Commuter Blue

Sometimes I read other people’s blogs about other people’s lives and I think, “wow, so that’s how they do it there.” I grew up in a smallish town and now live in a suburb of a smallish city in the Midwest with no mass transit or vibrant urban core, so the daily routines of people in, say, more metropolitan areas vary considerably from my own. Which made me wonder if people in vibrant urban core areas might be fascinated by my suburban minutiae. I’m just self-absorbed enough to think they would. So here it is. Enjoy.

5:30am – The alarm goes off. It’s a clock radio that’s either set to a local sports talk station or a Christian station, I’m not sure which, but whatever it is, it sure gets our attention. The alarm is on my husband’s side of the bed, because it’s his alarm—I don’t have to get up yet and I ain’t about to.

6:00am – I awake to the sounds of a toddler being tossed into bed with me, along with a bottle of milk. Yes, he’s plenty old enough to ditch the bottle, and he has for the most part. This morning bottle is more a bad habit of mine than anything else, but hey, it gets me another 10 or 15 minutes in the sack with a cuddly little fella who likes mornings about as much as I do.

6:15am – I get up and take the toddler to his room to change and dress him. He doesn’t like this because he’d rather I just return him to his crib and let him sleep another hour or two.

6:30am – I send the toddler and the husband on their merry way and head upstairs.

6:35am-7:30am – I start the firstborn’s bath and go to wake him up; shower while the firstborn is in the tub, singing, playing, doing everything but washing himself; alternate hair and makeup with yelling at the firstborn to hurry up and wash himself; make the firstborn a toaster item for breakfast, then head back upstairs to get dressed; make my coffee and our lunches and go about getting us out the door.

7:35am – I drop off the firstborn at school and head for work.

8:10am – 4:50pm – I perform a variety of tasks that may or may not include checking my Google Reader list, reading/responding to emails, paying bills on line, making phone calls, returning phone calls, dodging phone calls, scheduling appointments, eating lunch at my desk, going out for lunch, walking downstairs to Panera for a soda or bagel, and maybe (or maybe not) doing some of the actual work I get paid to do.

4:55pm – I run like hell from my office to the parking garage across the street, get in my car, and try to get started on my evening commute before every other asshole in town does the same. Because of the construction taking place on the Paseo Bridge, my former direct route is shot, so I have to get off the highway, cut through the city market, take a backwards route along the river to the casino area and get back on the highway to finally cross the river into suburbia. Yay.

5:35-5:45pm (depending on traffic) – I arrive home to my husband and children, who have been home for a good half hour to 45 minutes already. The toddler is either eating or has eaten, and the husband has either prepared (or is preparing) our dinner—or neither, in which case, we are calling for take-out in short order.

6:15-7:30pm – Various and sundry family activities, including but not limited to: park-going, playing in our backyard, going to the nearby public pool, riding our bikes to the elementary school playground, going for walks, watching Yo Gabba Gabba!, going to the public library, etc.

7:30-8:00pm – Putting children to bed. Toddler first.

8:00pm – I drive my car to the gym. I’m not sure what the husband does, and I'm not sure I want to know.

8:10pm – I arrive at the gym, which is in a strip mall that also features a grocery store and a restaurant. Meaning as I walk through the parking lot from my car to the gym, I smell steak. Nothing but steak. Lots of steak. I fucking love steak. And I am not going to go have a steak, I am going to go work out. This is torture of the highest caliber.

8:10-8:50pm – I do my 40 minutes of cardio. I used to break down my workouts into cardio and free weights, but I’ve been trying to drop some more poundage, so I’ve been doing strictly cardio for the past few weeks. There are several tvs mounted in the cardio area, but they are typically all tuned to the same shit programming, so I may have to resort to people-watching. If there are no worthy participants present, I get very bored and that 40 minutes of cardio stretches into an eternity, but somehow, I get through it. Yay, Me!

9:00pm – I arrive back home. Take a shower, put on some pjs. Try to organize crap for the following morning. Watch tv with the husband.

10:30-11:00pm – Bedtime.

Some people might read this and think, “wow, so if she wants to go somewhere, she just like, gets in her car and drives there? Fascinating!” (Some people might read this and think, "wow, no wonder she blogs, because her life is crashingly dull!")

But in terms of the driving part, I've determined driving is really only cool for about six months after you turn legal driving age and get to go motorin’ for the first time. I have now reached the age where I curse living in one of the only remaining metropolitan areas that does not have a mass transit system. I hate driving in rush hour traffic. Hate it. I hate having to spend 35 to 40 minutes (or, God forbid, longer in the event of an accident or some other delay) stuck behind the wheel of my car, unable to do more than occasionally fumble for my cup of iced coffee and pray I don’t spill it on myself in the process. How I would love to be able to climb on board some big piece of public transportation and zone out with a magazine or a paper or a book (hey, then I could read again!), sip my iced latte and listen to my MP3 player and let some other yutz worry about traffic and deer and errant spiders in the driver’s field of vision. God, just thinking about it makes my eyes fill with bitter, jealous tears.

“Oh, but you have the Metro! You can’t discount the Metro, Mitzi!”

To which I respond: Get real. Have you ridden the Metro? It’s a bus. A slow-moving bus. Do you know how long it takes to get across town on the Metro? Seven hours. Give or take a few days. I ain’t got that kind of time. (In all seriousness, I checked the Metro’s “trip planner” just to see how long it would take me to take the bus to work. I would have to board one bus at 6:35am, get on a second bus at 7:15am, and arrive at my final stop at 7:40am. Total commute time: 1 hour. No thanks.)

So I've been suffering Commuter Envy since I started thinking about this inability to let "Jesus take the wheel," so to speak. Until this morning, as I drove to work in relatively light traffic, sipping my iced skim latte and listening to "Blue Monday" on my MP3 player, and thinking, Gee, this isn't so bad, really. And I remembered that poor fellow from the movie Singles, the one who worked for the Seattle Transportation Department and was trying to push his idea for a commuter train, only to be constantly told, "people really love their cars," even by his girlfriend.

It's true, people who have been driving everywhere on their own since they turned legal driving age do really love their cars. There's a certain freedom that comes with being able to walk out of one's dwelling and immediately be on the road to wherever, without being at the mercy of another individual or an unpredictable transit system. Yes, self-transporting has its issues (traffic congestion, random insect invasions, spilled coffee and ruined pants), but at least I know who (or what) was sitting on my seat before me.