02:34 - 04.10.07
Manifestation
People on the trains and busses have been really cranky lately. A good part of that is probably the severe overcrowding. Up close and personal in someone else's armpit isn't all that conducive to really exquisite manners. One of the manifestations of impatience is in exiting the vehicles. On the first bus I take there is very little room left even for standing by the time I get on. Some of the people sitting on the benches are so impatient that I have been hip-checked and shouldered out of their way as I stand hanging by one arm - the injured one - to the strap that barely allows one to stay upright as the bus sways around corners and curves in the road at what feels like 100 miles an hour. Since I am already standing and planning to exit at the same time I don't think it would hurt to let me move toward the exit first would it?
On the train the opposite scenario plays out. I usually am in a window seat getting on the first train station on the route - those benches that face backward to boot. By the time we reach my stop downtown most often the people in the aisle seat have or are moving out the door to get to their daily place of grind. The last couple of days that hasn't been the case. Yesterday the woman refused to move at all. Oh do you have to get out?? Well yes I do. I had been preparing to move - shutting up and storing the newspaper I was reading and tidying up my gear a stop ahead - so it wasn't a big surprise since the woman watched as I did so. Oi. This morning there was a nice looking but very tall man sitting beside me. When I asked if I could please get out, he responded by pulling his knees closer to the seat. Although flattering that he thought I was that skinny, I wasn't about to slide across his lap - the only option available at that moment - to get to the aisle. Next up he slid his knees around to the aisle, apparently thinking that would give me enough room to move. If we had been sitting in a two-bench configuration it would have worked, but we were in the two seater high backed chairs that don't give any room to move from the window seat unless the aisle seat is empty. As I've mentioned I have lost weight, now fitting into clothes I haven't been able to wear since the summer of 2004, and have tighened up somewhat due to running after an 18 month old up four flights of steep stairs for the past month, but that still doesn't give me the svelte figure of those size one models on the fashion runways. That's the size one would have to be to squeeze through the space allowed in those two-seater benches. The one consolation was that I got to sit behind one of the most striking males I have seen in a long time in the next bus on my journey. Probably in his 30's with a mane of chestnut hair that suggested maybe an orchestra conductor, dapper pin striped suit jacket and jeans. Just very tall and cool looking as he perused his newspaper. Well it doesn't take much to amuse me that time of day. I guessed that maybe he was a prof at the one college served by that route but hard to know.
My grand-daughter still wasn't feeling well so it was a cuddling, "read-me-stories" type of day. Fine by me. The parcel I had called about was gone when I arrived at their door. One good deed accomplished any way. Ther had been a request for a reference for one of the women who had worked for me the past couple of elections so I called that business and gave her as good a recommendation as I could. That felt good too. Left a message for the one agency that had requested an interview by email. No call back yet though. There was another spooky incident around 4 in the pm. Footsteps sounding as though they were in the kitchen two flights up. I decided to ignore them and just stay sitting, because no one was due home for a couple of hours. However, my grand-daughter went running for the stairs calling "who's there?". It wasn't just my imagination. I grabbed the phone and followed her up the stairs but there was no visible entity in that kitchen or elsewhere either. The doors were still locked from the inside. I checked the whole house but didn't find anyone else - thankfully. I'm guessing my son thinks I'm crazy, but my granddaughter acted of her own accord and she can't be accused of developing Alzheimer's yet.
On the way home the oddest storm we've seen in a while. It was too cold for it, but the sky had that thick, cloudy, greeny-brown look of a tornado sky. The rain, sleet, hail, thunder and purple lightning started a few blocks from my son's home becoming more intense the closer to my home we got. Right under the flight path of the big planes thank you very much. As we approached the last leg of our journey there appeared a small hole in those very thick storm clouds. Inside the sky was a brilliant deep blue and it appeared as though the white clouds contained in that gap were pouring out and over the black and green clouds ringing it. Wish I'd had a camera. When the weatherman talked about the strangeness later he said that it was the result of two big low weather fronts duking it out over my community. One front rotating clock-wise was directly from the Arctic - icy cold winds. The second low front rotating counter-clockwise was from the Pacific regions aroi=und Hawai'i. Looked like gears clashing in the time lapse photos. At least the meteorologist didn't tell me it was all in my head, eh.
Anyway I have a cat stomping on my keyboard so I think I'll take the hint and sign off before she jettisons the whole entry. Good night dear diary.
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