Yesterday I got eight stitches in my neck during a skin cancer excision, and since it started hurting a lot right before bed I took a muscle relaxer to knock me out.
At 10pm.
You see where this is going, I am sure.
I don’t remember turning my alarms off although surely I must have, and woke up proper at 7 am. Cue PANIC.
Oh, not really. I am too old to panic about being late for work, but that said, I don’t like putting my colleagues in a position of needing me when I’m not around, so it was quick morning and a short walk for Keely.
We were out by 7:20 am and I took a modified “around the block” route that takes us up to Thomasville, over to 5th, and back up Monroe. It’s a 20 minute loop instead of a 30+ minute one, but I was trying to catch the 8:15 am bus.
All of which is to say: the city was well awake by the time we were out traipsing around. There isn’t any long pauses in the morning cycle of traffic, it goes from empty to rush hour in the span of a few minutes in my observation. Usually that is just after 7 am, and I can judge it by how likely I am to be able to cross 7th Ave. at the foot of my driveway (jaywalking! right in front of the police station! scandal!).
I wanted to write something poetic about the city stretching and yawning awake but I think mostly people sleepwalk in herds, on automatic, driving and fighting and eating by the clock. It’s more like the city flops awake by falling off its bed.
(By 8:05 when I was headed to the bus stop, traffic was impossible and I had to hike to the stop light to cross like some kind of damn law abiding citizen.)
Keely was a little confused by our unusual path, but bore up well under the stress.