Americanuck

After being a late band wagon jumper for “The Da Vinci Code” and more recently lovin’ on “Angels and Demons”, I figured I would allow myself to get sucked further into the Dan Brown vortex and read another one of his novels “Deception Point.”

I’m happy to report, so far so good! I mean so far so good that I went so far so bad and missed my train stop coming home tonight because I was so absorbed! About a good 25 seconds AFTER the train pulled out of my station I started coming back to reality and realized that the train was climbing up a hill. There t’aint no hills on my way home. Dammit!

Feeling pretty stupid I got off at the next stop and waited for a train going the other direction.

THANKS A LOT DAN!

Yet here we go again, more crappy weather on the wet coast

The lake forming outside our front entry way

Bad weather seems to encourage idiots to drive even worse I swear. It’s been crazy wet lately and there was another extreme weather warning this morning so I decided to be a nice Mommy and drive the kids to school/work. Normally I’m hell and gone by that time in the morning, but as I’m off work this week I couldn’t really lay all comfy in bed without a smidge of guilt knowing they would be drenched and/or blown away by the wind. Yeah I rock.

Just before we are set to leave Sean brings in his backpack with a stuck zipper once again. They have these flaps that cover the zipper which are I’m sure there to help stop any leaks through the zipper on days like this, but really all it’s been good for is getting goddam stuck in the teeth of the zipper leaving the backpack partially open, hence negating the usefulness of said flap. After spending five minutes trying to pry the cloth out of the zipper I took scissors to it and cut the friggin thing off. Fixed! I told Sean if it leaks it’s HIS problem because if he just held the flap aside when zipping instead of zipping in haste this wouldn’t have happened. Of course I’m talking to deaf ears.

So we head off and I end up in a longggg line of parents dropping their kids off. Sweet! We snake our way through, drop off Sean with a reminder to hand in the note to his teacher about tomorrows braces appt and to PLEASE ensure he talks to the teachers of the classes he missed last week to make sure he’s all caught up on anything he may have missed and rejoin the line-up. This time of course to try and get out of the friggin parking lot.

I drop Chris off at the A&W because he still has about a half hour to kill before his shift (and I wasn’t making two trips dammit!) and turn around to come home. By this time it’s pouring and the wind is howling. As I’m passing the school going the other way a Kamakazi parent comes FLYING out of the parking lot to make a left turn right into the lane I’m in as they see the traffic coming at them from the left is momentarily clear but not necessarily noticing that I’m yanno, IN the lane going the direction they want to go in and cut me off. They notice at the last minute that I’m coming at them and slam their brakes on and put themselves into a nice semi-spin/skid. All I can say is thank goodness for periferal vision and survival instincts. I coulda T-boned that car easy and that spin could have taken me out had I not had a chance to slow down and move over. The woman obviously shaken straightens out and keeps on driving not looking over at me at all even though I’m REALLY trying to make eye contact. Stupid cow.

On another note I heard as I got up this am that there was an earthquake that spurred a Tsunami warning that was even for our coast. Crazy. Glad that turned out to be a non-issue, especially for those closer to the actual earthquake. Bad enough to deal with an earthquake.

Today was just weird. You ever have those days when everything just seems that little bit off? I mean nothing mindblowingly awful just things kept causing me to pause and shake my head vigorously.

It started out normal. I reluctantly got out of bed after laying in my normal 5 - 8 minute state of denial that it’s morning, showered, make-up on, blow dried my hair, patted the clingy cat, went out the door and locked up.

I got about one step away and my little OCD alarm went off and I had to unlock the door and check to see that I’d unplugged the iron. Check. Iron unplugged.

I left with still a nagging feeling, something I couldn’t put my finger on, that is until I got to the train. I hadn’t done my burner check last night before I went to bed.

Ok an aside, my logical mind knew that if the thing had been on all night I would have noticed. The irrational part of my mind went “Oh sure Belinda, you think that is the case but maybe, just maybe, it’s too low to notice”. Maybe I’m being paranoid?

So when Tom woke up and emailed me at work I asked him to check. The dear, he checked. Am I being dumb? Absolutely. Does he make me feel dumb, not in the least. The love.

That wasn’t the ‘off’ stuff though.

It’s been raining so much here in the last few days I’m thinking it’s time to build an ark and find the boys some girlfriends. There is some serious puddleage enough in some places where I think the puddles are plotting to swallow my car.

I was turning off our cross street onto the main drag heading towards the train and noticed rather at the last minute that the right turn lane was now a small lake. Not good. I tried to drive through it as slowly as possible and spent the remainder of the drive in slalom mode avoiding both puddles and other drivers coming into my lane avoiding their hungry puddles. The rain had eased off a bit so it was more or less just regular rain not the crazy downpours of the previous evening/night.

I got to skytrain, parked my car and the minute I walked outside the wind picked up and it started pouring again. The rain came in sideways and soaked me. So much for blow-drying my hair straight eh?

At first I’m standing, no seats are available, so I lean against the wall and start reading. After a few stops a seat opens up and I grab it. That’s when I noticed people were kind of stealing glances at me and looking away. I’m thinking “okay…what is that all about” I’m checking to see if, I dunno my bra is showing, something is stuck to me.. then I caught my reflection in the window. The ride side of my hair had changed direction laying both simultaneously flat and kind of upwards. I tried to play it cool by sloooowly patting it down. Who was I fooling, they noticed, there was no cool. One older fellow smiled and nodded once my hair was once more pointing south. Gawd.

I get to work and try to do the 100 yard dash from the station building to my building without getting wet but no dice. I’m trying to cross the road while I’ve got the walk sign and three assholes turn left in my path because they don’t have cars coming the other direction. I’m yelling “What the FUCK!” by the time the last guys is turning. He kind of shrugs and waves at me. I should have kicked their cars. Straight hair was now official curly. Ech.

I get in the elevator push my floor and the door closes but elevator stays put. Door opens again and the person getting in is surprised to see me. They push their floor, I push mine and after a funny look in my direction the elevator moves. I don’t bother to explain.

All day I walk around with a vague feeling that something is off.

I head home on the train, get to my car and start driving out of the lot. I need to merge with the traffic heading up the hill so I went to glance in my right side mirror and all I can see is my car. WTF? It’s like someone had pushed my mirror housing in. It was too late to do anything about it I was committed so I adjusted the mirror with the auto settings as far as I could and kept driving.

When I got to our place I called Sean to come out so I could drive him to his Father’s and while I was waiting I checked and sure enough someone had folded in my mirror. First of all I didn’t know they could do that. It was too dark to see if any damage was done to my car but it doesn’t appear so. Better not be I tell ya, Freddy’s my baby.

So on the way back I stop at the grocery store, talk to the guy beside me who was admiring my car and comparing it to his Toyota (he was thinking of buying his Son a Mazda 3 and had never seen one side by side with his car). I think I all but had him convinced to keep the M3 and give his Son the Toyota. All I can say is, dayum, lucky Son!

I drive up to our underground, press the remote and nothing happens. The people standing in the visitors lot glance over and kept talking. So I turn around and try the other gate. I’m thinking to myself surely it CAN’T be the remote I just changed the battery! Nope. Wrong. Bzzzzz. The other damn gate won’t open.

I park on the street and carry my groceries down the ramp towards the garage and ask the guy standing there if he knows if there is a problem with the gate. “Nope. Nothing wrong with the gate!” he says “Maybe it’s your battery”. “No it can’t be I just changed it” I said. The lady with him to prove his point presses her remote and up the gate goes. DAMN! “Maybe it’s your battery” she says helpfully.

I smile and walk away muttering to myself. Come upstairs and drop the groceries. No damn way I’m leaving my car on the street overnight.

I pull the back off, remove the batteries, blow on the contact and replace them in a different order. I stalked downstairs and pressed the button. The gate went up no problem. The cosmos are messing with me alright. I walked out of the gate pointed at it and said “Okay gate, I’m going to get my car now, you had better work when I get back because I’m SERIOUSLY not in the mood for you to jack me around.” The gate worked. Not sure if I scared it silly or it’s just pissed at my ‘tude and going to try and trap me in the garage when I need to leave for work tomorrow morning.

Yeah, maybe I’m just being paranoid.

To begin, I would be remiss not to mention plumber Tom has fixed the gushing dribbling dishwasher drain hose, and according to him WITHOUT the need to make a drip to Home Despot. Way to go honey!

He was also telling me about his trip home on the train today which involved an post-post-adolescent punk (a weirdo guy somewhere in his 30’s) trying to OPEN the door of the train while it’s moving. Nice. He had to play stern Tom saying to the guy basically “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” and yanno, “stop that!” A few other guys on the train stood up to show commuter solidarity against the nutcase.

He was telling me that the guy mumbled to himself after he finally pulled his hand out of the opening he had managed to force the doors to and he later realized the man sounded a lot like Popeye. He said fortunately that factoid didn’t hit him until after he left the train because laughing at a nutcase doesn’t usually result in happy endings.

It made me think of one of my own weirdo experiences many moons back with a drunk older guy who I had nicely offered my seat to when I saw him kind of staggering onto the train (better to contain drunks I say than let them roll around unrestrained in a moving vehicle lest one get barfed on or something) and he just went OFF on me mumbling shit I couldn’t understand and then saying he hates all people like me and called me a “Fucking Iraqi” (his words not mine) Now, I’m just about as close to the cartoon of Snow White as a real human can get so not sure what he’d been drinking..

Anyway the guy proceeded to manhandle me, pulling on my jacket and shoving me while screaming all kinds of racial slurs and everyone in the train kept their eyes sharply averted. This went on until the next stop when a really tall burly guy got on, saw what was happening and told the guy to back off. When the doors opened he said “Tap your heels together Dorothy, you’re going home” and basically pushed him off the train onto the platform and the doors shut behind him.

I thanked my hero and he asked if I was ok, then of course all the cowards on the train who didn’t want to ‘get involved’ during the incident expressed their concern and one person told me they had pushed the security strip to summon help, of course nobody actually got on the train to check things out by the time I got off a few stops later.
Most of the time the rides are incident free, but it’s moments like these that I miss being a single occupancy vehicle polluter.

On the way home tonight I watched a girl make the mistake of making eye contact with a weirdo on the train. At first I thought maybe she knew him but then I realized he started the talking she just kind of played along being nice. She tries making idle conversation with him and he managed to turn every innocuous thing she say into something suggestive. I think the winner though had to be this one:

Her: I can’t wait until the rapid transit is finished between the airport and downtown, then you can go all the way round Richmond and back downtown.

Him: Hey I loved to go all the way with you. I can’t help it I speak my mind.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence and then she got off the next stop (whether planned or not I don’t know). She decides to say bye to him and say see you around have a nice day.

He tells her he wished he could see her around and “I love you!” and grabs and kisses her hand.

Then the freak sits next to me turns and smiles. I glower at him and put my nose back in my book.

He makes cooing noises like a pigeon until the next stop and finally gets off.

I so love taking public transit.