I allowed myself to sleep a little late this morning, which of course meant that I missed my (already later) train by perhaps just a minute or two. And then they announced that, “because of a police investigation,” the next train, due fifteen minutes later, was running nine minutes late. There was no sign of police activity on the train when it did arrive — not too late, I thought — but the car I was on was rather crowded. And crowded in that “you know, if you’d just move over a tiny little bit and maybe act like we’re living in a civilization…no? Gee, thanks” kind of way.
It was also snowing, although that ended well before noon. The snow seemed to be coming down fast and flurry-ous for awhile there, and I had dreams of them sending us home, but, not unexpectedly, it was not to be.
On the train ride home this evening, the car I was in had almost no light. Luckily I was one of the first couple of people on, so I managed to snag a seat where there was enough light to read, but the rest of the car behind me remained fairly dark. One of the ticket collectors tried flipping a switch to see if that wouldn’t help, but it just turned off the two or three bulbs left in the car. He quickly flipped it back.
But it was a pretty normal train ride, and I had enough light to read by, so that’s enough for me.
I got home, then, only to discover that the street was blocked off by a work crew a little up the block. I was able to get to our house, but I had to walk our dog in the back yard, rather than to the corner like usual. I’ll do that sometimes — sometimes even often — in the summer, but that’s when there isn’t snow on the ground and there’s still light in the sky. Luckily the morning’s snow hadn’t done too much damage, added too much to what was already on the back lawn, and I grabbed a flashlight and we went out in the back.
Around that time, my mother came home from work, and we tried to figure out what had happened, and after that what to do about dinner. All evidence pointed towards a water main break up the street — giant puddles across the street, our own tap water a little iffy and sputtery for a while — and that was later confirmed by a phone call to the local water district.
(Sadly, they had finished their work up the block before I could snap any photos. There also wasn’t any way to do so inconspicuously. So I’m afraid the habits of southern mants will have to remain an undocumented mystery for some time. Mant headquarters, though, does assure us that the water should be fine to drink.)
Right around then, my father called, needing to be picked up at the train station. (Fewer trains run to our station, so sometimes, at night especially, it’s easier or even necessary to stop at the station one town over.) I had an hour to kill before that, so I decided to actually go get dinner. (Quick takeout at Boston Market, should you wish to keep score at home.) Of course, I managed to run over some of the recycling we’d put at the curb for tomorrow’s pick-up on my way out of the driveway — the snow has left significantly less room for maneuvering, and we haven’t had a recycling pick-up in a couple of weeks — and dragged a cardboard box full of paper half a block before I realized. I pulled over, then pulled it all out from under the front wheel, then tossed the mess of paper in the trunk and went to get the food.
I got home, with maybe twenty minutes to spare before I had to go pick up my father, only to be startled out of my mind by a cat racing from the garage. We don’t have any cats, though occasionally a neighbor’s will take up residence on our front step, or sometimes the garage. At least, I’m pretty sure it was a cat. Maybe it was a tiny mant.
Anyway, then I went to pick up my father. And all of this makes the evening sound much more exciting than it really was.
Or maybe not very exciting at all, I don’t know.
