Tuesday, April 16, 2013

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.

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