The Angry Bus

July 26th, 2007 |

Am presently milling around Vancouver (though leaving ever so soon) - an experience I’ll post about later when I find myself berefit of all other activities (and let history show, this will happen). Anyway, I had to mention, of note, the fact that I just took a ride on the angriest bus of my life today in Downtown Vancouver. I am not a soft suburban bus-riding debutante having ridden on buses shrieking down the 1/4 lane highway in Vietnam replete with 5 people one seat, 4 of those people throwing up, and the back windshield (definitely not safety glass - only the jagged deadly kind, of course) flying out mid-journey. And no, I didn’t look behind onto the crowded, dusty road full of unprotected motorcyclists. Call me cold.
That being said, today’s bus ride was impressive given that, by the end of about 14 minutes on it, I had heard about 20 different people scream angrily for several different reasons, including transit fraud, slander associated with alleged transit fraud, general undirected anger and a minor catastrophe involving someone’s repeated inability to open the back door.

Oh, and someone told me to “take the drugs!” (although I suspect if I bothered to place that within its correct context that might be less random).

Love the bus. Highly amused. And here I thought the West Coast was laid back?

Bonus travel anecdote:
On an AirNZ flight:
hostess (handing out immigration forms): what nationality of passport are you travelling under?
me: Canadian
hostess: Great, so you’re a U.S. citizen
me: no, Canadian
hostess: right. Here’s the form for U.S. citizens
Apparently international travel has done nothing for this woman?

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what else is there to do?

July 16th, 2007 |

When not being midwifish - for example this week - I:
Am compulsive:
–> ate homeade chicken soup for 8 meals in a row. Not from one batch. Nor from one batch of groceries. ahem. Is it a bad sign when the cashier at the checkout notices you’ve bought the same ingredients twice in one week?
Am literary:
–> read several books, only one of which was on breastfeeding. So there (unless you count Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market as breastfeeding, which you really, really shouldn’t).
Am slothful:
–> 11 hours is a nice length of time to sleep. Plus the naps of course. Especially the ones in the bath. Prunily pleasant.

Am thwarted:

–> despite excellent attempts, my track record for re-selling uselessly expensive textbooks remains at universe: ad infinitum, me: 1. Furthermore, the one victory can’t even be enjoyed properly because it wasn’t my textbook; I just sold it to be spiteful (justified!).

Am productive:
–> so it appears you’re supposed to actually run those errands. Intriguing.

Am feverish:
–> if I knit all the wool I own into things, it will take up less space in my suitcase. Right?

Am pressured:

–> my lovely (male) relation claims “if you can convince me, i wont buy a gun”. Splendid, I needed something to get all soap-boxy and critical about in my time off.

Am irresponsible:
–> where is my cell phone? who knows! Why is there a giant daikon radish on the backseat of my car? probably because the creepy man at the grocery store suggested I buy it and I did so in an attempt to evade further conversation with him. . . he has white clown hair!

Am vastly complex and fascinating:
–> or, well, you know. . . I like to think my inner machinations are thusly. Ca va?

Ah, see. . .there is plenty else to do

even if it is all a little lacking in bodily fluids

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Unaccountable

July 5th, 2007 |

On June the 28th I stomped into my midwife’s kitchen after an all day induction (which had all the markings of doom and ended beautifully - humbling my cynical self nicely) and announced that June was officially over for me, because I refused to participate further in the nerve-grinding schedule it was throwing at me.
Since then, life has cooperatively lulled off and been an unremarkable series of cleaning, packing, sorting, paying bills, visiting the recently birthed and pilfering food from aforementioned kitchen (and the kitchens of her family).
Throw in a random Canadian visitor who hustled me off to the ‘big’ city of Wellington (half a million people, maybe?) - with the resultant effect being the number of shirts that actually cover the intended anatomy in my wardrobe doubling - and there’s two weeks going by.
Which is good. . . because I’m counting them.

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