Stephieface

It all started Sunday.

Sunday I had to take Zach back to his mom’s house. On the way home I was supposed to go to the grocery store and buy the week’s groceries… but standing in the pre Steeler game time lines wasn’t really my thing. So I bought some essentials, zipped through the express check out, and went home. I got home about 7:30. The Steelers game started at 8.

At the beginning of the 2nd quarter, the power went out.

Sure, it was really windy outside, so we waited patiently… and when it became apparent that the lights weren’t coming back on, we sat outside on the porch in the wind giggling and talking like teenagers. Luckily the Mister didn’t have to be at work the next day, so we went to bed…

…and woke up Monday to still no electricity. We went on through the day, and when it became apparent that we would still have no electricity that night, I went out to buy ice for the few perishables we had. We sat on the porch again and talked with our neighbors. Rumors began to abound… no power until Thursday or Friday.

Naw, we said, there will be power before that.

Oh, there was power before that… for the neighbors behind us on another street and the rest of the township I live in… just not for those of us in the neighborhood who didn’t live on that one street.

Tuesday came and went with no power.

Wednesday too. When I went out for some refresher ice on Wednesday, and I drove to the end of my street I saw that from there on had electricity. On my way back to the house I could see that the graveyard, which is just over the hill from me, had electricity… you know, so the dead could watch Desperate Housewives and not stumble when they rise from the grave to kill the living. At least the township was polite in that respect, tripping and stumbling undead are an embarrassment to the community. Then, as I turned off the main street on to my street, the endless black lay before me. The only lights on my street belonged to me and my neighbor Judy… and it was candle light at that.

Neighbors took walks to talk to other neighbors… what else are you going to do?

More rumors were spreading… still the no power until Thursday or Friday rumor… coupled with why we still had no power… the electric company was waiting for tree trimmers to come trim trees from the transformer. That was it. We were waiting in the black, not because they were working tirelessly to restore our power with no luck, but because we were waiting for tree trimmers to come cut some limbs off of our transformer.

Thursday came, and we still had no power. The neighborhood wives were running back and forth to one another, shuttling kids back and forth… talking of no power. Then at 12:45, I saw the tree trimming trucks drive down my street. I run down the hill to the next street and tell the wives down there, they in turn tell other wives. Packs of people loom and mill around the tree trimming trucks to see what it is that is so important for the tree trimmers to do that we had to wait almost 5 days for. They cut away some branches and leave. Its general consensus that such a job was not worth waiting almost 5 days without power for.

We still had no power.

Then late last night, a reprieve, the power fluttered on. It was almost like the 4th of July, or New Years, people were hollering and carrying on… setting off fireworks in celebration of the fact that our lights were now on. The fridges were working. The fans were turning. The computers were computing. The celebration went on for a couple of hours. I am not making any of this up.

Today found me trying to catch up with my online life… my inbox was overflowing. I had messages that I had to reply to, people were trying to get a hold of me. And now, as I reel with the enibriation of electricity, i debate a future vocation in tree trimming.

Today is a very wet day. Trying to get Sam to school is turning out to be a very wet endeavor. While baby stayed dry, and Sam and TJ remained for the most part dry (try to keep a 5year old and a 4 year old from playing in the rain), I came home soaked… the unfairness of being a parent (I get the burnt grilled cheese too!).

Then to add insult to injury while waiting at the school, Sam’s teacher chided me that I was there with him a bit too early- and OH could I make him go pee at home before I bring him to school because he’s asking too often to be excused from class… I’m a bit put out about this since they only bus one way and they put it on the parents to get the kids to the school on time. There’s only three buses that go by that school at any time close to his 12:45 start time. A Nooner bus (the one I take to drop him off, which is an inbound bus), a 12:30 bus (and outbound bus going back to my house), and then another outbound bus at 1:55 (<— umm, eeew). Typically they don’t let them in until 12:40, so I end up missing the 12:30 and walk back home carrying baby and dragging TJ. I fumed about this all the way home… I fumed about it while eating lunch… then, fed up I called the school to complain.

If there was a magical leprechaun driven bus at my beck and call that could take me wherever i wished for free whenever I wanted… there would be no issue (and in fact that would be stupid awesome). However, to my knowledge no such bus exists… so I’m stuck within the confines of the PAT Transit bus schedule vs. the Elementary school schedule.

A means was eventually worked out, which should really help during the winter… still though, I shouldn’t have had to complain to make things workable, there should have already been a way.

So far this week I have been able to avoid being taken hostage again. I know this because I’ve had the same driver as last week, so the ingredients were there. Maybe he was just having a bad day last week, since this week he’s been ever so nice. He’s let me off at the school, mentioned he’ll see me tomorrow, and chuckled when he discovered the real reason why I buy transfers for the bus (it all hinges on TJ and whether or not he feels like walking all the way home or not… or rides, we do get them occasionally from the other parents). I’m willing to forgive for a bad day, I’ve had them myself.

This new house is do much different from the old place. Its all so different. From the nuns who run the community center at the end of my street (who know Zach really well, and know my name despite my never having gone in the center), to the other parents with whom I talk every morning and afternoon while we wait for school stuff (dropping off and picking up). My neighbors are certainly very different. Judy next door is really all I could ever want in a neighbor, and that just rocks. People look out for people here, they look out for the kids, they offer rides to each other when they’re going to town… its the awesomest thing ever.

Sure, there are people who make trouble, and there are some people who exhibit some less than desireable behavior… but, for what its worth, I’m really glad we moved here.

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Still working on the Mister’s hat. I’ve just recently sewn a new purse for myself that can accomodate my knitting pouch without it all hanging over and out the top losing my cable needle who knows where. The new/old sewing machine is working fine, though I would love to get it looked at maybe… just for upkeep’s sake. I wish there were door to door sewing machine repairmen… that would be awesome.

The blanket for my Surplus arrived, and is a darker grey than the picture showed from where I bought it- which is awesome because that means I won’t have to dye it. To that I must say, “Sweet”.

So far, everything is going as it should… provided we don’t all get sucked in to black holes.

Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays the Mister has the vehicle at work, so I have to find some alernate way to get Sam to school. On Thursday, I tried Public Transit.

The Theory was sound. There’s a bus stop right in front of the school, nevermind before and after the school, so I could just hop off the bus and be there. It sounded so simple, so easy… maybe too easy.

Thursday began a little hectic, but we managed to board the bus on time. PAT Transit was, as always, a little off time… but that didn’t matter since we had more than enough time to get to the school. If all went as it should had, the boys and I would have waited 40 minutes after getting to the school to get Sam in the school. So the bus being a little behind wouldn’t have been too big of an issue.

The bus ride went as many do, there weren’t many people on the bus, so it was quiet- you could hear every sound on the bus amplified as though each thing had its own microphone. I kept hushing the kids, because their little kid banter sounded like screaming inside the moving metal tube on wheels. The stop approached, so I pulled the ‘Stop Request’ line. You could hear the shrill buzzing noise of the alert coming from the Driver’s dash. Since Danny was on my back, which makes my balance a little off, I continued to sit waiting for him to stop getting the boys to collect their stuff and get ready.

But he didn’t stop, he just kept going.

I yanked the line again so that he could stop at the next stop… but he just kept going.

I yanked it a third time, and when he refused to stop again, I pulled myself up and wandered to the front of the bus where I said “hey! Stop the bus! I Need to get off here and get my kid to school!” “Hey buddy, I need off this bus- stop!” to which I was ignored and the bus driver just kept driving.

Sam began to cry, he’s already a little over emotional because of school (his class starts at 12:45pm, he starts wearing his backpack at 9am). I announce to my children that the bus driver isn’t letting us off the bus. Sam cries more, TJ thinks its a hoot, and Danny just starts going to sleep back there in the papoose.

I am angry. I start committing the bus number (8642 on Sept 4th at 12:02pm, for those interested) to memory, because even though I didn’t know that drivers’ ID numbers are displayed on their chest badges… I was still going to have some way to identify this driver when I was going to call and complain. I would have called right there and then (and loud enough for him to hear), but the Mister had my cell phone with him so he could call to say if he was working late or not.

As the bus continued to drive, I looked around to other passengers, you know, just in case there was some sort of bus terrorist on the bus with me that was forcing the bus driver to collect hostages lest the bus get blown up. Besides me and the kids, there were 2 ladies on the bus, both were sitting near me talking to each other and talking to Danny on my back. Nope, no Dennis Hopper, or Alan Rickman.

As the bus rolls onto the campus of Robert Morris University, I watch as the driver huffs and puffs every time he has to stop the bus. He throws up his hands in exasperation whenever he is asked if he is going to Coraopolis. My theory begins to form that this is his last run of the day, and each little stop drags the inevitable clock out a little further from his grasp.

We reach the Giant Eagle grocery store and he actually stops to let people off the bus. The two ladies get off before me. I wrangle the children to the front and state, “You need to give me a transfer since you refused to stop the bus” his reply… “Transfers are 75 cents”.

Blink, blink

“Its your fault I didn’t make my stop because you refused to the stop the bus, even though I pulled the alert like thirty times.”

“Transfers are 75 cents, or you can get off the bus.”

While, yes, I did eventually pay for the transfer I was now super steaming mad. I had run into this before, where the bus driver believes he is the Lord and Master of his own personal domain of the bus he drives. I had watched as a bus driver threw teenagers off the bus… not because they were causing trouble… but because there was a chance they could.

The minute that TJ stepped off the bus (he was last) the driver snapped the door shut (almost on his wee little bum) and took off. TJ wasn’t even out of the street yet.

I whipped out the bus schedule and fretted back and forth between the in going and out going schedules. The next outgoing bus would be going back towards the school… hopefully I could catch it… but there was a 4 minute difference between drop off of the Ingoing Bus, and pick up by the Outgoing bus. As I stood there for 10 minutes or so, I began to fret. Had I missed it? Was it late? What time was it? How late was Sam going to be getting to school?

I began a conversation with another woman there, one of the ladies who had got off before me had told her how the driver wouldn’t let me off. We talked about what happened, and she discussed the politics of the “Bus drivers get paid X amount of dollars an hour and have the best benefits of anyone in the country” argument that I hear so often… followed by her annoyance that the bus drivers were striking again (I don;t know if this part was true… I don’t watch the news)… and her outrage at the whole situation.

The Outgoing bus showed up, and I shuffled the kids on. Politics lady told the new bus driver about how the old bus driver held me hostage until the grocery store. This new bus driver was shocked and a little upset by it. He suggested that I call to complain, and made sure that I had the number to call. This bus driver was awesome. After already promising one rider that he would pretty much try to drop her (and her computer and luggage) at her doorstep so she wouldn’t have to try and walk with all of that stuff… he offered to drive the bus to the elementary school’s front door and let me off there (bus# 8614 on Sep 4 at 12:40pm for those interested)… but I opted just to be let off at the stop. I loved this bus driver.

We get off at the stop and shuffle to the classroom. Class has already begun, and I apologize to the teacher. TJ and I begin our walk back to the house (since the next bus doesn’t come back around until 2pm ish).

The minute I walk in the door the phone is in my hand. I choose my options through the list… choosing the the complaint and commendation option. The Customer service guy answers and asks “Good Afternoon, are you calling with a complaint or a commendation?” and I answer “Both” (because I believe, in this day and age, that goodness and politeness should be commended).

He then says, “Okay ma’m, can you tell me the complaint first?”

“Sure!” I say “It all begins with the fact that one of your bus drivers held me hostage…”

I don’t know that anything will come of my complaint, I just hope that next time I’m allowed off the bus somewhere close to the vicinity of Sam’s school.