One of Those Days

Yesterday was not a great day. In fact, it was a pretty trying day. When things don't go well, they have a way of piling on. To wit:

The icy conditions made getting to the bus stop pretty tricky. Most of the distance between my house and the corner where I wait for the bus is buried in now-frozen snow, thanks to the selfish, ignorant assholes who never, ever clear their sidewalks. So I was forced to walk in the street. When I made it to the bus stop, I found that someone had made the effort to shovel out the Herald box, but didn't bother to go the three feet beyond it that would have enabled people to actually get from the sidewalk to the street. So I climbed up on the icebank and stood there.

When the bus came, I got scolded by the driver, more or less along the lines of: "You can't stand up there. If you slip and fall under the bus, I'm liable. So tomorrow you're going to have to stand in the street, or I won't be able to pick you up." Easy for you to say, Ms. Bus Driver (who, to be fair, is generally very polite and pleasant, certainly more so than the average T bus driver); you're not the one who has to stand there with the cars whizzing by, wondering which SUV-driving twit yapping on a cell phone will be the one that hits you.

When I made it to work, I remembered that we had a temp starting that day, and somehow it had been deemed my responsibility to train and supervise this person. It took me about three hours before I had him set up well enough so that I could go do my own work.

I made a bad lunch decision: I got the pasta primavera, and it wasn't until I'd gotten back to my desk that I remembered that I'd gotten it once before, and it was full of squash and red peppers, about the only two vegetables I don't like.

On the way home, I got stuck on the Green Line between Prudential and Copley for about 20 minutes, while we waited for a disabled train to clear out ahead of us. This caused me to miss my usual bus, as well as the one 20 minutes after it. Now, I don't really care about missing the bus in and of itself; sure, it's aggravating, but it's not a crisis. But with the Mrs. away, I've been on morning and evening dog duty, and a delay in getting home means the dog has to wait that much longer to go out. Fortunately, she was able to hold it until I'd made it home.

Also, while changing trains at North Station, I forgot that I'd taken off my hat (because we were not moving for so long, I got overheated) and put it on my lap. When I stood up, it fell on the floor, but I didn't notice until I was down on the Orange Line platform and the train was long gone. So not only did I lose a brand new hat that I really liked, but I had to stand outside hatless in the 24-degree cold because I missed the bus. When I finally made it home, I found that the garbage people had caused the lid of our trash can to vanish, for the second time this year.

One bit of luck: the bus I take runs every 20 minutes during rush hours, but for some reason, I didn't have to wait another 20 minutes for the next bus. One showed up after ten minutes. I assumed we were going to sit and wait until 6:40, but we headed right out. It's possible that it was the 6:20 bus running late, but when I came out of the Orange Line station, it was just after 6:20 and there was no one else waiting for the bus, so I figured I had to have missed it. At that point, I didn't care which bus it was; it was warm, and it was moving, and it got me home.