Comfort Knitting

I didn't think I even wanted to blog about this at all, but I teach at Taft High School, which was in the news on Thursday because of an on-campus shooting. I tried writing about it yesterday but couldn't, and I don't want to say that much today either, other than to say that I'm working through it. I've had a lot of emotions in the last couple of days, mostly sadness for the kids in the classroom where the shooting took place, who have had their sense of security destroyed forever, relief that the boy who was shot is expected to recover, comfort that I live among many wonderful, brave, compassionate people, and just a general feeling of vulnerability and disbelief.

I came home late Thursday afternoon to a nice, clean living room and a very strong cup of coffee that Kai, who I didn't even know knew how to make coffee, had made for me. Russ said that he (Kai) had been planning to take it down to me if I didn't come home soon. I'm not sure how he had planned to get through all of the cop cars, media, and general chaos, but it was very nice of him. Since then, I've done the things that I usually do to make myself happy: knitting another pair of baby socks, using up leftovers in my stash, and going for a two-hour run with Russ in the foothills on Saturday, which wasn't actually that fun since it was near freezing and muddy and windy..and uphill. In fact, I had to have a little cry because Russ got ahead of me and I got to a fork in the road and didn't know which way he had gone. He came back for me before I got too stressed, but that was when I knew that I wasn't as OK as I had thought I was. Tomorrow, I'll return to work, and eventually things will get back to some kind of normalcy, but for now, life seems a little upside down.