I can do this without tears or cussing because at this point, I have now gotten eight full hours of sleep and am able to do like the psychologists say and look back with a bit of a laugh. not a big laugh, but still a laugh...
So yesterday I took the kids up to my mother in law so that they could spend a week with her. Randy is going to meet them up there Friday and they are going to celebrate the fourth there. Then they are coming back because I finally made Randy see that although I would LOVE LOVE, LOVE a month to myself while I prepare to pull up stakes and head out of dodge, it wasn't worth it to the kids because they would spend 7am to 5pm in day camp and then three nights a week with a babysitter while he goes to school. They wouldn't be spending the summer with Daddy, they'd be spending the Summer in Daddy's general vicinity. He understood and finally agreed! Yay me!!
And don't get me wrong I still think my mother in law is quite possibly a decent sized thorn in my side but after this month, I really won't have to deal with her as much anymore. I won't be an hour and a half away and therefore in her summoning circle. So anyway. I took the kids up to Newark to meet her. That actually went off without a hitch. My train was scheduled to leave at 8:23 on track four so we said out goodbyes and parted ways. I sat on the platform for probably twenty minutes due to the delayed status of my train. It stayed delayed until 8:41 when it changed to canceled. I didn't freak out, bloggers. I held my cool. I found a train station official and asked him what I was supposed to do now. He said in one of the thickest Jamaican accents I've heard in a long time that I was supposed to get on the 9;21 local train. I wasn't happy about it but what can you do? You have to get home somehow.
OMG! The train was sooo crowded. I mean there was barely standing room that's how crowded. As I stood there panting because it was soo hot on the train one of the guys in a seat looked up and said "I can't have you standing. It's got to be hard to stand to stand like that!" Then he moved and gave me his seat. As I got marginally comfortable, he asked me when I was due and suddenly his chivalry made sense. I looked up at him and told him late October.
Oh don't look at me that way, I know it was wrong. I also know that that one little sentence probably earned me an extra hot fire in hell but it got me a seat.
Soon enough the train thinned out and I was able to get really comfortable so I slid on my music and let the train lull me to sleep. I so wish I hadn't gone to sleep, Because when I woke up I was in REALLY unfamiliar territory.
That Territory being Trenton. Okay, now i was upset. I was panicked and upset and all the things that a person could be when they find themselves in strange territory. I was crying and I was angry at myself for falling asleep and I was angry at the train official in Newark that told me to get on this train. The police officer in the transit center in Trenton told me that I would probably have to go back o Newark to get on the train to bring me back to Long Branch. I was even more upset to learn that the train to take me back up wouldn't get there until 11 and by the time I got home it would be close to two.
Turns out that when you cry and blubber and basically live up to every stereotype of brainless women that men hold dear, they like you just a little bit more. So I cried, and a blubbered, and I whimpered. And I got to ride the train back to Rahway for free. The train to Long branch was only ten minutes later and guess what?! It was one of the double trains! Yay! Got to Long Branch and the last Asbury train was waiting at the tracks.
So one would think there ends my tale, right? Nope. I didn't have the five on me to catch a cab from the train station so I hoofed it. Really so not the drama. I walk the same walk almost everyday to get to the bus for work. What was the drama?
The Drama was when a car pulled up alongside of me and two white guys sat inside and the one in the passenger side asked me if I could give him and his friend a early morning special. UNBELIEVABLE! Granted I was dressed in my not much of a shirt scarf shirt but still!!!
I was tired. My feet hurt. My back hurt. I had to use the potty. What else could I have done? I approached the car and and was about to tell them exactly how to get to the part hell they needed to be in, I saw the driver move his hand to just below his leg. And it hit me. VICE SQUAD!! Are you freaking kidding me?? I smiled, I leaned in and told them that I don't know who taught the police how to troll for hookers but they don't use phrases like 'early morning special' and that when looking for a hooker, it's not wise to roll two by two. Then I leaned up and walked home.
I mean come on! On the bright side I can now move away from Asbury Park with the full knowledge that I have been mistaken for someone else by both Asbury Public School Truant officers and now the Vice Squad.
Oh you didn't hear bout the truant officer? That's a really short story. About five months after I moved here I was walking back from somewhere and the police that pick up the kids cutting school (yes, they actually have that) asked me if I had a good reason for not being in school. I said yes, I had graduated ten years prior. He asked for ID and I didn't have any. I must not have been going far or whatever because I had nothing but a few dollars on me. Suffice to say this didn't follow with the officer who made me get in the car and he drove me to the high school. The lady in the office told him that she didn't recognize me. I told her it was because I wasn't a student there, I was a great grown woman with kids of her own. Ya! In Asbury Park, that's not actually something that screams "I'm not in high school, you jackass!" I was given the opportunity to prove my age by calling someone to prove how old I was. To his credit, the officer looked apologetic and drove me home saying he was sorry.
So I've been confused for a high school kid and a hooker. I have been told that I looked young and I've been told I looked trashy. BY THE COPS.
I think it's time to leave Asbury Park... What do you think?
Single and blogging is never taking the train again...
