On Monday night, I went to a life skills class at Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter looming over the heart of skid row. Fifth and San Pedro, blocks and miles away from where I go to work everyday. I had been there once before, when I interviewed for a freelance job I found online: copy-editing a book compilation of the stories of skid row: of this homeless shelter, of the people that have passed through here.

The people that have passed through here—the people that are still here—are surprising and varied. Monday, it was a group of twelve kids. Kids, teenagers, young adults, whatever you call them, they were eight and eighteen. People who shouldn’t be expected to take care of themselves, but are being asked to anyway.

The class started with a breathing exercise. In and out, sit up straight. “If you can’t control your breath, how can you control your life?”

These past few weeks (since, actually, right around the time when I finally articulated my need to spring forward and the span of the day started manifesting it) have been emotionally, um…full, but this was so searingly simple (breathing in and out; being a kid and being homeless) that it didn’t have space for my own feelings. They weren’t sad, at least not on Monday night—they were teenagers, chatty and sassy, full of attitude and slouching, whispering behind the teacher’s back.

I met a girl who wants to be a writer—or actually, just loves to write, and writes and reads and paints and dreams, and do you have any book recommendations, and loves blogs (omg you have a blog!) and wants to be someone big, someone with influence, there are so many things I want to do. She was just thrilled, and had had a great day (she figured out she wanted to take Japanese in school instead of Chinese, and what a relief it was to make that decision, finally). Her story will appear in the book of stories, and it’s next in my queue to edit. I almost don’t want to read it, don’t want to find out why this expanding energy of a girl is here, now, at a life skills class at a homeless shelter on a Monday night. She’s just like any kid I’ve tutored, or coached or taught, and I imagine it must be weird for her, too, to have ended up here… to have to identify herself as homeless.

There are all the presumptions about who is homeless, but for as many stories as I’ve now read about drugs and abuse, there are stories of risks taken and no safety net. And, as much as the rowdy teenagers—now milling about the room in the after-class free time—were just teenagers, they also sort of weren’t. They could articulate that it’s tough to live here. It’s hard to leave this place behind when I go to school and act cool and normal and hip with my friends, and my friends don’t know I live here, that I’m homeless.

When I left, I finally enjoyed my long drive home… the driving, the control over my life, and little home I get to rent all for myself.

Because I grew up in California, the state of superficial seasons (sun in January, gloom in June), Daylight Savings Time, that silly one hour we seem to lose and gain from our days in the fall and spring, has always provided me with the most physical, tangible signal of the shifting of seasons.

In September, fall back, early darkness is a signal to retreat indoors, to start baking and simmering chili on the stove—even if it’s still 70 degrees at dusk. Early sunsets prevent late afternoon runs, and mornings are cozy, grey, and cool.

And now, in March, a late day—a longer day, it seems—is an excuse to get outdoors, to enjoy sun and color and the stretched, extra-space feeling you get between 3 and 7 p.m.

Tomorrow, I’ll drive to work at 6 a.m. in pitch blackness, but for tonight at least, the day met the night oh so leisurely.

And, with spring forward, there’s always the anticipation of longer days to come—warmer weather, less layers, and relaxed muscles on sunset jogs. To spring: spring the noun and spring the verb, the latter being the sentiment I like to harness in this time switch. Springing forward.

After my epiphany of February, in which I give into my love of the opulent grocery store, I’ve been making an effort to 1. give myself more time in such store and 2. enjoy this time. Last week, I did neither. I rushed to TJs around 3:00 p.m., famished due to a lunch skip and with a serious hankering for brussels sprouts. Sauteed sprouts, salty and yum, a new recipe in hand…I wheeled to the produce section in ye ol’ TJs, and what do you know. No brussels sprouts.

Rather harried, I asked the TJs employee who ambled over moments after I sighed desperately at the refridgerated produce section: “But…what happened to the brussels?!”

He nodded sympathetically. “Freezes. We’re going to have a lot of shortages in our vegetables coming up.” I nodded like I knew what he was talking about and continued grumpily on my way. Ralphs has a similar sign up, a plaque on the produce mirrors that pleads something to the effect of: forgive our shortages, farm freezes, we’re working on it. Pshaw. I live in a country of bounty! Surely we will find another place for produce.

And then I went a Googling.

“A major freeze in Mexico earlier this month has resulted in a shortage across the U.S. of tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and other produce that could last until April and lead to higher prices at the grocery store. Supermarkets, distributors and restaurant chains are scrambling to find other sources for the items and to offer replacements. But the problem has been compounded by the fact that inclement weather has also hit other growing regions, like Florida and Texas, that would normally be able to make up for a supply interruption from Mexico.”

Yesterday I finally finished my read of The Omnivores Dilemma, and nodded in accordance of how, in any case, we should be eating seasonly—that is, the seasons of where we live, not the seasons of Chile or Mexico. It’s easy to agree with, but harder to incorporate when you’re just sort of used to things being there… and then they’re not. Though the freeze destroyed, according to one article I read, 60 percent of certain Mexican crops—and put a fragile economy in an even more fragile state—not having what we’re accustomed to having (or, what will probably be the case, having to pay seriously more for it) may be a helpful reminder of how fragile our food system really is… and how, despite its scope, weather still trumps industry.