One Of Those 'Life' Posts Filled With Questions That Have No Answers And Lots Of ' Marks

Do you ever find yourself in the same difficult and perplexing situations over and over again? You start to wonder if the universe is trying to teach you something or it is some heinous personal defect since the only constant element in all these situations is you.

Or in this case, me.

My particular situation is that am finding it increasingly difficult to be in the company of people.

I have a couple things going against me. First of all I have terrible social anxiety complicated by some pretty weird phobias. Any social situation is pretty agonizing on most levels. Secondly I am very sensitive to the emotions of others and so called ‘vibes’. Just very aware of the undercurrents of most interactions. Some therapists think this is why I have such bad anxiety. It is like I am lacking some sort of protective life filter.

That is another consideration as well. I’ve had a lot of therapy. A LOT. Some really bad but mostly good. I’ve learned a great deal about myself and the various limits and problems I deal with daily and as a result I am also able to recognize various psychological ‘issues’ (pronounced ithews) in others.

Let me give you an example. I have some family members who bicker a lot at family gatherings. You know, insults with smiling faces. They would also talk poorly about other family members behind their backs. When I first started seeing these people socially I would become seriously depressed for a day or two afterwards. On a couple occasions I was even teary. It got to the point where I would decline invitations to be social with them. With a couple therapy sessions I came to realize that bickering is the way some families show affection. Certainly not how I am comfortable with showing affection but each to their own, right? And I also learned that I could very subtly and politely show that I was not accepting of the negative talk about other family members. It totally worked and I am now able to be social with these people again.

The fact is that I was not raised to be assertive at all. I was raised to be ‘good’ and we all know that being ‘good’ often means being a doormat. For years I have not stood up for myself when being treated poorly and have swallowed all the emotions that go along with that. No wonder I have depression and anxiety, right? It is only in the last few years that I have stood up for myself and become pretty open about how I am feeling and, especially, how I want to be treated. As when anybody learns a new skill it is not always performed perfectly but overall I am happy with these changes. I’ve learned that not only am I a pretty quirky outspoken person with people I know and trust but in fact a leader in many respects opposed to the follower I always thought I was.

But here is the thing; I still am not sure how to deal with people who hold back from me. I’ve had a few friends/family members/acquaintances who I could sense were annoyed, displeased, or outright angry with me and for whatever reason couldn’t tell me so. I trust my gut that I am right about this and can probably guess what I had said or done to make them feel this way. Usually it is that I have an opinion that differs from theirs or have done something that they disagree with. And fair enough. I am happy to say that I am ok with all this and am totally happy to be disagreed with. I can safely be sure that I’ve not done or said anything out of malice or anger. Or it might simply be a misunderstanding. But they won’t tell me. They just start treating me differently. Sometimes it is just a feeling and sometimes it is outright passive aggressive behavior. In any case I just don’t know how to talk to somebody who cannot tell me what is wrong. And I hate being afraid to be myself and have my opinions and own ideas when I think they clearly are uncomfortable with that.

A few years back I had a very good friend who I met at work. We totally hit it off and became very close very quickly. We had a blast hanging out and were very similar in many ways. I totally trusted her and really felt like she had my back. After a couple years she seemed to be having some problems at work. I tried very hard to be supportive but found it very hard to know how to do that. So I just tried to listen and agree with her feelings. A few months went by and her behavior towards me started to change. I’d ask her if everything was ok and she’d say it was just work. But I knew it wasn’t. Unfortunately she decided to bring up everything that had been bothering her about me while we were on vacation together. Stuff that had happened over a year or two in the past and unto itself not a big deal but over time it had festered within her until it became so overwhelming she damned near lost her freaking mind. Her behavior scared me and after she brought up personal stuff I’d trusted her with and thought she accepted me for (mostly about the limits of my anxiety disorder) and then threw it in my face I knew I couldn’t save the friendship and I’ve never spoken to her since.

I hate that it got so out of hand. I really missed her but ironically not as much as I thought I would as I didn’t realize until I was out of the friendship how much I had to tippy-toe around her ‘stuff’. It was somewhat a relief in many ways to have her out of my life.

So what do you do when you just wish your friends/family/aquaintances would come out and say what they are feeling? How do you deal when you feel like you can’t be straight with them or else they will disengage or ‘punish’ you in some way?

Is this a common situation with friends and acquaintances or am I just some crazy lady? Is being up-front, honest with how I am feeling, and willing to talk about how we can agree to disagree maybe not a good thing?

Being with people is hard.

Inbox Surprise

This nasty little pervert fucker just emailed me with a friend request from Facebook.

Fanfuckingtastic.

Uptight Dork Seeks Same

Good news! I got the Flickr/Yahoo! thing all figured out. They actually have an email form you can fill out for help and they actually answer your email. Unlike some other entity I know *coughBloggercough*. They will even answer your email again when their first emailed suggestions don’t work. So long story short they automatically flipped my Flickr account into a Yahoo! account using my Flickr identity (not my email) matched with my Flickr password. I didn’t know this and when I went to sign into Flickr it linked directly to Yahoo! log-in which is already set up with my original Yahoo! account information. So now I have two Yahoo! accounts: my original one and the one they made out of my Flickr account. Hence the issue with log-in. Now that I know about this second account I have access.

So yeaaaaay!

And what the fuck where they thinking?

So I was in the car today with my mom and we were talking about people and how often just a few wreck it for the majority. We hear this a lot from my dad who is a property manager and looks after several buildings in the downtown area. Most have on-site managers but a couple small ones don’t so he gets to deal with issues first hand. With all the crazy stuff my poor dad has to handle with tenants it is a miracle he hasn’t lost his mind. I know I’d freak out.

And the weird thing is that so many of these people don’t even think about how their so-called little lapses accumulate and add up to some serious hassle.

So after gossiping about various people we have heard about who live their lives selfishly thereby negatively affecting others I came to this conclusion,

“There are people who notice stuff and people who just don’t.”

I happen to be one of those people who notice stuff. Unfortunately I notice stuff in such minute detail it is actually a huge pain in the ass. Cleaning my apartment is often hell. I start on the big stuff and then get lost in the tiny stuff. I hate fingerprints and notice them on my desk top, cabinets, and glass. Don’t even talk to me about smears. Stains freak me out. It is not so much that I am a neat freak because I am actually not. It is just small imperfections are incredibly obvious to me.

Chips in the paintwork, spotted chrome, crooked pictures, dead leaves on plants….

I don’t know why.

For instance every time I wash my floors I wash the outside of my front door too. I polish the door knob and knocker and wipe off all the scuff marks on the base of the door from the toes of my shoe. You know those black marks from when you use your foot to push the door open if your hands are full?

But every day when I walk down the hallway of my building to get to my apartment I notice all the dirty scuffed marked and fingerprinty doors of my neighbours and wonder how they do not notice the dirt and clean their doors.

I then have to remind myself that most people just don’t notice this stuff. They are not bad or nasty. They just don’t see.

But what pisses me off is when some asshole spills half their latte down the wall of the elevator and doesn’t clean it up. Or lets their dog poop in the lobby. Or leaves dirty panties behind in the laundry room. How can you not notice that stuff?!?! Is it that they don’t notice or don’t care?

Sadly, us folks who notice stuff always appear like uptight bitchy dorks to those who don’t notice.

But even though I can get driven to distraction by these details they can also delight me in strange ways.

I recently bought some fabric to make pillows exactly because if you look reeeaaaallly close at the pattern it is filled with all sorts of weird and wacky shit. To just glance at it you would think it was some sort of childish fabric.

Oh no! No, no, no, no no….

"Hey Fluffy Bunny! I'm Timmy Raccoon. Can I play with you and your scythe?"

"OK! While I build a boat you dig a grave..um...I mean a cool hole!"

"Haha! See ya, Timbo! Hope you like swimming without a life-vest!"
"Why I LOVE swimming Fluffy Bunny! Wait for me!"

"Oh Hey! Feel like a campfire?
"Why yes, Fluffy Bunny, I do although my blue vest is knitted from nice cooling asbestos."

But Mister Bunny was bored of Timmy Raccoon and wanted to go home for a snack.

Bye bye, Timmy Raccoon.

The End.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-MY HEAD is in Jeopardy Today

I’ve never claimed to be a patient person but right at this moment I am losing my fucking mind. So much so that Yoshi is in danger of a head crushing for reals. After my own head explodes.

Ok, here is the thing.

I went to sign-in to my Flickr account today and was immediately diverted to a Yahoo sign-in page. Ok, whatever. I know all about how these sites buy each other out so I did what they told me and signed into my Yahoo! account. It then took me to a page where it asked if I wanted to start up a new Flickr account or associate my old one with my Yahoo! account. Well, obviously, yes, I would very much like to merge the two accounts opposed to starting up a new one. So it asked me to provide my Flickr account ID and password to do that.

This is where it gets very ugly.

I have all my log-ins and passwords saved per Windows XP’s auto-prompt security feature so I haven’t actually had to physically type in my Flickr info since I started the account a few years ago. But for some reason when prompted this time to log into Flickr my computer didn’t automatically fill in my info. I had to do it manually.

No biggie because to keep things simple I use the same email address and password for pretty much everything frivolous like this. I know this is supposedly dangerous but I figure if anybody wants to hack into my Flickr account and mess with my Yoshi costume pics they can do it. It would probably crack me up more than annoy me.

So I entered my info and Flickr told me that it was wrong.

This is slightly possible as it has been a couple years since I had to type in this info myself and I might have done something different password-wise that long ago in a fit of originality. Yet I am about 95% sure I’ve got the right password. Sadly I am just not very original that often.

Well, it gives you the option to click on that dreaded “Lost Your Password?” link where you have to answer a bitch million questions to retrieve your info. So I did that and it gave me my info. Except it is the ID and password to my Yahoo! account and not my Flickr one.

WTF!?!

I tried it anyway to see if they had automatically merged my two accounts together and they now both had the same password but they don’t. It doesn’t work. I still get prompted to enter my original Flickr password etc. WHICH ALSO DOES NOT WORK!!! Because it is apparently wrooooooooonnnnggggg!

I have now entered a cyclic hell of internet password angst. I cannot access my Flickr page anymore and I cannot seem to find the right path to get that crucial info retrieved.

Can somebody heeeeeeellpp meeeee and get my frickin’ blood pressure down? I’ll bake you cookies!

Yoshi's New Favourite Sleeping Position:

Hiding Head From Potential Crushing

Who Needs Fiction When You Have This Kind of Life.

Things have been very busy around the Kranki Krash Pad. I’ve done things, seen things and traveled to far away places this week. Get all cozy under your covers and I’ll tell you a bedtime story or several.

I consider myself a very mild mannered person. I don’t yell, I don’t hit and I certainly don’t freak the fuck out. If I find myself in a bad situation I try to rise above it all and emerge unscathed and well established on the higher road. Until last week.

So I was in this suburban mall parking lot.

I know! Most of you are all, “Yeah! I know where this is going!” and you are probably right. I had backed out of my parking spot and was just cranking the wheel over to go forward and out of the lot when this woman in a van pulls up to my front bumper. Reeeeaaaaally close. I drive a full sized early 90’s 4-door Jetta so this isn’t some tiny car that zips around tight spaces. I need a little room to move. So there I am backed up so my rear bumper is right up to a parked car behind me and I need that room in front to turn my car so I can go forward and straighten out to drive out etc… But right up to my front bumper is this van. And she continues to let her van roll even closer to me so I am basically trapped. She immediately starts cussing me out and waving her hands around. I reply with an incredulous look combined with the showing palms gesture of exasperation. She then starts to REALLY spaz out and scream at me. Clearly I cannot got very far because at this point she is about 6 inches from my front bumper. I just don’t understand why she cannot see she has gotten us into this predicament and needs to back up herself to give me some turning room. And it was not like I backed out right in front of her as I was totally clear to back up and she was actually stopped farther down the row with her turn signal on to go into a different spot. I guess she changed her mind and would have had plenty of time to see me pull out before approaching.

So I get stubborn and just sit there for a few seconds with my arms crossed.

The woman is literally shaking her head around and yelling, “GO! GO! GO!”

Sadly I cannot because she is blocking meeeeeeeee.

Then I just snapped and for the very first time in my very vanilla life I retaliated. I looked her square in the eye and mouthed very clearly, “FUCK YOU BITCH!” And the funniest part was she looked at me like I was the potty mouth evil hag after she had been cussing me out the whole time already. I guess I must have looked livid.

When I told this story to a friend she couldn’t believe I had done it. This is very unlike me.

I then cranked the wheel over and inched back and forth within the foot of space I had to maneuver and finally was able to get around her. I laughed the whole time and I know she could see that too.

I have to admit it felt really good to do that. My inner ‘feist’ is coming out in surprising ways.

Then on Friday I dog-sat my two girls, Xiola and Lulu for the whole day. I took them to the dog beach where they can run around off leash and play with loads of other dogs and jump in the ocean if they want. We came back to my place and I gave them both a bath and then we went for another walk to the park where I planned to brush them thereby giving all the wee birdies and animals clumps of fur to add to their nests and totally keeping my apartment a fur free zone. I sat on the grass and not long after this woman just walked up to me with her two Chihuahuas and sat right down next to me.

Oh! OK!

So we started talking and it became evident that she might be a little mentally disabled which explained her lack of personal space boundaries with complete strangers. We had a nice chat and I brushed her dogs too (all 5 lbs of them) in the sunshine. It was obvious she very much loved her dogs and when I asked questions she almost entirely answered me as if the dogs were speaking themselves.

Me: So what are your dogs’ names?

Lady: (baby voice) My name is Romeo and even though I am very little I think I am very big and I get into fights with large dogs and bark a lot to show them I mean business.

Me: Oh…um…what is your other dog’s name?

Lady: (higher pitched baby voice) My name is Juliette and I am the boss. Romeo thinks he is the boss but I let him think that way but I am really the boss and I sit in my mommy’s lap and never ever ever ever let her get up.

Me: Hehe… um…Well, Romeo and Juliette, you are both very cute.

Lady: (singsong voice) We knooooooowwww!

It was while sitting with Romeo and Juliette’s mom that I saw something I have never seen before and I hope I never see again. This woman and her small son were walking along a nearby path and she was shouting at him about something. The kid, I think about 5 years old, wasn’t saying anything or whining that I could hear but this woman going on and on about how he was not listening and bugging her and such. When they got about 30 feet from me she stopped and her voice got louder and louder and she suddenly spit on her child. Yes. SPIT ON HER OWN SMALL CHILD. It was all I could do not to say something but I had a large dog with me and I wasn’t sure how Xiola would react if this lady freaked out on me and did something stupid. She seemed really nuts. Poor little kid is going to be Hannibal Lecter when he grows up.

Then yesterday my mom and I ventured into the deepest and darkest of suburbs to visit the Holy Grail of shopping destinations. Yes, we FINALLY have gotten an H & M clothing store. I have seen them in other cities for years and years and I just couldn’t figure out why Vancouver didn’t have one yet. We have all the big designer stores and other big names but no H & M. Well we have one now in a nearby town and a downtown Vancouver one will be opening up in Spring 2008.

Sadly I cannot rave too much about it as the store was so packed with back to school teenagers and moms with kids and strollers you literally couldn’t move. There was a huge line-up to try stuff on and everything was so picked over. I’ll go back once school starts and let you know how fabulous it is.

And an update- Yoshi is now talking to me again as I bought her a nice big playzen tuben that she LOVES! I am the cool food lady now (with a 5 foot cat tunnel in the middle of her living room) and all is well.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-On Strike

Yoshi here again. I refuse to come out from under the bed (except to post this important notice) because my stooopid Food Hag brought over two ugly and dumb dogs for the whole frickin' day! My dinner was 3 hours late and my mom is covered in dog fur. She also smells.

So I am boycotting a photograph today and will only consider posing over the weekend if the following demands are met:

-1 (one) can of tuna served in 2 (two) installments for my dinner.
-uninterrupted use of the lap.
-my litter box scooped every hour on the hour.
-scratching of my chin combined with light bum spankings on demand.
-unrestricted access to all hair clips and elastics.
-undying devotion of all mortals.

Only if all my demands are met will I attend a photo shoot. If any of these conditions are not met in a timely manner I will penalize My Slave by pooping in her shoe.

Your co-operation is greatly appreciated.

However, I still hate you.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Yo in the House

Hi! Yoshi here!

Well, my mom, The Food Lady, has been hard to shift off the couch lately. Something about several ‘The Office’ DVDs needing to be watched. I have to really bitch and moan to get dinner around here and it is totally starting to piss me off. I am waiting patiently for her to leave the closet door open so I can make my displeasure known. *clenches butt*

The Food Lady blogged about some sort of 8 Random Things topic recently. I think she called it a Meme. Well, since Fat Ass, um, I mean Food Lady is soooo buuuusy laughing at the large flickering cube I am going to do my own post today.

Yoshi’s “8 Things You Don’t Know About Me” Meowmeow

1. I’ve been told that I have very expressive ears. When you live with such daily incompetence The Food Whore is lucky it is only my ears that are expressive, if ya know what I mean? *delicately flexes claws in menacing manner*

Most common messages conveyed by my ears include:

-Displeasure-immense, moderate, fluctuating, overwhelming, piffling, acute and urgent.

-Annoyance-complete, partial, general, specific, varied, sporadic and glaring.

-Disbelief-towards human stupidity, dog stupidity, and universal stupidity. Stupidos!

-Disgust-full repulsion to vague distaste.

-Dismissal-IE: If ears could kill you’d be greasy cremains right now!

-Derision-ASS!

-Contempt-malignant and seething.

-Ambivalence-…

2. I have an old war injury. ‘Nam? Heard of it? Well, actually I was born with it. I have a little hitch to my step. My right rear leg doesn’t quite step properly. It certainly doesn’t slow me down, though. Running right in front of my mom while she is carrying hot tea is still my passion.

3. Once I was chased up a tree by a couple of mean old dogs. When I found a perch to rest on about 15 feet up I realized that just on the other side of the trunk a raccoon was having a nap. My mom climbed up a tall ladder that was held by a couple grey haired men so it wouldn’t fall into a pointy wrought iron fence and stood on the very top rung so she could reach me and pull me down. She was sure sweating a lot mumbling something about height phobias? Whatever. She took long enough. I was getting hungry. Sheesh!

4. If my food is stale I will pester you. That will include meowing, licking and poking. My mom feeds me fresh food every night so I won’t bug her in the morning. Sometimes I mix it up and harass her anyway.

5. I love pooping. When I do my 'bidnis I dig and dig and scratch and shift that litter until it is perfect and my mom's eyeballs are about shooting out of her head. Then when I am done I run like a motherfucker and race around the house with a big fluffy tail. Cuz’ I feel so free and unburdened. My mom calls it, “Fleeing the scene of the crime.”

6. The Food Slut and I have a little routine we do. She puts her hand palm up on the couch and I walk over and sit on it. She thinks it is the cutest thing. I just like a warm tushie.

7. When my mom blows a raspberry on my head I always lick my lips. It is like a yawn in church. Contagious.

8. I only pretend to hate you.

This is me testing out the freshly vacuumed couch. It's my job. I take it seriously.

I just finished watching the entire first season of 'The Office' (US version) and can’t quite get that ucky feeling out of my gut. Don’t misunderstand. I laughed my ass off and really enjoyed the show but it is almost a little too lifelike in many ways. I guess that is the beauty of it. You watch and relate viscerally on some level based on your past or present experiences in the work-place. Those ugly and dark employee moments one tries to forget every Friday night at happy hour before you go home and have a real life on the weekend.

Here are just a few lovely work related past incidences I wish I could scour from my memory.

-When I was in high school I had a cushy summer job at a nearby town’s city hall. It was not unusual to find yourself sharing an elevator with the mayor. He was about a million years old and used to introduce himself to you no matter how many times he’d done so before. His typical greeting? A bone crushing in-every-sense-of-the-word handshake and a hearty, “You look like a fine group of young lads!” Friendly, yes, but we were all girls and we would be in skirts and blouses with purses and heels. I always wondered what he was like at city political functions.

-Once I made a mistake at work on a film. Not an earth-shattering mistake but a clear mistake on my part. I was spray-painting a pair of boots with fabric paint and I forgot to tape up the soles so some paint dripped under the shoes and got on the bottoms. I had the tape in my hand and got distracted and put it down and forgot to tape up the shoes. I also had a major migraine that day so I was kinda out of it anyway. But not a big deal as I very easily got some solvent and a cotton ball and removed the paint and everything was fine. Or would have been if I hadn’t been caught out by a co-worker. She wasn’t even part of my work area but she flipped out on my head anyway saying that I could get fired for that and if she was my boss I would be out of there and that it was unacceptable to give an article of clothing to an actor in that condition. I apologized to her and said that I had fixed it and it was all good. All day she would walk past me shaking her head, tsking and mumbling under her breath about how I had so royally fucked up. My boss knew about my error and was totally unconcerned so I ignored her. At the end of the day she started up on me again about how even though I was a newbie I couldn’t get away with doing something so stupid as this and wasting valuable time blah blah blah. The ironic part is that it probably took me less time to wipe off the excess paint with nail polish remover than it would have to carefully tape up the shoes and peel it all off afterwards. Nobody got hurt. Filming was not delayed or affected in any way. I didn’t wreck anything or cost the production money. I didn’t understand why she was going on and on and ON! So I turned to her and said, “Listen! I have apologized and apologized to you, which I didn’t have to because you are not my boss and I just don’t know what more I can say to you to convey that it was a MISTAKE! And I have learned from it and it won’t happen again. Let’s all just move on, shall we?” And she said to me, “Ok, ok! Maybe if you just dropped the subject and stopped making such a big deal out of it!”

Oh…my…god…

And the damned shoes never made it on screen anyway.

-Once a boss called me a “Dumb Shit” in front of customers and staff because a co-worker had snuck up behind me and noogied my ribs causing my arm to flail out and knock a box of little doo-dads all over the floor. Then she laughed along with the offending co-worker over his tickling maneuver.

-I had a boss who scheduled an inventory taking day on January 1^st. Yes, that would be New Year’s day. At 8am. And said that if any of us were even a minute late we would be fired. She then showed up 25 minutes late, no apology, while we all huddled outside in the cold waiting for her, very hung-over.

-I had a co-worker who, on a daily basis, would graphically describe to me and anybody within earshot what he imagined my breasts looked like.

-One boss berated me in front of my co-workers that the jeans I was wearing were too faded for work-wear. Never mind that my MALE co-workers, standing right next to me, were all wearing faded jeans too. They were exempt, I guess.

-I nearly got fired because my co-workers and I accidentally left the back loading door unlocked overnight. I was spared but not because I had only started working there a couple days earlier and not only didn’t have keys or the code to the alarm or any kind of locking-up responsibilities at all OR that I didn’t even know there was a loading door in the first place. No, I was kept on, as were my co-workers (who had keys and codes and knowledge about that stupid door), because it would have been too much of a hassle to hire and train new staff. I did get a royal chewing out though after which I had them show me the door they were talking about.

So tell me a personal 'The Office' moment that makes your eyes roll up into the back of your head.

An Unsanitary Truth

The ever lovely Miss Kula posted on her blog her conflict over taking public transit to work with upcoming construction delays versus driving to work and paying hefty parking fees. I related very much to her post as I go through some serious car guilt at times. Yes, only at times. For instance after watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth' or when I have to fill up my gas tank with very pricy Canadian gas (as of today priced at $3.82 USD per gallon). However when I am driving in my sweet heated car with tunes blasting and passing all the buses stopping to pick up the masses I don’t feel that bad at all. Not one little bit. Especially when it is pouring rain out like it does the majority of the time in Vancouver. We have a little term used to describe public transit – Loser Cruiser.

I didn’t make that up. Don’t kill the messenger!

I didn’t actually own a car until I was 22 years old and took the bus to and from high school and college as well as to my crappy retail job and to the bars on the weekends. I didn’t have any friends with cars so I didn’t get to carpool with them either. I’ve certainly served my time on transit.

This sucked. My city has an appallingly bad public transportation infrastructure for its size. There is rapid transit (like a subway) that goes to and through various suburbs but that is very limited and rarely does it comprise your whole journey. Almost everybody needs to get a bus to the Skytrain station (yes, that is the suck-ass name of it) and a bus from the closest stop to their final destination. And because busses are lame you probably have a long walk in there as well. Getting pretty much anywhere is a long and convoluted ordeal. And you are almost guaranteed to be late.

Working in the film industry doesn’t lend itself to using mass transit with early call times, late finishing times, strange out of the way locations and the fact that it is part of the job to travel with a huge amount of stuff. On top of that it may be in your job description to run errands and the bus just won’t cut it. It is wasteful but that is the type of work it is. Can’t be helped. So I enjoyed the luxury of driving to and from work and was thankful not to have to wait for busses after a 16 hour work day.

I live right in the city core so I can walk to do most of my everyday errands and only drive when I have to go a significant distance which is not very often these days. But with all this extra attention on greenhouse gasses I’ve thought about whether I would give up my car if I could take public transport to a job.

Sadly, I probably would not. It is not that I don’t want to but it is that I have been so severely traumatized by many terrible incidents on public transit that I plead Post Traumatic Transit Stress Disorder.

Seriously.

Let me tell you a few stories:

-I’ve been on a bus where somebody puked copiously right in front of me.

-Have you ever sat next to a person who was whispering to himself that he shouldn’t hurt you? I have.

-Once I was on a bus and a guy pulled a knife on the bus driver. Fortunately a police car was driving right by and the bus driver honked and the guy ran off.

-I’ve been totally sexually harassed on the bus both verbally (several times) and physically (more than once) with a guy jamming his hand up under my skirt.

-I can also tell you how scary it is when a guy follows you off the bus and tails you to your destination because that has happened to me quite a few times.

-There is also a little phenomenon that a lot of us ladies are familiar with and that is when you sit in the aisle seat and pervy guys who are standing next to your seat use the oh-so convenient jolting of the bus to grind their pelvis into your shoulder. GROOOOOOSSSSS!

-I was taking the bus out of a very affluent suburb when a police car pulled the bus over. A detective wearing a rumpled trench coat walked on the bus and snapped a pair of handcuffs on this guy sitting across from me and then hauled him off.

-Not to mention the B.O. and other nasty smells. And the disgusting steamy germs on every surface. *vomit* I HATE being surrounded by sneezing and hacking people. I feel like I need a peroxide bath after every trip.

There is one particular public transit instance that I don’t like to talk about that really sealed my future as a unrepentant smog belching car driver and that is when I was peed on while riding the bus. Yes, a guy urinated on me.

When I used to take the bus to high school I had to go through a very dodgy neighbourhood. I got fairly immune to the grubby state of people I sat next to because if one got picky about such things one would never get on the bus in the first place. EVER!! So I didn’t really pay much attention to the fact that the guy sitting next to me was looking pretty rough. In fact he looked like somebody had kicked the shit out of him. As I said, not an unusual happening in this neighbourhood. You know, covered in bruises and small cuts stitched with that nasty black thread. I also noticed this guy was wearing a hospital bracelet but sat next to him anyway because I was so used to it by then. Well, I got very unused to it when the guy’s bladder let lose and he very quietly and peacefully peed his pants. And yes, there was overflow which soaked the side of my pant leg. I don’t think I had ever moved so fast in my life as I did jumping up from that seat. He looked up at me and quietly said, “Ooops.” He sat in his own piss for another couple stops and then casually walked off the bus leaving me to silently freak THE FUCK OUT!!!

I had to transfer onto another bus to get home and everybody was looking at my lovely wet spot as well as judgmentally sniffing the air. It was HORRIBLE.

At that moment I vowed that as soon as I could afford a car I would never ride the bus again and once I got my car I have, for the most part, stayed true to my vow.

So that is my dilemma. What would you do in my position?