ruts and dynamic waiting

It's Monday, and although it's a strange one on account of MLK day, it's still a strange one. It feels like vacation at our house because we're not following our usual Monday routine. Not that our routine was awesome by any means. It started too early, it involved unnecessary D-hustling and D-bundling and other forms of toddler-wrangling that tended to make us all a little extra tired and irritated. But it was our routine, and it was the same every weekday. No nursery school for D today either on account of MLK and such, which further worked to peel the "Mon-" off our "day."

I was thinking about trains (as I often do, seeing as how I step on or trip over one basically every time I walk through the living room) and about how the disruption of daily routine is like moving from the train to the station. On the train you're moving forward, although ironically you're really just sitting there, waiting to get to the next stop. It's movement but without consciousness. On the station, meanwhile, you're milling around, getting some coffee, eyeing the strangers, maybe going up and down escalators or something. You're not moving forward, but you're moving. You're attentive and you're present. It's a state of dynamic waiting.

The state of dynamic waiting isn't bad, but it isn't as easy as just sitting there on the train. You do have more freedom to go up and down the escalator, for instance, and escalators are always fairly awesome. Yet, there is only so much waiting you can do before you start to get tired of it. Or go somewhere else, I guess.