Thoughts on home and on stopping.

(this was started on Thursday from my car and finished on Friday from my room.  Or rather, my jail.)

There’s a sketch on the Amanda Show that’s a Survivor spoof in which five or so people sit in a white convertible in a parking lot and the last person there wins the car and a brief case full of money.  If you can remember this show and if you can picture it; I am a contestant in that Survivor spoof.

See, about 30 minutes ago, I ran out of gas in the Dover Elementary School so I had to walk the little girl I was with to the library and then I had to walk back to Dover and I’m now sitting in my car listening to Numb/Encore by Jay Z & Linkin Park, because that’s the only song I have.

And I look like a character on the Amanda Show.

The good thing is that today is a beautiful day.  It’s probably the most beautiful October day I have ever lived in Cleveland.  As much as it sucks to have this happen to me- running out of gas I mean- I appreciate the momentary pause this has put on my life.

Sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m on a carousel; like the world is spinning and spinning and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.  My life on the weekends, except for work, is generally pretty leisurely but my life during the week is so busy and hectic every day.  That’s only four days out of my seven-day week, but it’s still so much and I’m exhausted all the time.  Although I’ve been admiring it from the windows of the classrooms I daydream in, I haven’t actually gotten the chance to get outside much during the daylight and to just enjoy it.  It’s pretty nice.

I realized today that this was the first day I have walked down Dover Center, which is in my opinion one of the most beautiful streets in Westlake, in years.  Since Music à La Mode in Eighth grade.  A little less than four years, and that’s at least three years too many.  I only have a year left before, in all honesty, I move out of Westlake.  Alone.  To what I hope will be a beautiful place that I can one day call home, or maybe that I’ll just live in for four years before I go find my home.

I know my second grade self would hate me for saying this, but little Hayley, Westlake has been home for 10 years whether I was ready to admit it or not.  I’m not sure if I’ve always appreciated it as much as I should have, but I appreciate it now.  I don’t want this to be a crappy cliché post about home, but that’s kind of what it’s been. 

Taking the mandatory stop of life that was running out of gas was one of the nicest things I have gotten to do in a while.