out cold

This is why I don't commute anymore.


If I've learned anything in the last two days (and, god help me, I have), it's that I have really gotten used to being clocked in on my unit seven minutes after I pull out of my driveway. No more being on the highway for an hour while it's still dark outside. No more trudging fifteen minutes uphill from the parking lot. I like not knowing exactly how much gas I have in my tank, since two gallons can keep me going for days. As agonizing as it was at the time to leave the Big City Trauma Hospital and move close to home, it was worth it a thousand times over. Maybe even a million.


And I've realized all of this in a big way the last couple of days. The class I'm taking is meeting in two different places, and they both require at least an hour each way on the highway. (In pouring rain, by the way). I'm carpooling with two other gals, and we all meet in the dark, coffee mugs clutched in our hands. We drive an hour to sit for nine hours so we can drive an hour to get home so I can fall into bed like a rag before nine. How is it more tiring to sit for eleven hours than it is to run my butt off at work for twelve? Seriously. How can that be? Two of us fell asleep today in class during a film on (god help me again) strangulation. Do you know how long it's been since I fell asleep in a class??


No, I don't miss commuting at all. This is a hard thing for an LA girl to admit, since freeway exhaust is like mother's milk to a Californian. When we first moved here, I howled when people griped about the traffic. I wanted to tell them in graphic terms exactly what traffic really was and why they seriously needed to hush about their three minute cross town commute. (As a point of reference, my hour commute here has me driving about fifty miles. Do you know how long that would take in LA??) I even convinced myself at my old job that the drive home was a good thing. I would blast the radio and decompress and by the time I got home, I would (in theory) be ready to be part of my family. It never worked that way, now that I think about it. I would come home and sit in a chair, drooling and speaking in grunts until I could crawl into bed.


I've been doing that this week, much to my kid's amusement. I suppose I'd take offense, but I'm unconscious at the time. They can pretty much say what they want and laugh to their heart's content.


No, I don't miss commuting at all. And if this is totally unintelligible, it's because I'm writing unconscious.


Is it obvious?