Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair

My walks to work started three years ago, a month after Emma's death, as a respite from sorrow. To have a regular activity that anchored me in the physical world and took me out of my head a little bit. The daily #walktowork pictures evolved shortly thereafter - it forced me to seek out the beautiful, the interesting, the weird, the funny. It helped me heal, or at least helped the scar tissue develop.

I would do that walk in the rain, and when it was -5 degrees and blowing snow, and when there was dirty slush from a snowstorm 3 days ago. I loved it. I needed it. 

Sometimes I would go down 12th Avenue and walk through Cheesman Park and admire the gardens in peoples' yards.

More often I would walk down Colfax, past the Fillmore and Ogden theaters, past the sex shops and tattoo parlors and marijuana dispensaries. 

Past the 7-Eleven where that crazy-ass lady was friends with the police dispatcher. Past the beautiful gold dome of the state capitol building. 

 Past urban art and urban poetry and blood on the streets.

Yes, that really is a big puddle of blood on the sidewalk, as long as a manhole cover.

And then I got a new job that is 25 miles south of my house. No more walks to work. No more gritty city. No more #dailydenver pictures. 

To be clear, I love my new job. Absolutely love it. But my office is out in the 'burbs and I have to drive. At least it's a counter-commute. 

Still, it's 40 minutes. I rationalize it that it used to take me 40 minutes to walk to work before, so it's the same amount of time commuting. It's not the same commute, though.

I am getting used to it.

I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks, which I'm really enjoying. I listened to some when I walked, but I found I had a harder time concentrating on the story than when I'm in the car.

I've been practicing my Italian in preparation for the trip the kids and I are going on in two weeks. If you need someone to say, in Italian, "this is creamy cod, a typical northern Italian dish," I'm your girl.

I drive through some beautiful scenery - wide open plains underneath wide open skies.

I am, by nature, an optimist. I don't know how to view the world from a place of negativity. So I am learning to like the drive. The routine of it. The views. 

It's not quite the romanticism of the open road, but it has its own charm. I don't mind it at all.