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#1 Bowness to Forest Lawn

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 06 May 2010

Hits: 2359

There's a poem in there somewhere....

It runs across Calgary from ghetto to slum, then back again. Now maybe it's the hours I take it, respectable people take the bus from 7-9 to get downtown to work, then again from 4-6 from downtown to get home again, but when I take the bus, given the odd hours I work, it's a different crowd completely. 

Teen single mothers pushing baby carts. Guys on their cellphones, the cellphone just the polite prop, really they're talking to the whole bus..."Just got out of prison....yeah, 2 hours ago...is she waiting for me?...tell my kids I miss 'em, eh?....Tell her I'm still hard for her...Yeah, missed them something fierce....just got out 2 hours ago...". Old folks coming home from the legion. Strangely made up old ladies and their shopping trollies, other people trying to carry on conversations on their cell phones but prison dude, he's talking too loud and they have to yell to to make themselves heard. The weekend stop in Kensington, more inebriated passengers board, people chatting at the stop get separated in the rush to get on, almost about to get lucky but he or she has disappeared and they don't care, they can make new friends, the sober talking loudly about the 12 steps in AA, what step they're on, the not so discreet fraternity of unrepentant and reformed alcoholics...

I could drive, I don't have a car but I could get one, only it doesn't work into the budget, not now, there are still too many bills to be paid. And the bus is cheap, it's quick enough, and somewhat entertaining in a circus-sideshow kinda way... 

Missed Connections

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 06 May 2010

Hits: 2134

A fruitless day off, early morning but I force myself to sleep another hour, get up, call friend for coffee but he's not home and so I go on the weekly thrift shop tour.

Lots of attractive women's handbags today. Sadly I'm not a woman. Still I manage to turn up a couple of pairs of jeans, some tea lights, nothing else. There's a dearth of real treasures.

Then home, I attempt to answer some emails but the neighbor downstairs is playing with the fuses, power blinking on and off; internet modem perpetually resetting and eventually give up. Leave to pick up my daughter.

We have a date to go and make her mother's day gift. 

Now I've budgeted an hour to get to her school, it's nasty out and so I'll take the bus. It's about 4 or 5 miles from here, sadly there's no direct buses but I can transfer downtown, should be about 20 minutes early...

Should be.

And the #1 to Forest Lawn gets me downtown in record time, but I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and there's no #2 up to her school. Almost 40 minutes I wait for a #2, and by the time it shows up I'm already late....

The stress builds inside like a volcano...

By the time I get to her school I'm almost 20 minutes late, almost an hour and a half on Calgary Transit to travel a total of 4 miles, quicker, in fact, to have walked, bus averaging roughly 3 miles per hour...

But more importantly I'm late and I search the school and she's not there, not surprising, and so I try to find out where she is and I can't and so I presume she's taken the bus home and so I walk over to her mothers to wait for her there....

Now it's 4:00 and the bus shows up and she's not on it.

I wait for her mother in the back of her house. 

We track her down to the after care place she's looked after when her mother's working, and go to pick her up. She'd wisely chosen to walk there when she saw that I wasn't coming, and by the time we pick her up, the day, the weather, the Mothers' Day gift building just isn't going to happen.

Dinner, brief nap (an hour), strangely refreshing, that feeling of having slept enough, but it never lasts that long....

Then surf the net, finish the emails unfinished earlier, light cleaning, feed and coddle the cat (who's getting slimmer, I notice, as she purrs on my lap, good kitty...)...blog, scotch and bed. 

Constantly Napping

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 05 May 2010

Hits: 2108

The breaks between shifts, between lunch and dinner, you use to clean up the restaurant, reset tables, stock, organize, polish cutlery, put away glasses, and, if you're very very lucky, nap.

I'm constantly napping.

And, oddly, whereas it's seldom I successfully nap while at home, at work there doesn't seem to be a problem. Well, not the same problems.

At work it's always something. The phone will ring, a reservation, or job seeker wondering if we're hiring, or salesperson from a paper mill someplace who wants to know if we need more paper....You can tell the salespeople, they always want to speak to the "Owner or Manager". They're not very good.

On those days the phone isn't ringing there will be the late tables, tables that somehow have gotten a little too comfortable in their chairs and don't leave until 3:00 or 3:30. There's no napping then.

Or, if you're having some success, sprawled out across the comfortable overstuffed leather chairs, the phone hasn't rung and all the customers have left, you've a clear conscience having overstocked everything and done all the side duties and then some, there will be some staff member roaming to the front asking if you need help with anything....through half opened eyes you hiss: "I need your help napping....please fuck off..."

2 or three such interruptions and you're done.

A good nap, at work, might be 10 minutes straight. Which, if it wasn't a sexy dream, is often enough.