Slip Sliding Away

I’m really sorry this update is more than a couple of hours late. Right now I feel more bruised and beaten that a certain media mogul’s ego might be feeling these days (I’m assuming my loyal fans are keeping up with the news). I have succeeded in experiencing an entire battery of boo boos this week.

Since climbing the hill to take my three-year-old, Lanes, to school has proven to be such a challenge, I was pondering the utility of a preschool education. My dutiful spouse, P, rushed to the rescue and secured us a bus route that would take us around the back of the hill. The catch is that we have to go down a rather steep trail that would take us right to the doorstep of the school. As Lanes, rightfully calls it, it’s a ‘ground slide’.

I decided that I would take the bus up the hill and walk down, not only because it is good exercise, but also because to catch the bus on the way back down the hill involves crossing a road that looks like a freeway and I’m rather challenged in the road crossing department. In short, I'm too chicken to.

As we set into a routine, even the bus drivers got used to us. The one on the way to school was always gruff, just like a pirate right out of finishing school.  After he got used to us hoping on every morning, he has taken to greeting us and ensuring that we get off at the right stop (our stop and the stop before ours look deceptively alike).

The driver on the bus I catch when I go to pick Lanes up, appeared to be super surly, but on the third day he very seriously asked me, ‘is this the stop you wanted? You know we don’t stop here anymore right?’.  I must have looked like I was about to pass out as a million thoughts of me struggling up the hill whizzed past my head because he burst out laughing saying that he was kidding and he hasn’t had such a good laugh in years. Apparently, I bring out the psycho comedian in people.

The hill also seems to have other plans for me. With the help of gravity and my natural clumsiness thrown in with a little rain for good measure, it turned to be my Waterloo.  I managed to fall down the hill with all the poise of a hippo going down a water slide and I managed to pick myself up with all the grace of a breeched calf at birth.

All my weight, and let me tell you I’m surprised the ground didn’t shake, fell on my shoulder that was already hurt from a previous injury years ago. I managed to cut my knee and my hand but that was not the worst part. I couldn’t get up!! I must have looked like a baby elephant rolling around in a bath of mud.

After much scrambling and skidding I managed to heave myself up and shrug off debris, twigs, and my dignity from my person.   I managed to limp home, where I proceeded to bump my knee again and slam my head on the fridge twice. Clearly, it was a good day for me to audition for the starring role of a human piñata.

I tried to get some rest but in our crazy a$$ ghetto fabulous joint, there is always something going on. I was cleaning my wounds when it sounded like there was a lawnmower in my living room. Turns out the motor in our fridge, which was actually brand new when we moved in, was on the fritz.

I begrudgingly called it in, and who waltzes in to ‘fix’ it? Mr. Condensation.  He is the most notorious maintenance man in our building because he just looks at a problem and then tells you to let some ‘air circulate, go round and round, it’s not working due to condensation’. 

That’s his solution for everything.  Heater not working?  Open a window, let some air in. Leaking ceiling? Let some air in. So yep, cranky fridge. Let some air in.  I guess that is what he does with all the hot air in between his ears—just lets the air in. He has air molecules for brains.

I had to stay in for him to come and give me these pearls of wisdom. I was in no mood and I had to shoo him away since he was trying to touch all the food in the freezer! I’m really a finicky person, and the thought that he might have just been in someone’s toilet, lifting up the seat of the commode and then asking them to let air circulate, made me literally step in his way and demand that he not touch any food items.

When he left I had to put Lysol on every non-edible surface he touched. I think I’ll have to wait another week and put in another complaint. If only I can figure out the days of the week he is not working, it would be most helpful. As I type this, he is probably looking constipated and narrowly escaping an assault by an irate tenant.

Speaking of which, my close encounters with the prematurely white haired dandelion headed Mandarin-only speaking lady continue.  She springs into my life like a villain in a computer game from the 1980s.  Any old how, scary lady seems to have recruited a sidekick in the form of a rather jovial man who is always in the same outfit: a dark stripped dress shirt, grey dress pants, and a shiny black belt, all rounded off with white running shoes.

She drags him up the hill every morning around the same time that I take Lanes to school.  She must have told him about me because he waves genially at me and I nod back as enthusiastically as I can seeing as we have a language barrier and all.  I like him because he is friendly, and unlike his companion, he does not try capture me to help with cleaning appliances or get me to stake out the mail room in order to pounce on unsuspecting mailmen.

Lanes and I got off the bus the other day, and I was walking gingerly down the path I had slipped on, when who comes bounding up the trail? Dandelion lady, her sidekick, and some other woman they have no doubt picked up and dragged along the way. She spotted me a mile away and excitedly pointed at me and told her friends something.

It was like the time we went to the aquarium and we were looking for the sloth bear that was hiding up a tree, and when I spotted it I was practically bouncing with delight and kept pointing at it till Lanes spotted it.  I felt quite like that sloth bear at that moment.

Lanes was bounding down the trail and there was no way out of the situation. I gritted my teeth and tried to give a pained but big smile. She pointed at the bus stop and shook her head disapprovingly, swiveled her elbows in a movement to indicate jogging and then she rubbed my belly as if hoping for good luck!! No Mandarin was needed for all of us to get the drift that she thinks I need to work out. This is the second (or is it third?) time she has done this to me.

I felt like screaming and running down the hill, pulling out my hair. I pointed at Lanes and pretended I had to catch up with her and extracted myself from the situation.  Any more exposure to this woman and I’d have to start hitting myself in the head out of frustration.

The sad thing is that she always seems genuinely happy to see me. I have no idea why. She practically bounces with joy and points me out to her friends and waves if she can’t come up to me.  Even Lanes doesn’t look that happy to see me after school. I should be delighted that I apparently bring so much joy to someone, but she just drives me absolutely insane.

In between all this, I had my usual frustrating round with my driving instructor. The good news is that apparently he now says that I am ‘the boss’ so I get to drive myself to Lanes’ school  on days I have a driving class, which means I don’t have to get up the hill on the bus or on foot.

I think the instructor thought that I was going to get Lanes and come back in the car because he looked disappointed when I said bye and waved him off. One would think he would have sped off considering I gave him no chances at all to doze off during that session.

I succeeded in doing a fabulous job failing at parking in a lot. I also annoyed him because I used my method of parallel parking and not his and did a splendid job on that.  He wrinkled his nose and said ‘that is such an old fashioned way of parallel parking. Hmf.’  From back in the days I could drive, I remember that was my strong point. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to back into or turn into a spot, which is not good considering that is one of the things that is tested on the driving exam.

We rounded up the week rushing to Seattle on Friday, so that we could spend Saturday with my crazy sister and her brood since it was my parents’ last weekend at her place.  I was in a lot of pain after my various accidents, and in true style my sister tried to give me medications and vitamins. Only thing was that the vitamins had expired in July 2010.

Luckily, knowing my sister, I checked the date before consuming anything. Meanwhile, her husband convinced me to take medications that I could have been allergic to. Apparently, I survived.  Besides these attempts on my life, it was a nice weekend since we had an early birthday celebration for Lanes, and a belated celebration for P.

We had to race back on Sunday and took forever getting across the border…so I must sign off since I am still recovering from my long week. Plus, I decided it was a good idea to do laundry at 10pm, which means I have to brave the elevators in our building to go fetch our clothes.  More adventures next week…plus my baby turns four: )