I wrote most of this yesterday, but didn't have a chance to post it yet:

Driving back from lunch today I had one of those poetic revelations that damn near made me drive up on to the curb. I was coming from a diner not too far down the road, which I actually pass at least twice a day going to and from work. I went there only one other time, on some other sunny day last summer.

I'm just sick of the work building's cafeteria. It's not so much the food, but the fact I'm seeing most of the same people. A lunch hour, I think, should be a true break from work. If you're still eating or waving hello to people from the same company, how much of an escape can it really be? Even in the time up until now, when I did regularly eat at the cafeteria, I was always sitting with 3 or 4 of the nurses. Why? They're not full of shit, they're well past the age of 40 (read: not talking about babies, not fantisizing about weddings, not sulking, and absolutely no thoughts that I might be hitting on them), they don't talk about work, and best of all, they're not the taddle-tailing faces I see every day as I go about my tasks. Besides, I live so close to work that I can (and have in the past) go home to have lunch.

So I'm at this diner. Not far away, but comfortably isolated. I'm enjoying my club sandwich and cola. And there's something about it that feels so nostaligic. As unexciting of an event it sounded, there was something very comfortable about the entire situation. When it was time to go, I drove by a woman walking down the sidewalk with her very young (and presumed) son. That was the point where it hit me.

When I was in grammar school, there'd be that rare day that I couldn't be in class. I either won some poster contest, I was sick, or had to get an EEG test. On those days, my mom would take me to this tiny breakfast & lunch place about 1/2 mile from the house. It was always the place to go to if I wasn't at school. And that's where I was today: at a diner for an hour, eating the typical club sandwich and wavy fries meal, escaping from the new grammar school-run institution known as my workplace.