six months

walking to get chai and eat lunch yesterday i realized that i have officially been at my job as a reporter for six months. then i got distracted by a mattress on the sidewalk and thinking about how trashy the city i work in can be.

a few steps later there was a guy with a beer gut hanging out of his t-shirt while he leaned over his pickup truck staring at me. almost gross enough to make me lose my appetite. almost.

i turned the corner and someone else was apparently intrigued by my pink lunch bag because he started yelling,"damn girl, if you were my lady you would never have to carry your lunch, because i would have it catered ... and packed ... and i would carry it for you wherever you wanted to go ... girl did anyone tell you that you are looking great today?!" actually no, but thank you for being the first?

that got me wondering which way i was going to walk to get back to the office, because i already avoid the opposite side of that street where someone burns incense on the sidewalk outside of their shop every day. (incense is one of the few, if not the only, smells that i actually hate more than cigarette smoke.)

this is the city i work in and yet my coworkers still seem shocked i would rather commute 40 minutes than move here, hmm.

eventually i got back to thinking about how i've been at my job for six months and how it feels a lot longer than that. the way that things have begun to come full circle cements that feeling.

on my first day i covered my first press conference, where it was announced that marvin hamlisch was coming to town later this year as a guest conductor.

i only knew who marvin was because of his cameo in one of my favorite chick flicks of all time. (that would be "how to lose a guy in 10 days" for those of you who actually have lives and don't remember useless rom com references.) so whoever says chick flicks are a waste of time is wrong. just kidding, they are a waste of time but i love them. so much.

anyway marvin hamlisch died last week. so there's that.

and on an even sadder note, one of the first stories i got attached to was an interview with a family whose four-year-old son had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. they told him he had four to six months to live, with treatment. i cried after the interview at his house with his family and prayed for them and even wrote some of my thoughts on it here.

i was really rooting for them and must have had an underlying optimism that the adorable little boy would live, because i was crushed when my editor yelled across the office that ryan died and i needed to do a story on that now.

i thought about what my last six months have been compared to that family's. my heart breaks for his parents, but also for his siblings, who are so young that this will probably shape them even more. but life goes on for them, and for all of us. it doesn't stop when we hurt.

"if grease is the soul of the kitchen
and coffee the drink of the gods
routine too perfect to mention
time is a thief i would rob
 

we're meant to be baby hold onto me
i'll never not be your girl
cause love is the heart of the world

oh and hope is the soul of the dreamer
and heaven is the home of my God
it only takes one true believer
to believe you can still beat the odds."

[lady antebellum]