Just a quick post to remember the day, it was sudden and I was here, he was there so I didn’t get to say good-bye, something that matters only to me.
Category: Personal not private
I stopped writing about my commute because I was tired of writing the same thing everyday. I figured everyone must be tired of reading it too. Then I changed to the #4 and it just sat there! There were 5 million people on the train and it only holds 2 million etc. Anyway, things have changed in my commute.
The first thing is my route to the subway station has changed. This is the sidewalk I normally walk on to get to the subway. I don’t know what they are doing here but the sidewalk is almost completely blocked off. This picture was taken on my way home, in the morning the workers are there and you can’t walk up nearly this far. So they have made a ‘pedestrian walkway’.
Which is just cones put out on the road to re-direct traffic, and this is a rather narrow road, it makes more sense to walk on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Which I would do except,
They are working on the entrance to the subway, so I have to cross the street anyway. So walking down to 96th Street is really the best way to go except, there is a fruit stand at 95th and 3rd where I like to get my breakfast, and being human I am a creature of habit and automatically turn left at 95th street. I also don’t like having to change my routine. After two years of walking the same way to the subway I have to do something different and it annoys me. So I come here to vent and to post pictures, I am really just trying to get back into the habit of writing so if this bores you or YOU are annoyed that with all the bad things happening lately I am going on about having to change my routine, I’m sorry I’m not sorry. Meaning I don’t feel bad about writing this. Because of all the bad that happened last week, I need to get back to my routine and the MTA is not helping! If you are still reading this, thank you for reading and I promise I’ll get better.
A line I often hear is “Prepare for the worst but expect the best”. I have my own version, “I prepare for the worst because I expect the worst”. It does no good for people, even people I trust, to say, “Don’t worry” or “Don’t be a pessimist”, this is how I am. A pessimist is what I am and worry is what I do. Here’s some examples.
This Thursday, tomorrow actually, I am going to a hockey game. Not my first professional hockey game, but my first NHL hockey game. I’m excited, I’m nervous, I’M GOING TO DIE. When I ordered the tickets, my first worry was “Will I get them in time?”, the website promised me I would. Then the ticket was being shipped FedEx, I worried that FedEx would lose them, then when I got the sticker on my door I worried that I would get to the FedEx place and the envelope would be on the truck. All of those worries were groundless and I got my ticket. Interestingly, I didn’t worry about getting murdered while walking through the Bronx in the dark. I guess once I do something and don’t die, I’m invincible.
However, that is not the end of my worries. I have to go by train to Penn Station in Newark, then walk to the Prudential Center. Neither of which I have done before. Besides that, they are now forecasting a storm for tonight leading into tomorrow. So I am either going to get lost going there, get stuck on a snowed in train or die in Newark. I haven’t decided which of those things is the worst. Also, since I’m a Sabres fan and I’m going to the game in New Jesey, I worry that I’ll get pummeled by Devils fans. Paul assured me that won’t happen. I’m still worried.
The reality is, everything will most likely be fine. I’ve been thinking that the worst is going to happen and I’m not going to survive for most of my life. Usually the worst doesn’t happen, sometimes it has, but I’m still here. In fact I am now living my dream. Of course that may end at any moment. **Did I leave the stove on?**
On to the next subject, my friend is coming to visit tonight. She was planning on coming down tomorrow but because of said storm. In her text she says, “Don’t drive yourself crazy cleaning.” Because every time she says she’s coming I say: “I have to clean!” She says, “I don’t care, it doesn’t have to be spotless.” And I think, it’s far from spotless it’s a freakin’ filthy mess! See?
Maybe not. However I remember her telling me how important it would be for me to keep my apartment clean. As in, “You’ll get bugs if you don’t” and “If I come to your apartment and find it’s not clean ….”, I don’t remember what she said she would do. In fact she may have never even said that it may just be a figment of my overactive pessimistic imagination. Since she has been here before and is coming again I probably shouldn’t worry, of course there is the worry that she doesn’t really like my apartment, although why that should be important to me I have no idea. P.S. I don’t have bugs.
Now that I have laid bare my faults to you, I’m going to get off the computer and go clean. Later. Did I mention I’m really good at procrastinating?
When I was 17 my grandmother had major surgery. She had an aneurysm in one of the arteries leading to her brain, or away from the brain, I can’t remember is veins go to the brain or arteries, but it was a major blood vessel and the surgery was a big deal. As the doctors explained it, an aneurysm is like a balloon, and what the doctors planned to do was clamp the aneurysm at the neck, then since blood is no longer feeding it, it shrivels up and is no longer a threat to burst and bleed and kill her. The surgery was not a success, when the doctors got in there it was too big, the aneurysm was sitting on the artery and the doctors couldn’t get to the neck to clamp it off. So instead they closed off the artery and ‘redirected’ the blood. So she lived, sort of, she was paralyzed on one side of her body and spent the rest of her life not able to care for her basic needs. I remember so many details of that trip to see her when I was 17, I remember one of my tops was lavender and gauzy, I remember after she got out of intensive care she was on the 6th floor, I was knitting a baby blanket for a friend. I vividly remember my grandfather crying in the waiting room and my aunt telling someone (not me specifically) that her husband (who had been sitting next to my grandfather) told her, “I hope I die before you.” She told him that was selfish, he said: “I know.” He also got his wish.
For the past week, ever since I started thinking about writing this post I have tried to remember when she died, I am ashamed to say I can’t. I remember I was sitting at home watching T.V. and a friend of my brother’s was over, we were watching some comedy when the phone rang. But I don’t remember when that happened. I didn’t go to her funeral, I made some excuse about not being able to get time off from work, the truth was I didn’t even ask for the time because I didn’t want to go. That’s the truth, maybe I should add “World’s Worst Granddaughter” to my list of titles. The real truth was, I lost her when I was 17, not when she died.
My grannie was a strong woman who bore 6 children and raised 4 of them to adulthood and buried 2. She was a woman who didn’t let an ice storm keep her from doing her laundry, she hammered nails through pieces of plywood and tied them to her feet so she could make it to the laundry room. When her husband (my grandfather) complained she wasn’t putting enough starch in the wash she proceeded to starch his undershorts (he meant his shirts needed more starch, as far as I know he never complained about the laundry again). When the nasty old rooster spurred her and knocked her glasses off, she grabbed his head and twisted it clean off his body, into the stew pot he went! My father reports that she cooked him for three days and that old bird was still too tough to eat. She hiked to the top of a mountain, part of the hike involved climbing up rock, with her grandchildren, and was not impressed by the Grand Canyon, just a big hole in the ground. That was my grannie, not this frail woman lying in a hospital bed not able to eat, or dress herself or even talk.
Last Saturday my best friend’s mother died. She was a great lady, her daughter is my best friend in the whole wide world and I called her mother Mom. She considered me her fourth daughter. She had Alzheimer’s which is a terrible disease that before it kills you steals your personality. My friend told me that after her last visit home. Now I wonder if she started to mourn her mother during that visit, and now feels guilty thinking that she gave up on her mom too soon. I have no answers for her, she loved her mom, her mom knew that, even if she forgot it in the end it certainly wasn’t my friend’s fault. My heart hurts for her.
This October has quite frankly, been awful. What with a friend’s cancer coming back (after 10+ years cancer-free), another friend going to visit her mother who has Alzheimer’s (and sending me text messages “My mom’s really not doing well.”), the episode on the Evil Green Train that I wrote about before, and another one that I didn’t write about but resulted in me missing a day from work, to my allergies and asthma flaring up (that resulted in $100 pharmacy bill) and my rosacea and eczema coming back (another $90), I want a do-over please. Oh did I mention, the Yankees got swept by the Tigers in the ALCS and THERE WAS A MOUSE UNDER MY STOVE!
Did you think I was going to say ‘green’? Specifically, it is not easy being a single girl living in New York. I don’t know how it is elsewhere. The only other place I lived by myself was Buffalo and I had no problems going out because I never went out because there is nothing to do in Buffalo.
In New York there is plenty to do, especially since in this neighborhood, especially since this is a relatively nice neighborhood. There is a place near hear that has mac-n-cheese, which I am not supposed to have, but sometimes I crave it, so I go there. Actually I used to go there, I will never go there again. Twice I have been harassed there. By the same man, he is a vile nasty creeper, one time he tried to follow me home. The homeless guy helped me out. The second time by what he said I got a very good mental picture of just how big a jerk he is. So this place is scratched off my list of places to go.
The second place I had trouble was at Yankee stadium. I see no reason why I shouldn’t go to games by myself. As far as I know I am not breaking any rules. With all the other fans there, you’re not really all alone anyway. So first this guy starts off by insisting I have to have a boyfriend. No I don’t, what the hell do you care anyway? Nasty little s*** that thinks he’s badass cause he lives in the Bronx. I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t want a boyfriend, I don’t need a boyfriend. Then he starts asking me all these personal questions, which of course I don’t answer honestly, there is no way I am telling a complete stranger (a creepy one at that) personal details about me. Then he starts keeping track of the ‘lies’. ‘That’s three times you lied to me.’ Then I find out the seats he’s sitting in aren’t even his seats, the person who had those seats came to the game, so he moved. Here’s the kicker, as I’m watching him for the rest of the game, to make sure he doesn’t come near me again and I can tell he has forgotten all about me and our conversation. He ruined my evening, made me a nervous wreck and he is clueless about how his actions affected me.
This isn’t the middle ages is it? I didn’t get suddenly transported back in time to Victorian England. I’m not in one of those bizarre religions that oppress their women am I? So why can’t I go out by myself and have a good time and not have to worry about being harassed? I just want to go to dinner or go to a ballgame and be left alone.
Did you ever get one of those phone calls? You know, when you just KNOW it’s bad news, either by the tone of their voice, or their rate of speech, or how they seem to be measuring their words. I got one of those phone calls today. From my Dad, about his brother.
Not that I’m very close to my uncle, after all I’m not that close to my father, but they are family so I feel something, just haven’t figured it out yet.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.
As I was getting my nails done, this girl next to me was talking to the owner of the salon. The owner is Korean, the girl (I’ll call her GF) is Asian but not Korean, her boyfriend (BF) is Korean. GF was talking about BF’s mother (Mom) and the salon owner was explaining to her how Korean mothers are (these are not my words, I am telling the conversation as I remember it). The salon owner was saying Korean mothers want to know this and that, GF was saying, Mom wants to ask her questions about ‘this and that’, BF tells Mom, don’t ask those questions. She feels bad for Mom, but doesn’t want to interfere. Also, since she doesn’t speak Korean, she doesn’t know what Mom is telling BF about her. For instance, Mom told GF, BF can be nasty. She replied to Mom, oh he’s always been sweet to me, because she is afraid Mom will tell BF, she said you were nasty. She doesn’t know what Mom has said about GF to BF in the past.
It seems like a lot of work.
On occasion, people have told me I should get a boyfriend. I tell them I don’t have time for a boyfriend. What I really mean is, I don’t have the energy for a boyfriend. It could be because I have not had good relationships in the past, all the way back to the relationships with my parents and siblings. I only really like one of my siblings, and I have always felt only one of my siblings has really cared for me. My boyfriends were always happy to become my boyfriend, then after a while, I wasn’t ‘right’, and I needed to change to fit. One went so far as to tell me what kind of socks I should wear and what color lipstick.
Being single, completely single, may be lonely a times, but it is better then being miserably because the one you love isn’t happy with you for reasons you don’t understand and can’t change.
The below link is to an article about a home invasion in Connecticut, the second man responsible was just convicted. In summary, two men followed a woman and her daughter home, when they invaded the home, they beat up the husband/dad (Dr. William Petit), tied the girls up, raped and strangled the wife/mom and sexually assaulted one of the daughters. Then they set fire to the house. The husband/dad escaped and managed to get to a neighbors house to call for help.
After the trial Dr. Petit was saying how this crime was indicative of the problem of violence against women, if he had two sons instead of daughters would this have happened. I kind of stopped listening at that point, my thought was, while it is doubtful your son would have been sexually molested, it is still very possible that if it had been his wife and son, they would have still been followed home, the two men would have still beaten Dr. Petit up, robbed them and killed his family.
The fact is, people don’t worry about boys like they worry about girls. Fact is, boys are vulnerable like girls. Look at Dalmer and Gacy, they murdered boys, Gacy raped and murdered lots of boys. People worry about me living alone in NYC, (except for Alex, who knows I have a baseball bat and know how to use it) even though I have two locks on my door that I always lock, I’m careful, I don’t take chances. Of course that could probably be said about Jennifer Hawke-Petit, who was living in Connecticut of all places, which probably caused her to lower her guard, not that anyone can truly prevent you from being victimized. Which is partially my point here, anyone can become the target of a psychopath, there is no way to prevent it.
The rest of my point is that Dr. Petit is entitled to his opinion, I have the utmost sympathy for him, but to me his comments speak more about the attitude in this country toward women, that women are not as good as men, they are helpless and can’t protect or take care of themselves. The thought that women must be polite, if a perfect stranger asks you where you live, you must of course answer him because not answering him would be rude. Not only are women though of as inferior, they are also set up to be victims. You tell someone where you live because you don’t want to be rude. Unless you are saying “F you a.” in response to a simple question you’re not being rude. Now if he continues to ask after you have told him you are uncomfortable giving out personal information you have my blessing to stick him in the ribs with a very sharp knife.
And that’s all, says she.
Joshua Komisarjevsky Guilty in Connecticut Home Invasion Case
Belleza
just a (transplanted) city girl 