Then I remembered this. A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I had a date night, a rare evening out without the kids, and for just a little while, we got to leave behind all the nagging thoughts, all the big and little worries, all the things that needed doing now or tomorrow or yesterday.

We didn’t go far – to Ninth Street, a colorful little strip of shops and bars across from Duke University, to a ramshackle brick building that had seen its better days several decades ago, where we would find, my partner assured me, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant with a battered, artsy kind of atmosphere you tend to find near colleges that she was sure I would like. The food, she said, was excellent and, happily for us (else there would have been no date night), cheap.

An unmarked door in the side of the battered building would lead us to the stairs to the Cosmic Cantina. (Yes, the name alone was worth the trip.)  But the stairway was my favorite part because stairs are just an excellent place to put poetry.

I want to dedicate this post to my blogger friend (and T.S. Elliot fan) at http://35andupcynicismonhold.wordpress.com/. (Look what I found, San!) She’s smart, funny, educated, insightful and a lovely writer. Look around her blog while you’re there. You’ll be glad you did. And if you follow the link in this post, you can listen to Anthony Hopkins read the poem on the stairs:

http://35andupcynicismonhold.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/after-all/

To see other entries for this week’s photo challenge, go to:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/photo-challenge-escape/

To see more colorful offerings for this week’s photo challenge, visit:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/weekly-photo-challenge-color/#more-17311

Frost.

I made our sons stand shivering in the driveway before school one morning while I tried to take photos of the frost on the car windows. I tried shooting through 2 different windows, from the inside and from the outside trying to get the right light and background. This is my favoriite (with a little help from Photoshop Elements to increase the contrast and sharpen).

To see more images for this week’s photo challenge go to:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/weekly-photo-challenge-lost-in-the-details/

Forward looking.

See more images for this week’s photo challenge at: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/forward/

The stones are scattered seemingly randomly and many are canted at strange angles. Trees have grown and fallen. Dead leaves carpet the whole area. The oldest stone markers aren’t even carved. One is a faded and broken slab of sandstone that dates the eighteenth century. There’s nothing about the woods immediately surrounding the graves that indicates that people once lived here – no remains of a household or clearing even. No view of the river. Just a few stones scattered forlornly among the trees.

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Which one is unique – the swirly one, the colorless one or the one with a handle?

Or this one?

Check out other offerings for this week’s photo challenge at:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/photo-challenge-unique/

The only good waiting room is an empty one.

I am constitutionally disinclined to wait gracefully. Four of my least favorite adjectives describe why. Waiting is most often passive, public, unpredictable and confined meaning I will be confined to a prescribed area with strangers for an undetermined amount of time during which I will have a very limited range of sessile activities to choose from to pass the time. This makes me batty.

But when you have a family to care for, waiting rooms become an unavoidable evil. Kids have to go to doctors and dentists. Pets have to go to the vet. And, as was the case yesterday, cars have to get serviced. After years of practice, I can usually deal with most waiting rooms now with a travel cup of coffee and a book. Sometimes, though, extremer measures are called for.

How to pass the time in waiting rooms:

1-      Stare surreptitiously at the person sitting in a more desirable spot until they get the telepathic message and relinquish the seat. (Doesn’t work, but worth a try.)

2-      Count the people who are playing with phones, laptops or tablets and compare it to the number of people who are reading books or magazines.

3-      Glare at the rude guy talking loudly on his cell phone until the device bursts into flames. (Doesn’t work either, but I keep hoping.)

4-      Try not to think about how many people have, are or will invade your personal space before the waiting is over.

5-      Try not to think about how many people have occupied the chair you currently inhabit and what communicable diseases they may have carried.

6-      Read the book you brought. If concentration is difficult, pretend to read it so you won’t look like some goober staring off into space.

7-      Stare off into space (until you realize that that “space” is occupied by a person who is glaring at you for staring at them).

8-      Go outside and try to find someplace to pace or loiter unobtrusively at the edge of the parking lot. Go back inside when someone comes out, stands nearby, and lights a cigarette. Cough as you walk by them.

9-      Count the people wearing glasses. Calculate ratio of the total. Count the women with short hair. Calculate ratio.

10-   Glare at the woman talking loudly on her cell phone but do it surreptitiously because she is old enough to be your grandmother and deserves courtesy even if she is an annoying nit.

11-   Wonder how many people are left in the world who are old enough to be your grandparent and how quickly that number is dwindling. Try to calm down after that thought freaks you out a little.

12-   Wonder what on earth could be taking so long. Drum your fingers. Stop drumming your fingers because that annoys people. Realize you are grinding your teeth. Try to stop.

13-   Count the people sleeping.

14-   If you are in the waiting room of a pediatric practice, stare at the fish tank. Count the orange fish. If there’s not a fish tank, spend a few moments wishing there was.

15-   Repeatedly pick up your travel mug to make sure it’s still empty. Sigh loudly when you find that it is. Slump in your seat.

16-   Open your book and stare at it.

17-   Repeat these steps for the length of your wait. Good luck.

Happily, I managed to break my pattern yesterday. I did actually go through all these steps for the first half hour. Except the book. I purposely didn’t bring a book to read this time. I brought a notebook. And after that first half hour, I wrote it all down. That killed another half hour and made my hand hurt. But I felt slightly productive and even enjoyed myself a bit. So I wrote some more. I call that a success.

Your turn. Does waiting make you nuts or do enjoy the downtime? What do you do to pass the time? Do you have Asperger’s, social anxiety or another condition that makes waiting or standing in line (ugh) problematic for you? What do you do about it?

Coffee love.

I had a hard time choosing what to focus on, the ironwork or the angel.

On a recent visit to my parents, I spent an hour walking around Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, while my mother was having her hair done. This historic graveyard caught my eye. The angel was carved from a dead tree after Hurricane Katrina.

http://evolutionofx.com/2013/01/18/facebooked/