Square peg round hole?

Dear travelers,

When trying to manage luggage on public transportation, please check whee the elevators and escalators are in advance. Holding up everyone while you try to drag two suitcases down the narrow stairwell to the LIRR platform is not very polite. Not to mention the feet you trample on and the hideous thumping noises your luggage makes as you trample down the steps.

And it makes me want to explode your heads with my mind powers and rescue those poor innocent suitcases from your abuse.

No love,

Me.

Glaceau fruit water

"Tasty bubbles, zero calories."

And nasty fake sweetener aftertaste. I'm not falling for that again.

How Things Get Worse

So after I posted the entry earlier about the LIRR, I am fairly certain that LIRR then conspired with other evil entities to vividly demonstrate that things can in fact get worse.

Can things be worse than an hour playing kneesies with a stranger?

Oh yes.

Sit back dear reader and listen (err...read) my tale of woe.

It begins yesterday when vixen!grandma (and yes she is a vixen - just ask those Nazis that she shot when she was fourteen) called one of those NYC agencies that provide transport to people with Medicare to make a reservation for vixen!grandpa's appointment with his doctor in Manhattan today.

Now while grandma is in fact a vixen and her English skills are kind of functional face to face, they're only as functional as you'd expect from someone who came to America in her 60's ((if you didn't know, vixen!family moved to the US from Ukraine some decades ago). So she waited on hold for a half hour to get a Russian speaker (if you didn't know, Ukrainian expats mostly speak Russian, because, USSR) in order to book the reservation. But she is patient and wily and she got her way. Or so we thought.

Today, dear reader, your very own delightful narrator went to go with grandpa to the doctor. We're all much happier when he doesn't go places alone. Sure, he shot lots of Nazis in his youth but it's been a few years since then.

Anyway, here I was, expecting a transport at 11:30am so we could get to the doctor before the 1:45pm appointment. These transports tend to take on multiple passengers so we build in time.

But...

11:30 goes by. 11:40 goes by. 11:50 goes by. I hear faint cackling in the distance. LIRR, is that you?

We call the transport. The transport says, no dice, the agency never gave us a reservation. We call the agency. Magically after I give them the information I get put on a verrrrry looooong hold. So either they forgot me or they done screwed something up and are frantically trying to fix it. It was the latter, just for the record. They found it, the transport is coming around 12:30 and everything should be okay.

The transport company calls and confirms too = 12:30-12:45.

Okay no problem. It's going to be a little tight but we are a vixenish family. We can totally handle that. See, Nazis.

Well... 12:30 comes and goes. 12:40 comes and goes. 12:50 comes and goes. The cold feeling of fate begins to stroke my back in reassuring, soothing lines - don't worry, vixen, you're screwed, no sense in trying now. Erm, thanks, fate? Love you too? Go kick someone else in the shin?

Yeah. No. We finally get on the transport at 1pm. Now we're down to less than an hour and there are three other people in the van. No, this is okay, we can do this! We can! Because, Nazis!

Then the van starts wandering around Brooklyn. To be honest? I have no idea where we went to drop off those people, I just know it was out of the way. The argument the driver had with the passenger who wanted to be dropped at the door did not help. The time spent on that took longer than the actual drive to drop her where she wanted. Efficiency fail? Oh you ain't seen nothing yet, beb. Nothing at all.

It is now 1:30. Remember, that appointment we had? Yeah, in fifteen minutes and we're still in Brooklyn. As I call the doctor's office and beg them prettily to take us half an hour late - the driver's estimation of our ETA - and they generously tell me to get here before 3pm just when the driver gets a call from dispatch. And dispatch? Yeah, an evil minion of LIRR. And fate. No no don't go to the highway, go local and pick up that other passenger. It would be more efficient. OH FICKLE EFFICIENCY!

For the record? Not efficient at all.

We finally pick up the passenger and off we go. Slowly. Like molasses. Slooooowly running down the table. Actually I'm pretty sure molasses are faster. Every red. EVERY GODDAMN RED.

Let me remind you = we have to be at the office before 3pm. Or all this suffering is for naught. FOR NAUGHT!

And then, I begin to detect a strange smell. A strange awful smell. And the driver turns around and goes, what is that smell? That strange awful smell?

Well, dear readers, let me tell you what that strange awful smell was: the new passenger found some delightfully fresh dog excrement with her foot. And then shared it with the floor of the van. Which shared that smell with all of us. Injury? Insult? LIRR? You decide.

All I can tell you it was about an hour with that smell lingering in the transport and my soul slowly withering away. But we did make it to the doctor's office before 3pm - 1 minute before 3pm.

Yes. Watch out, LIRR. Watch out. Because, Nazis.

Middle is mediocre?

Dear lirr,

I'm not sure what you were trying to do with those middle seats in the all blue trains. Give both facing seats in every car via inept engineering? Provide togetherness for groups? Enforce love and peace for strangers?

I don't know.

What I do know is that, while those seats are perfectly fine for people who know each other, for everyone else it is an extremely awkward way to get close to someone in a way they couldn't do without sharing womb space.

I am only child for a reason.

I don't like bumping feet and knees for an hour with a person I have never met and never will meet again. I mean they didn't even buy me dinner first! And here we are interlocking legs.

And maybe, lirr, you're into that. That's okay. I support your right to define your own sexuality.

But I'm married. So I'd like to keep my sexual favors to my husband.

Thank you.

Displeased vixen

Spring Madness

It's baseball season and the Mets haven't keeled over yet. (They will of course cause the Mets suck.) This means there is a lot of baseball talk in my house. Mostly my darling husband talking to the baseball players on tv as if they can hear it. 

As you can all imagine I am getting Metsed out. Actually I usually start the season Metsed out and then fall off a Mets cliff. No Mets is too little Mets for me.

So of course there I was in Kings County Court when I overheard: "...as a Mets fan..." NO FELLOW ATTORNEY! NO! I am safe nowhere! NOWHERE!

Train

Dear mta,

I get that rails break and shit happens. So I don't blame you for the fact that my train could be up to 40 minutes late.

What I do blame you for is randomly switching another train to my track, which you then didn't move out until it was four minutes late. This means that not only was my train coming into the station at the last minute and thus would be pulling out late but you are also making me wait outside for ten finger chilling minutes.

I specifically waited in the car until the train pulled into the correct track. And it was the wrong train!

No love mta. No love.

I hope your office heat breaks down so you can enjoy your cold bits like I am right now.

And a pox upon your house. A mild but itchy pox.

Vixen

My eyes...

Today in Penn station I saw a woman pushing a dog in a stroller.

That is all.

Appropriate Court Wear? Hah!

Dear fellow attorney lady,

I know. The courts are stuck in the 80s and those suits are so so stuffy when you have to wear them every day. And let's not even go on about the high heeled shoes we are for some reason expected to wear. 

Yeah I too remember being told in law school that women should be wearing skirt suits, heels and pearls to interviews and court. Because, it's the 80s. Or maybe the 60s. But definitely not the modern era where women can wear pants and flats. Because the court system sucks that's why.

However.

All this sexism aside, a bright blue skirt that was gently tip toeing into mini-skirt land and cowboy boots, no matter how demure the blazer they were matched with, are just not okay.

I don't even know what you were trying to do there. But don't do it again.

With love,

Vixen [who also sometimes wishes to wear outlandish things to court... BUT NEVER DOES!]

And for a bonus:

Kudos lady who I am pretty sure is not a lawyer. Your ensemble of sweatpants and uggs in court was just breathtaking. Keep up the crazy work.

Train games

Dear MTA,

You suck.

Today you made me miss the LIRR in the most pointlessly asinine way.

First you sent by two trains in the opposite direction and none in the direction I needed for about fifteen minutes. I was sure I was sunk. Then the train came and went express, which cruelly gave me hope.

Alas then the train broke down the stop before mine. However, instead of letting the passengers switch to the other train that stopped in, your idiot conductors kept the doors closed. And they played with those doors for ten minutes,  losing all of that gained time and missing my LIRR line by minutes.

If I choke you that might in fact be too good for you.

No love,

Cranky vixen who has to wait an hour for the next train 

(Post written weeks and weeks ago. Blogger fail.)

Shoe abuse

Here is a not so secret confession.

I have a shoe problem. No matter how many I have, I always want more. And I play favorites. Because shoes are not created equal.

So yeah shocker secondary confession, I judge other people's shoes. You guys know that.

But today... today my vision went dark.

What is seen cannot be unseen...

I admit that my position on uggs is that of general disfavor.

But today. Today.  Oh today...

Today I saw an attorney in a courtroom in an attractive dark suit, neatly arranged hair and... uggs.

Honey. Oh honey. Not okay.

I know it's colder than the proverbial witch's tit (which is frankly bizarre and makes no sense) but that is not only hideous but also not appropriate.

But it's okay. After court we can have a liquid lunch so I can cope with my trauma and go shoe shopping. Because shoes.

Stupid people everywhere

(Written 1/17 posted late)

This morning I was stuck on a train that sounded like a busy cafe. Yes. At 7am. Diediedie. Wear gags. Die.

Now I'm stuck across the aisle from a chronic sniffler who is making no effort to do anything about her little noise maker. She had plenty of time to stop for elevensies* but picking up a box of tissues for a clearly runny nose was apparently out of the question.

I know. I know! If I had patience and tolerance with humanity's stupid,  I would be a perfect human specimen and the universe is encouraging me on that path.  But really.  I don't need to be perfect. I'm fine the way I am.

*Please note that it is 11am ish so it is time for elevensies and she got on the train with at least ten minutes to spare. I was making a logistical point not food shaming. And actually I'm kinda hungry so maybe if she shared I would want to kill her less.

Train pirates

Between you and me,  I hate people begging on the train. Whether it's straight up begging or begging disguised as performance art-usually not good art, it's basically taking your audience captive.  And since you never know if the person really needs money or is making good cash from this gig... giving in is mostly a sucker's game.

But whatever.  These are the things a city dweller must live with.

What really makes me peevish though is this - if the train is making an overhead announcement about the route changes, why oh why can't these people shut the Hell up long enough for the passengers to listen? 

Believe me if you weren't getting money from me before you drowned out important travel info,  you are sure not getting it now.  You might however get a black eye.