Last Updated on: 17th February 2017, 04:20 pm
I don’t know why I’ve never put this song up, but the way yesterday went down makes it feel like a fitting soundtrack.
Still I think he had a worse day than me, but I’ll continue with the story.
I had to take Tansy to the vet because she’s been coughing and hacking and making noises that make me think she’s going to harf. They had to make me a special appointment because they were super booked up…and they made the spot at 9:20 in the morning.
I don’t know what it is about getting there, but *every* time, I end up getting there late. The buses are great, but they’re a bit wonky about when they come. They arrive on the hour and half-hour until they don’t, etc. and since I have to ride this bus for a good while, it makes things nice and complicated. Taking a cab is expensive, so I don’t do it a whole heap.
So…I decided to get creative. There’s an express bus that gets within a mile of the vet’s. I figured I’d just take the express, which comes more frequently, then walk the mile to the vet’s. It would be great exercise, we’d learn stuff, and it would be an all-round awesome idea.
But I missed the bus I wanted to take, so wound up taking the 7…which takes ever so slightly longer to get there. I tried to change buses downtown to catch an express, but they didn’t think that would get me there any faster. We had a big conversation about where I was going and where I would get off, etc. This becomes important.
So I sat back down, resigned to the fact that I screwed up my brilliant plan. Then I heard it. “Next stop, Uptown Waterloo.” This is my stop, and they’ll stop here because they always stop here, and the driver knows I want off here so I don’t have to pull the…what the hell? We’re moving! We’re not stopping!
So I get up and ask if we’re stopping at Uptown Waterloo…and it’s a different driver! Aaa! She says they usually stop there without question, but nobody was there and nobody pulled the bell. Arg. So she let me off at the next stop.
So now I figured I’m committed to walking it because if I wanted to call a cab, where would I call it to? Somewhere on King and something or other? That’ll work? So I got out my GPS, plotted a course, and off we went.
Aside: Hey Google Maps, can ya please give me more than “Head east”? A cross street would be friggin amazing.
So I’m trucking down King Street. At one point I get to the corner of King and Princess, and this is my soundtrack,
along with cursing people for not believing in sidewalk-shoveling. This is goddamn King! Why am I having to stop and wonder if I’m still on the sidewalk?
And about that trusty GPS part…it’s part of my phone, and inexplicably, yesterday, it turned off and refused to turn back on. In the cold. On this route I don’t know. Yes the battery was full.
That is frightening. My phone, which I can use to make calls, call a cab, check where I am, decided na, I’m done for now.
And of course, there were no pedestrians around. One guy ran by me, but didn’t notice me calling out. I’m going to hope he was wearing headphones. Otherwise, he will contribute to my loss of faith in humanity.
A half-hour later, after I’d picked my way back a touch, I ran into a generous fellow who called the vet so I could talk to them, and then called me a cab. They were understanding, as was the cab driver.
So after the vet looked at Tansy, didn’t think it was uber serious and gave her some antibiotics, I decided I would head from there to Giant Tiger, not walk from there to Sabletine as I had planned. My trust in my phone had been shaken, and I realized that even though King and Bridgeport are busy streets, shoveling wasn’t a given.
…
something else that isn’t a given? That all 8’s go to Margaret and Breithaupt Centre! Aaarg!
So I rode downtown, and decided I was going to Sabletine after all, ran across to the 7’s and headed out.
…
I thought I remembered exactly how to get to Sabletine’s. I tried what I thought I knew…and found myself on the wrong side of King! Aaarg! Now I’m afraid to turn on my GPS, and all I run into are people who can’t speak English.
Eventually I ran into a really nice lady who was jogging past me and gave me a hand. Grrr. I hate it when I find out I don’t know stuff I thought I knew.
So I go from there to Vincenzo’s, discovering a way I didn’t know to get there. Kinda cool, although I don’t think I could repeat it. I almost became a shoplifter because someone was bent on helping me find the bus before I’d paid for my stuff!
So I leave there, go downtown and catch an 8…all that was uneventful. Go to Giant Tiger, grab my stuff, head back to the bus…and miss it! Then after standing for 20 minutes in the snow, which made Tansy voice her protests in whines, a bus pulled up and said if I was looking for the 8, I had missed it. Missed it? But I’ve been here since it last drove by, which was nearly a half hour ago.
Because I was so cold and had a rough rough day, I got on the bus and said screw it, I’ll ride downtown with you and sort it out. She radioed in to see if the 8 had already gone…and it hadn’t gone yet! Raaarg! But I was already on, so I just rode the bus downtown, and got an IExpress to the mall and got my tush home.
So look at that. I made 4 stops. The entire trip out and back took me over 6 hours! Six hours! That shouldn’t happen!
Reading that, it doesn’t seem like an absolute cunt of a day, but I think the scariest part was my phone going on strike in the freezing weather as I was going to my appointment…which means it might need repair. Aaag. I rely on this thing…possibly a tad too much.
But on the plus side, when I look back on that post, I realize how much I’ve learned in a year. Last year, I knew one way and one way only to get to places, and the terminal felt like a total person-eating zoo. Now, I was able to change things up and adapt. I still have a lot to learn, and I still had a bunch of stuff go wrong, but it wasn’t totally the end of the world, and I could still be amused…at points along the way. There were other points, though, where I was losin’ it. *person pointing and feverishly yelling “over there!” I’m lookin’ at you!*
But the weirdest part was that other people were having crappy days too. Lots of people I met were saying things like “Murphy’s law” or “it’s one of those days.” Maybe I just noticed it because I was having a bad day, but it was interesting.
Let’s hope today will have a better soundtrack.
