Postcards

Elaina smiled as she walked through downtown, she was happy to have gotten out early from work.
The weather was in that perfect pre-storm perfect phase. Where the breeze was cool, but not cold,
and strong enough to blow your hair. The clouds were coming in but before the sky was angry
and purple. She had seen something about a hail storm coming in this week and it was painfully clear
that it was on its way. As glad as she was for the weather, she knew that it meant that she wasn’t going
to have one of these perfect walks in a while.

As she enjoyed the small town beauty of being able to reach Yelsnag park in a hop skip and a jump,
she noticed that Joseph seemed to be walking around enjoying the weather too. Feeling sappy about
the whole small town life, she decided to stop and say hello. After some small talk about the weather
and much-needed improvements for the Park, getting her wheels turning on all the possible projects.

The weather seemed to have no appreciation for maintaining Elaina’s good mood. As always is
inevitable with the perfect pre-storm weather, it came crashing down with an epic hail storm. Elaina
and Joseph started running for shelter at the abandoned night guard shelter. As they ran, they noticed
Mr. Po asleep on a nearby bench. Joseph nodded over at him and together they ran and grabbed him
and took him along with them.

After settling in underneath the shelter they started talking to Mr. Po about him and his life, eventually,
they landed on his experiences as an immigrant. He talked about feeling so alone in America
sometimes, which surprised her a little. Especially since her parent immigrant experience involved
a whole network, with almost all of their siblings having come to America over the years.

Mr. Po began talking about how he couldn’t write because he had left in the midst of conflict, it
hadn’t even been a decision to leave like her parents. He was lucky to have gotten here in the first
place, let alone keep a network of loved ones. As she got back in her car post hail storm, starving
from hiding out in the night guard shelter, but feeling strangely sentimental.

Leftovers for breakfast

Elaina took leftovers our of her fridge from dinner at her parent's house last night. The convenience of homecooked food just 10 minutes across town was hard to resist when you still really hadn't gotten the hang of cooking for yourself at age 31. Still, it was going to help her get out the door on time, way more so than stumbling through eggs.

20 minutes later, she was on her way to work, in fact, she was early. Shocked by this she reached the parking lot, and a wave of sadness came over her as she remembered that this was the place where Mr. Evans had died, causing all of the hubbub the other day. She hadn't known Mr. Evans well, but then she didn't know too many people in her building very well. Maybe she should start to fix that.

Deciding to take advantage of her early timing that morning, and not wanting to spend any more possible time in the office than was strictly necessary, she decided to pop into Jumping Beans for what she promised herself wouldn't be a coffee.

As she walked across the street to get to the shop, she noticed things were a little more busy than usual, maybe everyone was feeling the same sentiment of wanting to find connections in the wake of Mr. Evans death. She saw Coco, the women always talking to Georgie, walking towards Cece's, an odd choice for the morning she thought. None the less, she was feeling an openness to her, so she called out a "Good morning,"

What she got back was an "If you say so," called over the shoulder. Seemingly harsh, but still there was a small smile there, that made Elaina a little more optimistic about the day.

The day started with...

The day started as usual with coffee as usual. Elaina probably went through too many cups
in a day, it was a habit she had developed in college. When she was studying for her urban
planning degree, she hadn't done the best of managing her time. She had always been busy
though, and caffeine fueled many sessions of "writing a 10 page paper in one sitting." Now,
coming up on 10 years later, she was significantly less busy. The coffee buzz that came from
5 cups a day was most certainly unnecessary for searching job sites followed by 8 bland hours
of coordinating street signage.

Elaina was completely zoned out mindlessly scanning job sites featuring city planning jobs in New York and Chicago. In the back if her mind she was thinking about the time back when she had been in one of those jobs. Fresh out of school, she had gotten a job in Chicago, working on implementing micro-parks. Now on the other hand, she was back in her parents town, working in her cubicle on the fourth four of the public works building. At least she wasn’t living in their house, she hadn’t fallen that far down. They still always wanted her to be dropping by, and called her an absurd amount when she saw them 4 times a week at a minimum.

Pulling her out of her thoughts, Elaina’s phone rung. She looked down, first seeing it was her
mom, then looking at the time, seeing it was already 7:20 and she needed to get going. There
was no way she couldn’t answer the phone though. Elaina answered sounding way more
hurried than she had been for the last half hour.

“Hi mom, what’s going on, I need to get to work,” Elaina said all in one breath.

“Good morning darling,” her mom responded, clearly ignoring her tone. “I just wanted to remind
you that your amme is coming for dinner tonight, and tell you I’m making zoolbia-bamieh.”

“I know mom, I remember. I’ll be there at 7?” She actually was glad to see her mom’s sister, plus a home cooked meal meant she wouldn’t be spending money on dinner.

Her mom confirmed the arrival time, and before she could launch into a 20 minute rant on all
the cooking that was involved in her older sisters arrival, Elaina cut her off quickly, saying she
really had to get to work.

By 7:45, Elaina was flying out of her building towards the parking lot, and came to a quick stop
when she saw a flurry of cops and yellow tape surrounding the parking lot. A couple minutes of
lingering told her something really bad had happened, but another glance at her watch told her
she didn’t have the time to find out, or work on wading through the people gathered to her car.