Fifteen minutes ago:
[phone rings]My husband answers: “Hello?”
[pause.]Ralph: “… Uh, no, this is her husband. Would you like to talk to her?”
I mean – WTF? This is a first. I have a kinda scratchy, brassy voice. But I don’t sound like a man, for the love of God. What … ?!
Five minutes ago:
Me: “Sophie, if you want to go outside, you put your shoes on.”
My daughter: “No. I don’t want to. It makes me want to puke.”
It is really hard to ask your child to follow your instructions when you burst into laughter at this sort of retort.
So, my husband does all these silly reports with MS Money. I have mocked the data-porn in this silly software in the past, but last week he revealed that since the day I bought our August bus pass (mid-month, pro-rated), our gas prices went down 13%. In two weeks, the price of the monthly bus pass was paid for several times over.
I am now obsessing over ways to ride transit instead of driving. This morning as we were en route to the park I was looking around at my fellow passengers thinking, “Weird, I’m starting to know all these ‘bus people’.” Then I realized, “Wait, I am becoming ‘bus people’!” On our way home I talked with a young father and his children – he a minister in a local church – as our four kids gambolled about and squirmed in their seats. He and I continued our conversation while we transferred, helped by a young man with low-budget tattoos covering his limbs, including the elbow-spiderweb (I’ve always secretly thought those looked cool). We boarded and sat next to a middle-aged man morbidly obese and of course, the small handful of senior citizens that can always be counted on in public transportation. A woman with lines etched in her cheeks looked at my son with tears in her eyes and said, “Beautiful!”
I am digging the bus action.