How does one find herself going from a nice, cool bed under a soft sheet to a smelly bus stop with a deranged pregnant woman singing along with her iPod and digging at her crotch? Answer: slowly. Painfully, dreadfully, slowly.
This morning started like any other morning: the wind was blowing softly through my open window, my ceiling fan was merrily circulating the air throughout the room, and – of course – my alarm was going off. The only variable today was that instead of riding in with my father I would be driving myself.
I only do this if I must, mind you. Since two of my classes run past the normal four o’clock departure time, I now have to drive my Jeep in to Oakland on said days. Now, back to the alarm clock.
Instead of waking up at 5:30 like I typically do, I decided to live a little and sleep an extra fifteen minutes. But rather than hit the snooze three times, I opted to change the alarm time to 5:45. What I didn’t realize in my sleepy stupor though was that I accidentally changed it not to 5:45, but to 6:45. That’s right, a whole hour’s difference. This would be the mistake that would alter the entire morning for me. As I tomahawked myself out of bed and got dressed, I carefully made sure that I had packed everything I needed for the day. I bolted down the stairs and was about to run out the door when my mom yelled down, “Don’t forget to pack some food!” Throwing on the breaks, I circled back around to the kitchen and chucked a few items into my bag.
These items were: a yogurt tube, a cheese stick, a bag of red grapes, and a foil-wrapped piece of perogie pizza from the night before. I tell you this because it will play a part later in this post. Okay, resume in three, two, one…
Ready to leave a second time, I jog up to my Jeep and hop in. I’m half way down the street when I realize that I’ve left my cell phone. I throw the Jeep into reverse and back up my road to my house. After retrieving my phone, I am now ready to leave yet a third time. As I drive back down the road, my “low fuel” light comes on. Great. Another stop. Fifteen dollars later, I’m back on the trail that is Route 28.
This is where the fun starts, people, so buckle up.
The drive up until the RIDC exit had been the usual stop-and-go traffic one sees every morning on the inbound commute. I’m following a rather large SUV when out of nowhere, a doe leaps from the grassy area on the other side of the highway. I embellish not when I say that this SUV obliterated that deer. I for one was easily cruising at 80 mph, so the vehicle in front of me was probably going the same. The chunks that flew from the front of his car were the size of basketballs. I slammed on my breaks to avoid crashing into his backend then had to veer off the road to avoid getting rear-ended myself by the car behind me. Panting from the adrenaline that was now rushing through me, I came back up onto the road to press on.
The ride only got worse. Once I made it to the Fortieth Street Bridge, traffic slowed to a stop. Once I made it across the Bloomfield Bridge, I found myself trapped behind a street cleaning machine. The traffic opposite me was too steady to cross the line and go around it, so instead I had to move at 15 mph along a 30 mph road. At last I was in Oakland. I made it into the parking garage with no issues, unless you count not being able to find a parking space until the fourth tier an issue. After parking, I opened my door to allow the overhead light to come on so that I could see the mess that slamming on my breaks had caused. My lunch had spilled out of my bag onto the floor of my passenger side feet space. To aggravate me further, the keys in my ignition were making my car ding. DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING. I pulled the keys out slightly to stop this.
Pay attention now, because if you do you’ll catch what I did not. Ah, the advantages of spelling things like this out – you see the mistake before it even happens.
Another two minutes, and everything was back in its place. Closing the doors, I made my way to the elevator, rode it to G1, and started walking down to the nearest bus stop. As I turned onto Fifth Avenue, I saw a bus about to stop at the end of the block. Technically, I’m not yet cleared to run, but I’ve been able to jog lightly…you’ll never learn to fly unless you jump out of the nest, right? So I took off in a sprint towards the bus. Bad idea. My knee twinged, and I staggered into a light jog, and finally into a limping walk as the bus blew by me.
I know you’re thinking it, so let’s just all say it once together: FAIL.
Five minutes later, I was on a bus heading towards my office. I got off at the stop nearest to my building and walked down the hill awkwardly. I knew Caribou was at the end of the block, and I just had to stop. I felt as though I’d earned it this morning. I walked in, set my bag down on a table, and began rooting through the front zipper section for my wallet when it hit me: my keys. Where were my keys? In the ignition of your car a mile away, you blithering idiot. Crestfallen, I stepped to the counter – knowing full well what I was going to have to do after purchasing my size small, four dollar specialty drink – and placed my order.
Fact: perhaps the only thing that had merited a smile the whole morning was that coffee. It’s September 8th and any Caribou addict worth her salt knows that this means the fall line of drinks come out. Therefore, instead of my usual small, skim white chocolate mocha, this morning’s order was a small, skim pumpkin white chocolate mocha. And yes, it was incredible, thank-you-very-much.
I picked my beverage up at the end of the counter, sleeved it, exited the comforting confines of my favorite coffee shop, and walked across the street to the bus stop in order to catch yet another bus that would take me back up to my garage. Those keys and I had some reuniting to do.
For those who do not know me especially well, I think it might be a good time to note that I am not a particularly paranoid person; actually, I consider myself so laid back that I may very well be in the horizontal position at times with my easygoingness. But leaving my keys in a Jeep – even if it IS in an underground garage – is just a little too much for me to let go. Had I headed to my office, I would even now be playing scenes in my head pertaining to some hooligan roaming the lot looking for a car with the keys still in the ignition then hopping in and driving away with my precious volleyball in the backseat. So yes, my Jeep may have been perfectly safe the entire day, but I did go back for the keys. Don’t judge me.
Ironically enough, across the street from the Caribou coffee shop is a Starbucks coffee shop. Don’t ask, it’s Pittsburgh. After maybe two or three minutes of waiting, a colossally pregnant woman waltzes out of the Starbucks, drink in one hand, iPod in the other, singing along with it to beat the band. She’s wearing a shirt that barely covers her bulging, infant-toting stomach along with a pair of jeans even I couldn’t fit in. To make matters worse, these jeans were giving her a serious case of the scratches, because she was quite literally clawing at her crotch to get the itch. To top it all off, she reeked of rotten eggs. I made it another three or four minutes before I decided it just wasn’t worth dying of stench inhalation and started walking to the next block’s bus stop. Suddenly, I was going toe to toe with the street cleaner again. He was hogging up the right lane and spraying the road and sidewalks with blasts of water. An extremely petite oriental girl was walking toward me, looking nowhere but down at her feet, presumably trying to avoid getting her shoes wet. Being sandwiched in on all sides, I tried to push my way past others to avoid a head-on collision with this completely oblivious girl. Instead, we clipped each other, and she managed to spill some of her drink on me. The lightbulb magically appeared above her head as she realized she’d plowed right into me; instead of an apology though, I got a shaky “No worry, it’s white tea,” and she shuffled hastily away. With my back wet with sweat and my torso wet with white tea, I stood waiting for the bus.
Incidentally, thirty seconds after the tea run-in, the last block’s bus came.
Ten minutes later, and I was on one of the campus’s buses getting shuttled over to the Cathedral of Learning. I made it off the bus first and elbowed my way through the impatient crowd of students who were trying to get on while others were still trying to get off. Up the hill I hiked, then down into the parking garage. I circled two levels before I realized I’d parked in section G3. Classic. I jogged to where I figured my car must be, praying that it would still be there or that, at least, that I could get a good look at the car thief as he pealed out of my stellar back-in job. Thankfully, Casper (the friendly Jeep) was still there, as were the keys. I paused for a moment, sighed, then ripped the keys from the ignition and stalked back to the elevator.
Walk down the hill, catch a bus, get off, walk to the office. Rinse and repeat.
I made it to my building without injury and took the elevator to my floor. When I came in and sat down, I decided to open my bag and take out my lunch. Keep in mind, I’ve been roaming all over Creation and the bag has been on my back the whole time, along for the ride. I loosen the drawstrings of my pack and am immediately punched in the nose by the most eye-watering odor of onions. My perogie pizza. In addition, my cheese stick is smashed into a mashed cheese strip and my grapes look like some Italian grandma has been squashing them in a wooden basin with her bare feet. But hey, even though my bag smells like onions and sweat, I can at least say that I smell of a quite fragrant blend of white tea and, by God, I’m really going to enjoy my yogurt tube.
Happy Hump Day, readers.
