Had Dante Alighieri begun work on the Divine Comedy in 2008 instead of 1308, he would have had to include in his opus the particular circle of hell that is after school pick up.

Usually, my youngest son rides the bus home from school. The bus stop is conveniently located on the corner where we live, so the process requires virtually no effort on my part.

Today, however, he had a trumpet lesson scheduled 42 minutes after school let out. There was no way for him to get home on the bus and guarantee us the 30 minutes needed to travel from our house to the trumpet lesson.

So after grabbing a late lunch I could eat in the car while I waited (as well as my state fair project stash bag), I drove to the school.

I arrived 10 minutes before classes were to be dismissed and got what constituted a pretty good place in what I term the “left-turn” line:

North Carolina does have a general statute that prohibits texting while driving, but it does not, as of yet, have a specific law prohibiting a driver from crocheting, so after I finished my lunch, I got out my crochet and chained 13 stitches for a rectangle I will use for the next addition to my state fair piece:

Before the line finally began to move, and I could begin a new phase of waiting, I completed these two rectangles:

During the trumpet lesson and immediately after I got home, I was able to turn out 11 more Bauhaus rectangles for an even baker’s dozen:

Much of my day got eaten by errands today, but tomorrow, I have very few obligations, and I intend to use the time well so that I can continue to move this project forward.