An Ode to Red Tape

This entry is going to fall more into the portion of stuff that has nothing to do with the 39, since it has nothing to do with the 39.

I have been on hold for over one hour and 45 minutes with the Rhode Island Department of Motor Vehicles. Now granted, my latest call has only run 1 hour (and counting) and the other call was only about 45 minutes because I had to pee really badly and had to hang up, but all together, I've spent too much time hearing "Agents are still busy." Over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

I hate bureaucracy, not that anyone likes it, but I think I have a more acute aversion to it. I'm afraid of it. I don't know why. I'm afraid that I'm going to say the wrong thing or turn in the wrong documentation and end up as prisoner number 876337, whose only skill is wise cracking and drawing the occasional fancy prison tattoo, OR I'm going to be like one of those little old ladies who gets the $30,000 water bill. It's a very real fear.

My latest skirmish with the Powers that Be all started when I discovered that if you borrow someone's car (even rarely) you need to be on the car owner's insurance. Even if you're thinking of borrowing someone's car, you should be on their insurance. A little tip to any of you who borrow cars or even have a moment where you ponder it. I didn't think this would be an issue. I'm an upstanding citizen. I pay taxes. I vote. I don't litter (unless it's that cellophane that creates mad static cling and you have to vigorously shake your hand to get it off and when it does finally come off you don't dare touch it or the whole problem will start again). Yes, I'm basically a law abiding girl, but I have a penchant for driving fast. *Sigh* We all have our vices.

16 Hours Later (I'm picking up with this morning because I totally lost my train of thought when the RI DMV actually picked up after a grand total of 128 minutes on hold). I found out that my worst fears were realized. I am a transgressor. Actually, what occurred was a speeding ticket I got in New York state about 3+ years ago. I was only going 5 miles over the speed limit so the cop made it a seat belt violation. Yay speed traps! I send in my check thinking we're all good. Little did I know that Chatham County New York does not accept personal checks, only certified checks. My check was not applied to my infraction. NY state suspends my New York license (NB: I do not have a NY state drivers license, never have). They contact Rhode Island, who in turn suspends my RI drivers license. This falls into a grey period since in the time when all of this occurred, I moved to Massachusetts and procured my Mass license. RI never told Mass that I'm an evil rule breaker, nor did my car insurance folks put two and two together. Yes, my ONE perfect crime was my bamboozling the respective RMV/DMVs of two New England states and a member of the Tri-State triumvirate. Do I get murder? A bank heist? An elaborate money laundering scheme??? NO! I get what is the equivalent of running away from a cross-eyed gunman in a serpentine pattern to successfully avoid injury. The gunman will always get you though. When you least expect it, he'll be waiting.

So super long story short (don't you hate it when people do that after they've already told you the really long story??), NY wants a couple of bucks to clear it all up, but the kicker is that RI wants twice as much as NY because they are complete d bags. I respect the mafia (aka, the Rhode Island legislature), but I did not expect a shake down at the DMV. Federal Hill, Ronzio's Pizza, Buddy Cianci's, yes, shake downs are expected. Oh well, at least now I can say I've been wanted in two states.

Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds

Yes, I've done a horrible job entertaining you all this week. I've been busy, but mostly, I've been tired. I don't know if it's allergies or just the general "pack as much as possible into one month" sleepies. Either way, my caffeine consumption has gone up and my eyelids continue to move further and further down. It also may be the fact that I'm at work, which the very thought of makes me exhausted. Sometimes, when I'm on my way home, I find myself wanting to close my eyes and take a nap. Then I snap back to reality and realize that there's no way that I could fall asleep on the bus.

Now don't get me wrong, if you can fall asleep and feel comfortable, then far be it for me to tell you not to catch some shut eye. I am saying that I'm just totally not able to snooze in this setting. I have my reasons.

First, if I were to nap, I'd try and choose an ideal location. This location would be a window seat. A place to rest my head. Have any of you ever looked at a bus window? Aside from the grime coating the outside, there is almost aaalways a nice thick coat of head grease on the inside. Just looking at it makes me feel ookey. I realize that some people use leave-in conditioners and/or have severe oily face, but if I placed my head against a surface and left a hazy halo of oil and grime, I'd freak out and probably spend the rest of my life washing my hair. That being said, I never, NEVER, want my hair/head to come in contact with other's hair or face residue.

Second, I'm terrified that I'll fall asleep and miss my stop. I don't want to ride all the way to Forrest Hills. I try to avoid Forrest Hills as much as humanly possible. I don't "blend" well there and it's also not close to anything that I would ever need. When I hear on the news that someone was shot/stabbed at Forrest Hills, I always think "that could have been me if I'd fallen asleep and walked off the bus in a sleepy haze because the bus driver is telling me that it's the end of the line and she needs to take a pee break." I think this my fear of bus naps has kept me stabbing/shooting free for a while now.

Third, and most likely to actually occur, but least worrisome to me for some reason, is that someone might steal my stuff. I'd like to keep my wallet, mp3 player, and backpack. I don't trust bus riders. There's a scent of desperation that certain individuals give off. In most cases, these individuals also give off the scent of urine or b.o. so it's easy to spot them.

So no, I don't sleep on the bus. I remain hypervigilant to protect myself and my gear. I'm a responsible citizen.

Zero to Rage in 1.3 seconds

So yesterday I'm riding home. It's rainy and yucky. The bus is pretty crowded since school had just let out (see my list of grievances to view my opinion on school kids). We're at the stop just before mine, and since there's someone next to me, I figure that I'll wait until we actually get to my stop before I ask her to get up and let me out. We're at my stop, I get up walk to the door, which closes so fast that I would have had to have been pressing myself against it to get out in the first place (the one woman who did make it off was practically doing that). I yell, loudly, "REAR DOOR", bus speak for "Open the back door you ass. There are still people who need to get off." Not only do I yell, but the back half of the bus yells along with me, but nooooooooo. We're going to keep right on going to the next stop. The bus driver stops, but STILL doesn't open the back doors! We yell again, and finally he opens the door. The difficulty that I have is overcoming my desire to climb over the people on the bus, while swinging like a monkey from the poles and handles, so that I can grab the driver by the face and crush his head. Instead, I get off the bus, angrily, and trudge home in the rain. There's no justice here. It's simply me and my anger hopping on our Huffy and peddling home.

It took me a good 5 minutes to cool off. Not a very long time in retrospect, but still long enough to make me angry just thinking about it. I hate the bus.

A long days journey into another day

Yesterday kicked my ass. Less than 6 hours of sleep the night before (Damn you Biggest Loser!!! I wish Tara had won. Helen was skank thin.), and then I basically was going non-stop from the moment I got into work until the moment I left roughly 10 hours later. To make up for it, I'll give you THREE bus rides of fantasticness.

Ride #1: Rather uneventful. Bus showed up just as I arrived at the bus stop. One thing to note regarding bus stops. DON'T PARK IN A BUS STOP!!! Alright, I used to be a driver (still am on occasion) and I realize how frustrating it can be to look for a parking spot and not find one, but the bus stop is wide open, and you're only running in for a second, and there's no way that a bus will come in the next five minutes, so I'll turn my hazard lights on to signify my speedy errand and everyone knows that if I have my hazards on, it makes me immune to parking tickets. Yes, this is how I used to think and how many people still think, but let me tell you, now that I've looked at bus riding from both sides now, your car blocking the bus stop is both annoying and potentially dangerous as it leaves me with no choice but to step off the bus into oncoming traffic. That being said, the bus ride itself was fine. At the corner of Huntington and South Huntington a man got on. I say man because I'm pretty sure we weren't on Sesame Street. As far as I know, the 39 does not pick up there. He looked rather like this chap, but with dark hair. Other than that, not much happened.

Ride #2: After my long, busy day, I make my way to the bus stop. Again, I didn't have to wait long. There were open seats on the back bench and I sat next to the window. I don't really enjoy sitting there as you can easily get trapped and have to ask three people to move just to let you out while running the risk of hitting them with your bag or sticking your butt in their face. One or two stops from when I got on, on of the regular seats opened up (sans adjoiner). I get up and move to that. HORROR. I happen to look at the floor and there's something there. It's liquidy and milky in color. Luckily, I did not step in it. I'm going to assume it was yogurt because anything else will still give me the wiggins. Yes, I could have moved again, but I didn't want people around me to think I was a total freak and then go home and write a blog about it. So I spent the rest of my ride with my feet at a safe distance from this "yogurt". VILE, even it if was yogurt.

Ride #3: This morning again with the parking in the bus stop! Annoying. I sit down on the bench to wait for the bus, listen to my mp3 player (I don't have an iPod), and drink my coffee. This little man walks by and sits down on the bench next to mine. I know him. I refer to him as "The Whistler." Now there's very little that I find more annoying than whistling and humming when it's quiet. It fills me with rage. I'm not overexagerating. I want to punch people in the face to make them stop. As he walked by, I thought to myself, "I swear to all that is holy, if he starts whistling today, I'm going to lose my shit." It was as if he could sense my thought and miraculously didn't even pucker once. Once the bus arrived, I checked the floor to make sure I wasn't stepping in anything and I enjoyed my quiet ride watching some poor guy in the pivot seat with a tissue jammed up his nose and his head titled back. He looked as if he was about to pass out, but would move every now and then.

I'm very sorry about what appears to be a very rough start to your day bloody nose man. I hope it gets better. Here's hoping that today isn't as difficult as yesterday.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes

Fear. We all have moments where we feel the creeping sensation that something is not right. Our primal instincts kick in and fight or flight begins to dictate our actions. What do we humans do? How do we reconcile that which is ingrained in our DNA and the behavior that modern society expects from us? The answer to that, my kittens, is we become obsessive compulsive. We check and recheck to make sure that whatever stalks us in the misty morning air will not catch us unaware. No matter how civilized we say we have become, we will never shake that fear of being devoured by the unknown. This unknown that I fear on a daily basis is sitting down on a urine soaked bus seat.

Yes, urine is insidious. It hides in the fabric covered seats of the 39. The fabric was chosen to mask stains and filth so that it is more aesthetically pleasing to the rider. Woe on them who did not see that I NEED to see the filth. I NEED to know that there is something THERE. Alas, I can never tell.

Now I can see all of you thinking "Can't you smell it? Urine has a very distinctive scent." You are all correct, BUT urine, when still wet, does not emit a scent (unless you eat asparagus or curry, which, frankly, explains a lot). The odor only occurs when the urea dries and becomes oxidized releasing ammonia. So the lack of smell compounded with the hide-everything fabric creates a situation that makes me OCD.

Here's what happens. I walk on the bus and look first for an empty seat without anyone in the adjoining seat. If I find said seat, I do a visual check. If there are no seats sans adjoiners, I'll take the available seat, still doing the visual check. Now, I've sat down. Temperature variances play tricks with your butt. Sometimes the seat is cool and this prompts me to boost myself up a bit and feel the seat underneath. No, I don't want to put my hand in urine, but I'd rather know. Sometimes I'll check two or three times, just to make sure. I try and avoid seats where paper has been put down. Yes, it may just have been put there for no reason, but it may also be hiding something. Something sinister. I also avoid stains, if at all possible. They're just yucky on principle.

So, I have yet to actually fall prey to the pee seat. Vigilance is key. But I will never shake the fear of sitting in the seat that will bring my fears to light. If you see me on the bus with my hand feeling underneath me, just nod and know that I'm not a pervert or freak, but just a prepared bus rider trying to avert a crisis.

The bus has smelled of fish before...

So this morning was rather uneventful but for one incident with a lure. On my way to the stop, I missed one bus, but luckily it was 7:45am, which means that there will be another in roughly 5 minutes (Unless it's Marathon Monday and then it runs on a Saturday schedule. I <3 Boston.). I know I missed it because no matter which stop I choose, I can always see the bus drive by. The bus I'll never be on, the one that got away.

Once on the bus, I almost caught my leg on a fish hook. Yes, a fish hook. The kind you use to catch big fish with a fake worm on the end of it. It was attached to a fishing pole. I guess some Rastafarian man (for real, dreads and all) figured that today would be the day that he'd finally catch the big one. I'm sure that there's a legend of something that lives at the bottom of Jamaica Pond. It's most likely an old Buick Skylark with a body inside though. (Ha! Rastafarian fishing at Jamaica Pond... it's destiny.)

I do have to say that it was eerily empty. I find it disconcerting when this occurs. I always wonder if there's a holiday that I don't know about. "I saw Whitey Bulger Day" or "Talk like Mumbles Menino Day". Sadly, no, I still had to work.

The poetic justice of it all was that the bus I missed was so packed full of people that my bus, the bus where I had my own seat, the bus where no one smelled of urine, eventually caught up to it. I believe it may be a good day after all.

If it had been full of water with alien pods, it might have been Coccoon

You lucky people, you get Two entries today.

I'm just getting home after leaving early on a Friday. What? I did my time, and lo how I paid for it in bussage. It takes forever for the bus to arrive between the hours of 10 and 3. I think it runs on a schedule of one every three days. So it finally arrived and I stepped on only to find it 375 degrees (fahrenheit, 190 degress celsius, 463 Kelvin). The heat was on FULL BLAST. I could feel the dry, hot air burning my face. My contacts were curling up in my eyes and my knee pits were sweating. It's 72 degrees outside (I'm not converting this time). There is NO NEED for heat. No one could get the windows to crack. It was brutal. The best part was listening to everyone around me bitch about how hot it was. If it had been possible, I would have grabbed my coat out of my backpack and put it on. Then I would have complained about how cold it was and that maybe I should ask the driver to turn up the heat. Alas, this was impossible as I don't want to vomit from heatstroke.

On another note, the other fun thing about taking the bus in the early afternoon is that it's old people on the bus time. See, the 39 goes right past the VA Hospital. It goes past several other hospitals, but I the VA stop provides the best old people watching. This is why I usually sit in the back. It's clearly posted that the front seats are reserved for the elderly and disabled. I also don't want to be responsible for providing life saving measures if something happens to them. Now don't get me wrong, I will help in an emergency, but the bus is just not where I want to do any of the following: mouth to mouth, kneeling on the floor, touching the floor with anything other than the bottoms of my shoes, have people watch me with mouths agape, mouth to mouth, etc. I wonder if they turn the heat up on purpose because they know it's old people on the bus time. It makes sense. All the old people were wearing coats. There just might be a method to the madness.

My list of grievances

So I didn't ride the bus this morning. My lovely lady gave me a ride. Fridays are hard people. It was really hard to wake up. I was dreaming that I had two alarm clocks and they were alternating in going off. I'd hit the snooze on one and 9 minutes later the other would go off. I woke up confused. Looking back, that sounds like a bad dream.

Aaanyway, since nothing happened this morning, I thought I'd share my thoughts on some bus-related things that I deal with on a regular basis. AKA, my list of grievances.

1. There are no single seats on a bus. There are two seats per row, unless you're in the way back and then there's five. If you sit in the aisle seat leaving the window seat available, DO NOT be pissed when I ask to sit down. I like to sit just as much as you do. Just be thankful that I don't hover over you awkwardly allowing my bag to whack you in the head with each lurch of the bus.
a. In relation to the above issue, do me and you a favor and pick your fat ass up off the seat to let me sit down. As much as you don't want me shoving my ass in your face or hitting you in the head with my bag, I want it EVEN LESS. Although I do feel a bit of poetic justice when it happens.

2. This is similar to point number 1. When in a seat and the bus is crowded, YOUR BAG DOES NOT DESERVE A SEAT OF IT'S OWN!! Don't be pissed when I ask you to hold your bag on your lap so that I can sit down. It makes me think less of you as a person.

3. If there are open seats, where neither of the seats in the row are taken, sit in those. Don't sit next to me. I don't like it.

4. School kids. Aren't there School Buses? I know there are! I get stuck behind them on a regular basis. Then why, oh why, must the bus be packed with kids, who act just as retarded as they would on an actual school bus. (Yes, retarded. I was one of those kids. The school bus was where you acted like a caged animal finally set free and dared other kids to snort Fun Dip powder.) After working all day, I really don't care that Kaylie's parents are going out of town and that Jackson has some friends who can go over to her house and move all the furniture into Kaylie's parent's bedroom. This way she can have the most kick-ass house party! The only issue left to figure out is whos' older brother will buy them beer. Yes, this might prove difficult.

5. People with baby carriages. When did baby carriages become HUGE? Seriously, the other day I saw one that had more gadgets then a car. Do you actually need to carry all that crap for your kid. Sometimes I wonder if there's actually a baby in there. How would I know? Maybe you're just a freak who likes to pretend and take up the space of three people. Do they even make umbrella strollers anymore? Classy, sophisticated, and portable. Again, DON'T GIVE ME A DIRTY LOOK WHEN I TRY AND GET PAST YOU AND YOUR GIANT STROLLER.

I think that's good for the moment. There are more, but I'll share them for a later date.

I’m a better person because I ride the bus

At least that's what I tell myself so that I don't cry. (You know you wanna be me) I also tell myself I'm saving the environment by riding the bus and that Chinese take-out isn't bad for me. We've all been on a bus (I think), but there's a certain mystique about riding a city bus. I ride the 39, Boston's busiest bus route. Running from Forrest Hills to Back Bay, it takes you to just about any place in the city that you want to go, and many more places that you don't want to go. I've decided to chronicle my life as a bus rider because it would be a travesty to not share the kaleidoscope of experiences, observations, and smells (sadly that will only be descriptive).

The daily commute is nothing new. I've taken buses and trains and for a while I even commuted 110 miles a day. That sucked. Did you know that commuter trains don't have bathrooms? Did you know that the bathroom in Back Bay station is the only MBTA public facility I've ever used (and ever hope to use)? No, well, now you do. I currently work in an area where the very idea of driving to work (2.5miles) and parking ($300+ per month) is anathema. That and I don't have that kind of money... or a car, so moot point. From home to work and back again, the 39 is my super stretch limo to destiny, or at least to Copley where I can connect to another bus.

As far as this morning's commute goes, nothing especially entertaining happened. Nothing happened except for getting this brilliant idea to write what happens happened! I would like to dedicate this entry to the woman in the giantly oversized coat, who was sitting next to me. She was talking on her cell phone to her mother. Talking loudly (I'm sure I'll discuss cell phone usage in public at a later date). Normally I tune this stuff out, but I tuned in when she started talking about how she was "pocastinatin'." Really? Pocastinatin'?! REALLY?!? What is "pocastinatin'?" Is it playing castinettes while poor? Is the act of playing castinettes called castinating? This, my kittens, I do not know. All I know is that I spent the remainder of my ride mulling this over. I was entranced and nearly missed my stop. Thank God the stop announcement on the bus was broken making the bus driver have to yell the stops in a Tourette-like shriek, thus breaking me from my reverie. "Garble-ERKINS STR-garble."

So here's to you, giant coat, loud cell phone, made-up word lady. I hope people enjoy what you have inspired me to do.