a huge office filled with huge servers and acoustic tiling on the floor and ceiling to keep the noise down, and in the one lower tile by his desk I remember he kept a black and white TV and a radio and Cheetos and on sunday nights we would watch The X-Files and during the week we would listen to Pens games on the radio, and he would roll my brother and I around on swivel chairs and put us in postage crates and roll us down the mail ramp.
So when my friends would say, “Oh, my parents and I are going downtown today,” they would mean downtown Monongahela but I already knew downtown meant Pittsburgh, and I would say, “Oh, my parents WORK downtown, at Children’s Hospital and for Blue Cross,” and my friends would say, “But there’s no hospital downtown...’ and I would have to instruct them that I meant downtown PITTSBURGH, which was actually where downtown was.
Needless to say, by the time I got to college, I already had this whole place pretty much down (some of the bus routes were a little shaky, though). And as much as we hate to become our parents, I walk past Fifth Avenue Place everyday on my own way to work, on Penn Avenue. And I don’t really mind. And when my multitude of friends from out of the area asks me what downtown Pittsburgh is like (they’ve all heard of it you see, but so very few people have actually been here...), sometimes I have to think about it for a minute but I think I invariably come up with the same answer:
“...You know what, it’s nice. Especially in the fall.”
It doesn’t feel like it. I’m already starting to realize how much faster time goes when you’re obligated to do things. I think that’s what it is. I don’t think it has anything to do with getting older. I just think that it’s more of your day is taken up by things that you’re made to do, or even just things that you’ve planned, and once your plans are up, poof, you’re on to other ones...
I remember the summer I stayed with my grandmother. It wasn’t really a good summer for me emotionally at all, but at the same time, that was that “weird, reckless” summer that everyone’s supposed to have as a kid. I mean it wasn’t that weird, and it wasn’t that reckless, but it sure was spontaneous, and I’m pretty sure it was important to my growth as a human being. Not to mention I saw so much more of this weird little country that summer than I had before (well, it actually goes back to the beginning of that year), a feat topped only by going on tour this spring at which point I realized I actually had all of Williamsburg, Virginia completely memorized by default, just like I now have all of Sommerville, New Jersey completely mapped out in my head. It’s still amazing to me how many places I’ve been to twice - or more - by some happy coincidence. Small world, and all that. But I had no plans, really, and so it seemed to last forever.
But I digress.
Working 5 - 9 is fabulous for getting things done. Even if I sleep in until noon, I still have four entire hours to get things done, no rush, no worries. I can comfortably get four loads of laundry done in that span of time, or wash every dish in the house, or scrub the bathroom. Three days of working 5 - 9 and the house is spic and span.
But it’s terrible for getting nothing done. It’s terrible for sitting around the house wearing soft clothes and writing or reading a big thick book, because once you get into it, and the sun is threatening to set but won’t go through with its plans for another few hours, it’s time to leave. You have to kick the kitty off of your lap, put down your book, dump out your tea, and your last respite is an all-to0-short twenty minute busride to be stuck in a building while the sun goes down without you.
I miss just riding the bus and the T everywhere in this kind of light. I used to go home a lot more on the weekends, beginning of Freshman year, and it was an hour and fifteen minute busride. I just got to lay my head against the window and ride the same set of roads I’d been taking since I was four years old and going to work with my dad. I’d take note of things that had changed and feel a little sad. I do just find with personal change, in fact, I welcome it. But environmental change sometimes gets to me. I don’t know why.
I remember when I was really young; both my parents worked downtown, my mom at Children’s Hospital Montefiore (which is technically Oakland), and my dad at Blue Cross in Fifth Avenue Place, and they often couldn’t afford baby sitters, so I would just go to work with them (simpler times? Maybe I was just a very good kid). My mom was a medical records technician so when I went with her I would play in these huge rolling stacks of files and go on adventures to find vending machines. My dad worked in a huge office filled with huge servers and acoustic tiling on the floor and ceiling to keep the noise down, and in the one lower tile by his desk I remember he kept a black and white TV and a radio and Cheetos and on sunday nights we would watch The X-Files and during the week we would listen to Pens games on the radio, and he would roll my brother and I around on swivel chairs and put us in postage crates and roll us down the mail ramp.
So when my friends would say, “Oh, my parents and I are going downtown today,” they would mean downtown Monongahela but I already knew downtown meant Pittsburgh, and I would say, “Oh, my parents WORK downtown, at Children’s Hospital and for Blue Cross,” and my friends would say, “But there’s no hospital downtown...’ and I would have to instruct them that I meant downtown PITTSBURGH, which was actually where downtown was.
Needless to say, by the time I got to college, I already had this whole place pretty much down (some of the bus routes were a little shaky, though). And as much as we hate to become our parents, I walk past Fifth Avenue Place everyday on my own way to work, on Penn Avenue. And I don’t really mind. And when my multitude of friends from out of the area asks me what downtown Pittsburgh is like (they’ve all heard of it you see, but so very few people have actually been here...), sometimes I have to think about it for a minute but I think I invariably come up with the same answer:
“...You know what, it’s nice. Especially in the fall.”