the rat race

Knitting at Lettuce was unusually fun last night, but the commuting part sucked pretty hard. It started with a late bus 2 blocks from the house, the house I exited sneakily as my housekeys are on walkabout to parts unknown. The sneak meant that I FORGOT TO TAKE KNITTING. To my knit night. Ugh.

After an extra-long, extra-fun ride to Yorkdale (with NO KNITTING), I booted down to Spadina Station, speed-walked through the whole place and milled about with a billion people waiting to board the southbound streetcar. Four cars passed us by, their "out of service" signs flashing cheekily as they rolled through the station with stately calm. I crammed myself into the fifth, and spent the relatively short but subjectively long ride to the Market fighting down my latent agoraphobia. A deadly heatwave is not the time you want to push yourself into public transit, nor push yourself out of it. It took me two blocks after my stop to drop my shoulders down from my ears.

When I decided to go home, I was distracted from my first plan when Emily offered a ride to Union. Unfortunately, she got distracted what with one thing (Clara) and another (Clara), and my departure time found me still on the patio at LK. Michelle offered me another beer to take the edge off the next hour, which worked so well that I arrived at Union 4 minutes after the bus left. This was the last straw, and I broke down when I called the Boy.

"Please come get me," I sobbed. And despite the bother, despite the hour, despite the fact that I had screwed up twice, there was no anger in his voice when he agreed to rescue me.

I spent the next half hour reading a free commuter paper and waiting for my face to get back to normal before I went out on the street corner to wait for my ride. The night culminated in me standing in front of Union Station at midnight, giving all of my money to a homeless guy, sitting on the edge of the drop and casting on some random number of stitches to keep calm while I waited for the Boy & Sleeping Blake to pick me up. I think that next week it'll seem a lot funnier in the telling.

One observation: if you have to stand in front of Union Station at midnight in the middle of summer, take off your Tilley. My usual "urban girl who knows what she's doing" air was completely replaced by a "traveller from parts unknown, possibly vulnerable" aura. As soon as I figured this out, I crammed the hat in my already full tote and waited, bare-headed in the dark, knitting. I don't know what knitting does to my vulnerability index. Could go either way, really: either I'm so soft that I can't figure out that this isn't my living room, or I'm so hard that I can ignore the street life and cable cast on.

Mason: How would you feel if your mom called you up for an explanation every time you changed your Facebook status?

Michelle: Pretty weird, since she's been dead for over ten years.

(Cut to Michelle and I honking with laughter)

The painting continues. I can see the end of the tunnel from where I'm sitting.

Labels: friends, house rich, knit, outings

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 8/02/2007 05:55:00 p.m.