I jump outta bed and pile on enough clothes only to make me street worthy, and begin my morning routine with dog leash in hand. For Sailor and me, this is a new route, but eventually we end up at the old familiar neighborhood convience store for a decent cupa joe. Careful to avoid making the dog into a puddle amongst grease stains, I pick up the little fella. Only, instead of spring legging into the baby-on-hip-position we're so fond of, he starts bucking like mule; bucking me in the stomach, bucking me in the chest, and then bucking my tank top down somewhere around my waist....and not at all covering gross female anatomy typically deemed tasteless in these parts of the south.

And so summarizes movements of the past week.

I transition from a life of cake baking and floating upon my neighborhood's happiest of events, to a life of administrative sitting down, and brushing past people patching up on their dying.
Two dozen, three dozen people every morning. Guzzling drinks from tiny styrofoam cups in the darkly lit lobby, and then absently chewing them down halfway. Usually they clutch eachother in twos, or else lean in very close. One of them has their eyes brave and alert, the other has their head down and distant. Alone or accompanied, no one talks but in whispers so as not to unsettle the big sickness before a good zap. At the end of my day, I see half a dozen sharp elbows flying to help the flopping stomachs, the dried up tounge, the aching bones, and sturdying the edges of things that bleed out into everything else. By 6, the lobby has succumb to a layer of strangled reading material and a dusty smell that doesn't let up.

Somehow, here...unlike the bakery, everyone says 'good morning.' Everyone here trys to help me learn my role, and is sentimental toward what which is new.