Bus Nightmare

My Bus Nightmare #2 came true the other day. During morning rush hour, the bus fills up with people - as in the aisle will be crammed with bodies... bodies in various states of cleanliness (or dirtiness) and carrying all sorts of things. I usually have a seat because my stop is early enough on the bus' route, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I get clocked in the head with someone's bag.

It wasn't anyone's backpack, or one of those 20-pound man satchels with the laptop inside and maybe one or two cinder blocks. Thankfully it was just a gentle slap in the face from a lady's soft leather hand bag. I was asleep too so the moment that slap was delivered, my waking thought was: BUS NIGHTMARE #2!!!

Bus Nightmare #1, by the way, is me sitting by the aisle and someone walking on the aisle with their coffee cup and me getting a good dousing of Starbucks on my face.

Bus Nightmare #3 is related to a school bus incident from my elementary years back home. Our school bus wasn't exactly top-of-the-line. It wasn't even middle-of-the-line. It was a rickety metal thing with wooden shades for when it rained and once in a while there will be a missing metal plate on the floor. Don't ask me how, or why but one day, as the bus was running along, my shoe fell into that hole. It was recovered, thank you Manong.

So yes, I still have a small fear that I will get off the bus and have to head to work with one shoe missing... a backpack-shaped bruise on my face, and hair that smells like coffee. Can you blame me?



My little sister is in Brazil at the moment. It's a study-abroad sort of program. She's staying with a family of three sister, just like ours! She sent me an email that they attended Easter Mass late on Saturday night. And after Mass there was running on the streets, and music and celebration.

I can imagine her running like a headless chicken outside the Church and grabbing the instruments from musicians, and terrorizing children with a tuba in her arms and a trumpet in her mouth. Kidding aside, she's kind of, slightly, a little bit, sort of, craaazy but only in the best way possible. And my own study-abroad nightmare worries aside, I'm sure she's having an amazing experience.



Photo: faqs.org

Overheard

You know how the saying goes, little pitchers have big teeth. Which is why I like my pitchers small and my mugs large. Heeey!

Oh. That's not how the saying goes?

Anyway, I overheard this at a clothing store. Allow me to set this up. It was by a store entrance, a mother, let's call her Mildred, and her daughter, let's call her Hotshit, paused to comment on the merchandise.

Hotshit: I'm not even going in.

Mildew: Yeah. But this skirt is cute.

Hotshit: Soooo cute.

Sales Associate: Isn't it? It's very demure. Would you like to try it on?

Hotshit & Mildsauce in unison: Oh no, no. No, no. Oh gosh, no, no. It won't fit.

Mildress: The XS is too big for her. Too big.

Sales Associate: We also have an XXS.

Hotshit: It's still too big. Mom, look how BIG the size 2 is.

Mildred: My daughter's waist is a size 22... and yeah, even that size 2 might be BIG for me.

Nice. I've never encountered a skinny person who was so smug about being thin. And I hate to say this but the mother? Size 2? Too big??? Yeah, right, she was more like a 2+6.

And I'm sorry, but those two got me all riled up. If all they're going to do is hover at various stores' doorways and go yakkety-yak about too-big this and too-big that, maybe they shouldn't be shopping. Maybe, they should just go to Toys R Us and buy little doll clothes to put on her little doll body so she can bake a cake in her dollhouse oven.

Moving on.

Overheard: you know how in comic books, a character would laugh and the sound was, yuk yuk yuk.

I swear, I heard an actual laugh that sounded like that. Except it was closer to hyauk hyauk HYAAUUUK, with a shrug of the shoulders for each HYAAUUK.

Overheard: a cover of November Rain by a lady singer where she raps in the middle of it. It was weird. Though not as weird as my own anti-rhythm version of just about any song that was ever written in the history of the world.

This Behavior's Not Unique

You guys, March flew by and I didn't even realize that this blog turned a year old last month.

What I learned, a year later, is that everything has chains. Absolutely nothing's changed.

Just kidding.

I just wanted to drop some song lyrics on all of you. Plus, today, one of the local radio stations, 99.9 KISW, is paying tribute to Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley by playing Seattle music from the '90s. So it's been Sickman and I Don't Know Anything and Lithium and Slaves and Bulldozers and Corduroy all day.

That song. I've always visualized myself getting so, so enraged that I'd start borrowing lines from Corduroy. Picture this, me, finger-pointing, breaking and kicking houseware while saying, I don't want to take what you can give! I would rather starve than eat your bread! Blahblah... I don't want to be held in your debt. I'll pay it off in blood... More throwing and kicking.

Just to be clear, in that little vision, I am also wearing a scarf around my head and movie star sunglasses.

Speaking of being enraged, I am absolutely hooked on HBO's Mildred Pierce. I've only just seen bits of Joan Crawford's version so the miniseries is still new to me. That Veda! If that Little Miss Bitchface was a real person, she would make a compelling argument against having children.

Going back to April 5th, I love this old video of Alice in Chains, when they were young and looked happy: