Interval, with cats, without snow

You know that my spoiled rotten cats are just swell.  However, there are times when I head home writing in my head, scribbling on disparate pieces of paper on the bus, knowing what I’ll key into the computer when I arrive at that blessed place, Home, and then I get home and discover the cats have knocked the window seat onto the food tray and scattered water and kibbles and bits and whatever all around the kitchen.  Suffice to say, new chores confront me on my return.  I suppose I should not feel the need to deal with such mundane matters, and just go write.  But no one else is going to deal with anything, so I am pressured into action. 

These are the times when I put the lines on the “good” and “naughty” sides of the board in my mind.  Left side — good cats.  Last night both Chick (a.k.a. Chickabetty) and Wilbur got good cat marks because they noticed me scream and run away (accompanied by Mama Millie, by the way) from the waterbug in the bathroom.  Next to the heating unit.  Which means it came up — or down — through said heating unit.  Great.  Subsequently Chick (my little huntress) and Wilbur killed the beast and left it in plain sight in the hallway where I could sweep it out the front door.  Good cats. No, I did not take pictures.

Then this morning, the three of them were hovering and sniffing around the floor of the bedroom.  I started to panic.  Then I saw what they were eating:  my lunch.  Anything in a plastic bag is fair game, I understand, but it was only there for ten minutes!  They couldn’t get into the soup containers, but my sandwich had become theirs.  Three marks (Chick, Wilbur, and Millie) in the naughty cat column.

I might not have been as annoyed had I not been awakened at 4:18 a.m.  I don’t have to get up at that hour, I just woke up.  The cats did not wake up. There were three cats leaning on one side or another of my legs, oblivious.  A blistering headache (yes, going to bed with wet hair does have ill effects, no matter what modern science says) and a song woke me.  Excedrin eventually knocked out the headache (I believe in NSAIDS no matter what my allergist says), but it took a while for me to hear the song clearly enough to identify it.  It was not from a car out on the street.  It was not coming from a neighbor upstairs or next door, or some maniac in the basement.  It was in my head.  I realized it was the Mamas and the Papas and eventually I recognized the song as ”I Call Your Name,” written by Lennon and McCartney.  Why was it in my head, and why did it coincide with a blistering headache to waken me?  I’ll probably never know.  Great song, though. I prefer it wake me around 7, not 4.

Tonight I intended to finish up my review of The Woman in Black (I’m up to version 5), and the kids managed to spill their water around the dinner tray and the kitchen floor.  Waterbug in the bathroom last night makes me very sure I don’t want them splashing water in my kitchen!  This leads to one more naughty cat mark. (If I don’t know whodunnit, I can hardly blame all three.  Which would probably be valid, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.)

On the bus stop tonight I heard a woman (young enough to call a girl, but I don’t want to sound old and crotchety) telling someone on her phone that it was snowing.  It was not snowing.  I got off a bus in Queens at 8 pm and it wasn’t snowing.  It was misting heavily and the air was cold enough for my breath to be frosty, but it wasn’t snowing.  It’s not snowing now.  And yet when I got off the bus, there seemed to be a soft coating of something whitish on some bushes.  Some windshields.  Presaging something downright wintery, without actually going there. 

I would have taken a photograph when I got home had there been the tiniest bit of frosting on my big blue spruce.  But, no.  Not a bit. Exhaust fumes from the highway have apparently melted away any hint of frosted windowpanes.  Oh well.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on that review.  Just thought the kids needed a little credit for killing the waterbug.  If not for munching on my lunch. 

~ Molly Matera, signing off.  I promise, I’ll finish my review of The Woman in Black and post it tomorrow night!  And I do not understand why Microsoft’s spellcheck does not comprehend the word “waterbug.”  It’s a waterbug.  It exists.  Believe me.  I don’t examine it minutely to be sure it’s not a cockroach. No, I do not want to know the difference.  Microsoft, catch up.

Snow Days Ahead -- The MTA Ain't No Post Office

Rain, sleet, uh oh, snow. You will not believe what I read on the bus tonight.  Specifically the Q46 bus in Queens, although I’m sure the notices are on all MTA buses.  No one reads these.  If you’re in the right spot, at the right time, you might see that there is a notice.  It might be six years old.  It might be current.  If you want to read it you’ll be leaning over someone who doubtless won’t appreciate the attention.

My phone’s camera is insufficient for photos of paper in moving buses at night, so I went to the MTA’s web site to grab another form of this notice, which is nowhere near as effective as the paper one I saw on the Q46, the one with the bus information outlined in magic marker.

I have been riding city buses since 1967.  That’s when I started at Robert H. Goddard Junior High School 202 in Ozone Park, Queens. I took the Q41 bus to get there from my home.  For years I took the Q41, the Q11, and/or the Q54 (along Metropolitan Avenue) to get to school.  Come rain or snow or sleet or whatever else.  We had blizzards back then, too.

I have been riding NYC subways since around 1970, when I made friends in high school who didn’t live in my neighborhood but rather rode the M train, the L (then the “double-L”) train, and took the Q55 along Myrtle Avenue.  Then there was the A train to college every day, and there’s a Q39 in memory, too.  That was the bus I followed — once I learned to drive — along its winding route through Ridgewood and Maspeth and wherever else to get to the 59^th Street Bridge and (then a precious secret) the multi-level parking garage.  This was so my friends and I could park, then walk over the bridge to get to Manhattan to get to work during the big MTA transit strike in … 1980?  Was that it?  You remember, when women started wearing sneakers and socks over their nylons, carrying their pumps in their shoulder bags.

Anyway, suffice to say I have been riding – and have been a fervent advocate of – public transportation for over 40 years.  All of a sudden, public transportation can’t handle snow.  All of a sudden, if it snows?  You’d better bring your yardstick.  All of a sudden, the A, E, F, G, etc . (see notice) trains may not run properly, may skip stops, if it snows.  BUSES — the magic-marker highlighted section of the poster on my bus tonight implies all caps — BUSES may not function at all if it snows more than 5”.  This would mean, of course, that the snowplows aren’t doing their jobs, or why on earth would suddenly buses not be able to function?

Don’t believe me?  This is the link:  http://mta.info/service/ColdWeather.htm

Does Mayor Bloomberg want us all to drive our own cars around the five boroughs?  Into Manhattan?  In the snow?  Instead of professional drivers?  Instead of taking public transportation, which apparently is no longer able to function in the Mid-Atlantic region, despite the fact that it has functioned for half a century that I know of, and a good deal longer before?  

Manhattan Island has the smallest land mass of the five boroughs.  This is about Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and – goddess help them – Staten Island.  We need public transportation.  We are so totally screwed.

I read the other day that someone caught MTA bus drivers playing chess.  I always knew they were doing something, since it is not a variable that on any given morning, during rush, three buses will arrive at the same bus stop at the same time (which is contrary to the published schedule), and riders will have to wait 20, 25, 30 minutes for another.  And then that bus will be so crowded they have to wait for yet one more.  Apparently the drivers are playing chess.  Today’s notices make me wonder if the MTA put out this news blast so we would blame the unions.  Hmm?  Or is it solely the MTA’s responsibility to transport (Metropolitan Transit Authority, in case you’ve forgotten the meaning of the acronym) the tax-paying and fare-paying citizens of all five boroughs to work, to home, to hospitals, to school, to life, even if it snows?

May we remind the MTA that children get snow days.  Working adults do not. 

I ask you.

~ Grumpy Molly Matera, signing off.  Mouthing off.  Whatever.  Too annoyed to be clever.