It's been a very strange day. After I dropped the kids off at school, I came home and felt compelled to lie down. I conked out and didn't wake up until almost noon, which is almost unheard of for me. I can never sleep during the day. I thought I was over whatever bug has been in my system, but I guess not--my head feels like it's in a jar. Shortly after I woke up, I got a phone call saying there was a bomb threat near Hannah's school; Hannah was freaking out, and I could come pick her up, even though the school was in lock-down mode. I had to take a detour to get there because of all of the emergency vehicles and the cordoned off street. On the way home, we had to take yet another detour because downtown Riverside was full of the same types of emergency vehicles. I later found out that the California building downtown had received a bomb threat, as well. I don't know if they are related, but I hope that everything and everyone will be okay.

Poor Hannah is still a little on edge. She said that she knew what was happening as soon as she heard "Mrs. Glass is on campus, I repeat, Mrs. Glass is on campus" come over the intercom. There had been a bomb threat three years before (it turned out to be a teenage prank), and the same code had been used.

Hannah was feeling very unsafe as we were driving home, especially after we came upon the downtown barricades. She asked if we could drive through the park down the street from our house, just to make sure nothing was going on there, too. Happily, the park looked very peaceful and quiet; the sunlight was hitting the small lake in that glorious sparkly way, and even the shaggy palm trees had a luminous, numinous quality to them. A bunch of white birds were diving for fish in unison, their tails in the air in a clump, like a water ballet. When their heads surfaced again, I was delighted to see it was the white pelicans, back for the winter! A nice flash of joy in this strange, strange day.