Morning all. I hope you are set for a good day. Mine is an odd one. Last week I did my annual blood tests and things and today I go in for the results and my actual visit with the doctor for my physical. I know they separate the two so they can get the general lab results back before they see the patient but it oddly makes me feel like I am being called to the principals office after doing something untoward during an exam. The doctor is always very nice and I don’t really have anything wrong it is just my annual checkup, so there is no official reason to feel that way, and yet I somehow still feel like I am about to be yelled at. Last night when I went to bed any bad habit I have ever had over the years or non healthy/questionable option I chose danced through my head. Do I think my doctor cares that twenty years ago I participated in a hot sauce competition that made my stomach ache for three days? No, yet for some reason my brain decided to parade that choice through my brain when I was trying to sleep. So it is going to actually be a relief to jump into the morning prompt today. So, timers set and off we go.
I rather enjoyed that break. I also like the set up. Which will also give me something to focus on that isn’t the nutritional content of the Twinkies I ate in 1998.
She looked oddly familiar. I knew, just knew I saw her before. I just couldn’t place it. The thought tickled the back of my mind. I tried to forget it but I kept seeing her throughout the day. She walked past my apartment building when I was leaving for work. She was clearly coming out of a parked car and checking a scrap of paper as though looking for an address.
I saw her a few hours later near my office building. There was nothing really strange in that. My office building was part of a complex of office buildings. My apartment was within walking distance and a complex of buildings in its own right. A good chunk of those who worked in the office complex lived in the same apartment complex. It was only the higherups who lived in the houses further put in suburbia.
Seeing her twice didn’t ring any alarm bells. I didn’t think she had any interest in me. Not really. She didn’t glance in my direction when I passed her on the sidewalk. I didn’t think she was even going into my building in the apartment complex. She was entering my office building, but it wasn’t my floor she was visiting.
Later I saw her in the office lunchroom. She was sitting and chatting amiably with people I didn’t know. The lunchroom was a strange place. It was centrally located in the complex and no other break room spaces were provided for employees. If you didn’t want to eat at your desk or make the trek out to a restaurant, here was where you went. Even food trucks seemed to stay on the far side of town.
Some people went through the cafeteria style line on one side of the lunchroom. Many people brought their lunch. As I considered the food in the cafeteria overpriced and the thought of paying my employers for food rankled something deep within me, I brought my lunch.
Over the years I had increasingly sophisticated lunch boxes. I started out with a simple reusable and insulated bag. I then added thermal soup containers that kept my soup hot enough to still be warm at lunch. I had reusable containers and even my own reusable silver wear set. I was contemplating one of those heated lunch box things that actually cooked your lunch while you worked at your desk so that you could have a hot lunch ready for lunchtime.
I wasn’t quite sold on that and wasn’t certain my office mates would appreciate the scent of anything I was cooking filling up the cubicles prior to lunch time. I noticed her as I was contemplating getting the gadget and testing it at home to see if the scent was onerous and if the device actually worked. I was a big fan of testing things at home before bringing them to work and I had a weakness for gadgets.
I was surprised to find her looking in my direction.
She looked away casually and I thought it was just happenstance. One of those things where two people happen to look up at the same time and see each other. Without all of the romantic overtones Hollywood likes to add. There was no element of romance in her gaze. If anything, she looked bored and vaguely annoyed.
I ignored it and finished my lunch. I saw her twice more that day, each time from afar. She still looked familiar, but I still couldn’t place it. It was only when I went to bed and closed my eyes that night that I recalled why she looked so familiar.
Ten til Midnight 