Sounds

I'm sitting at my window at the end of a long, hard payroll day. My world is filled with sounds today. I hear the train whistle blowing, over and over, which is a sound I love. Everywhere we have lived, except our newest house, we have always been able to hear the train whistle. Once we lived in an apartment which was directly in front of the tracks. When my son was a toddler, he would stand at the back screen door and watch it go by.

Sirens are blaring from the streets below my third floor window. Everyday, it is the police or fire trucks. Usually on a false alarm when they are near our building, just for precautions sake. Or possibly for a wreck on a nearby hyway.

The parking lot below is full of downtown workers leaving for home. They talk together as they walk fast across the lots to get to the parking decks. We have extra people out today, protesters. Think I'll walk out the back door when I leave.

The cleaning ladies outside my closed door. The clock on the wall... ticking my life away. The pounding voice of the life I want and can't have.

My own inner voice rushing me out the door to all the duties I must attend to at home.

All the memories that I carry with me and can't seem to put away or outrun.

My friend telling me just today I should "work to live, and not live to work". Yes, sometimes I leave it all at work, and have nothing left over to carry home, or to take care of myself with.

My son's voice ringing in my ears for all the things he wants, and the things we won't give him, or faciltate for him. All the ways he compares himself to all those around him, who he thinks has a better life.

The soft calls of nature beckoning me to come back as soon as I can. The sounds I need to hear; birds calling in the trees, the babbling of the creeks, the leaves under my shoes, the rushing of the waterfall.

And, of course, the now familiar sound of raindrops.

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Dining Al Fresco

We dined al fresco at The Loop tonight after a hard day's work. My job is in payroll and can get very tedious. The work seems to never end, and it always has to be done "right now". We have over 2600 employees and that makes for lots of changes every two weeks. I love working for the city, but would prefer to move to another deparment that wouldn't be so time sensitive. When I first got on at the city, it was in another department, and I was the office manager for someone who needed one really badly. It was fun to set everything up and make a work flow from scratch.

My husband, on the other hand, works much harder than I do. I use my mind, and he uses his mind, and his hands, and his back. He remoldels houses, and sometimes does disaster recovery projects. This is basically a new industry that has sprung up in America over the past few years. Whole companies have been started to immediately come out to a house that has burned, or has had storm damage or water damage, and clean up or demolish it, and then rebuild.

So, after a long, hard day for both of us, it was nice to sit out on the porch and have soup, salads, and grilled sandwiches in the evening breeze.

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