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Wednesday, September 7. Rain, Rain, Rain...Wet Seats... & School's In.

Ok so. It's my first day back after taking a week long vacation. I needed it!! I went down south and thoroughly enjoyed driving and not taking the train! Sorry New Yorkers! It is what it is.  So now, I am back to work and I have to schlep uphill to the train, wait for it...wait for it... get on and stand up and hold on, just like before, only today was worse for two reasons. One, the students are back in school. Booh hissss! I'll never get a seat on the train now. And two, it's been raining for 40 days and 40 nights!

So I am completely unprepared that it's only 60 degrees when I step out of the house. Really? Just cause it's September now, Summer just picked up and left? Ughhh.  So I grab a jean jacket and rush out the door only to find that there are puddles everywhere. I have on cute little ballerina flats...you know fall shoes!!  And I need to have on rubber wellies or boots. I cannot believe Summer's gone. Just like that.  So the rain wets me and my crappy umbrella does nothing about it.  (Hurricane Irene broke my sturdy, expensive one as I tried to beat her home from work, because NY doesn't believe in shutting down for even the most hazardous and life threatening conditions before they happen... Nooooo that would be like being a whimp.  NY is no whimp! NY shuts down when it is happening.  And after it happens...)  Anyway, so I am wet. And cold. And my slippers are flapping because my feet are somehow wet inside my shoes. Un-com-fort-able. 

I get to the train and when one pulls into the station I board and look around for a seat. Of course there isn't one.  Finding a seat available on the train these days is right up there with witnessing (plug coming...) a Black Swann (an unprecedented event, for you slow ones...) Anyway, I didn't get a seat.  After all, the children are back in school and we all know how tired they are and how hard it is for them to stand on their own two legs, what with being young and all. I mean, look at their faces next time and you will see how hard they work at school 6 whole hours every day and you will understand why they all need to sit and sleep on the train, instead of letting the granny who has to keep working because she lost her pension in the recession, or the old man on his way to the doctor, or the pregnant woman, or the young man working 12 hours a day to pay for school he attends every evening, or the woman holding a thousand bags of stuff she needs at work.  The school kids are tired. They have it hard. Really!  (Rolling my eyes.)  Moving on.

So I stand up and hold on, my purse and my tote falling off my shoulders...(The train floor is one big dirty, New York puddle so I can't sit them down.) When we are halfway to my stop, a seat becomes available.  I run to it. (Now I'm running for seats?) I am so ready to sit down and at least prop my umbrella on the floor, when I notice that the seat is full of rain water. Sigh.  Wet behind, stand up and hold on with bags and umbrella, wet behind, stand up and hold on with bags and umbrella...  I prop myself on the very edge of the seat hoping another one will become available at the next stop. It doesn't. I balance my butt in the chair with the left behind rain, all the way to work. Believe me, it takes acquired skill to do such a thing. Perhaps I should add that to my resume.

It's all good, because I have told myself that I will not allow me to be in this situation much longer.  I'm just biding my time while the President works it out.

Lesson:  Until you can do better, you gotta do what you gotta do.

A Girl Changing The World

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