I expected these improvements.  I didn’t expect to fall in love. But it happened. One morning, when I least expected it, the Somerville Market Basket seduced me with its cheap produce.  I was head over heels before I even got to the cereal aisle. We’ve had our rocky patches – I almost considered taking a break last week when an old woman en route to the yogurt case rammed with her shopping cart and then yelled at me in Greek – but I just can’t quit this relationship.  Its even moved me to poetry.

Ode to Market Basket: A Love Song

Market Basket, thee and thee only do we love

Your sales are like a gift from above

A gift of cheap produce, pasta, and meat

A cornacopia of wonder, with bargains replete

We love your Godiva for $2.99

We love your cheap hummus – its simply divine

We paritcularly love your rotisserie chicken

Even though we watch our waistlines thicken

We don’t love your parking, your lines, or your aisles

But when we think of your prices, we can’t help but smile

So to you and you only will we be true

We promise never to bid you adieu

It is 12 minutes to midnight and I am on a train. I am on the Lakeshore Limited, scheduled 9:45 arrival into Boson. We just passed Worchester (pronounced Wooo-stir – unlikely pronunciation, I  know). Worchester is about an hour outside of Boston.   I am displeased. Supposedly, its so cold out that the train that the cars had all frozen together. (Apparently this is commonplace in the northeast).  So, because everything was frozen together, this travesty of a train was 2 hours leaving Chicago. It arrived into Albany 3 hours and 30 minutes late (no one knows how the extra 90 minutes got tacked on), and then – because more things were frozen together in Albany – we sat there for an extra hour.

I really think if they had just sent me out into the train yard with a hair dryer, I could have sped things up.

At any rate, everyone on this train is tired, annoyed, sore, and cranky. Particularly the people who got on in Chicago, as they have now been on this dadgum thing for almost 24 hours.  When trains get delayed, the first thing to go is always the bathrooms. All the bathrooms but two were shot by the time the train arrived in Albany, and now we’re down to one. The conductor told me that he thought he was going to sell tickets to the bathroom and he’d pay his kid’s college tuition that way. He thought that was a hilarious joke. I did not laugh.

One of the conductors is actually about our age and quite dapper. He also keeps carrying strollers on and off the train for frazzled families. He is potentially doing this to pick up some of the more attractive female passengers, but at least the families are getting something out of it.

Speaking of attractive males, I had/have a halfway attractive seatmate. I flirted with him because I had been in the train station for 3 hours and on the train for 30 minutes and I was bored. Unfortunately, he turned out to be prodigiously stupid and completely unfit for intelligent conversation. He got on the train in Chicago and must be similarly bored because he took my exploratory flirtation more seriously than any idiot would have thought I meant it. I only chatted for 10 minutes and then began to studiously ignore him.  In an irritating turn of events, it turns out that simply because one is stupid does not mean that one is easily put off. In fact, this gentleman has been somewhat relentless.  Inanity combined with persistence is an irksome combination. Finally, the people behind us left the train, and he moved to their seat so he could lie down. Sleep was apparently more attractive than my winsome face, thank heaven.

I think the woman 3 seats ahead may have poured some of the cooking sherry into her Nalgene before she left home. While I wish I had her foresight, I also wish she would stop giggling and wishing all the people searching for a working restroom “Bon Voyage!”  On the other hand, maybe if I cozy up to her, she’ll share whatever she’s slyly sipping.

The most annoying thing by far about this delay is that I am arriving in Boston after the T shuts down. I won’t deliver my lecture on how ridiculous it is for a city’s public transit system to shut down before the bars even close and how this has almost certainly contributed to an absurd number of drunk driving deaths.  But I will tell you how unexcited I am to take a cab to my house. Its not just the expense – even though I like spending money about as much as I like having my blood drawn– it’s the utter creepiness of cabbies. Think about how creepy taking a cab in the middle of the night is – its just you and the driver and no witnesses. Anything could happen. I am convinced that half of Boston’s cabbies are accomplished axe murderers and an additional 25% have that potential. Am I the only one noticing the turnover in female BU students? In London, they have a cab service for women run by women – only women drivers who have had full criminal checks drive the cabs. Why don’t we have this in Boston? I’ll tell you why, because Boston, for all its supposed high-brow-ness, is actually a hick town hiding under the disguise of a lot of pretty red brick.

Anyway, I called my mother and told her that I didn’t want to take a cab and that I’d actually rather walk the streets of Somerville at 1 am dragging my suitcase, and she told me that I read too many novels and that I should take a cab. So, I am taking a cab, but I have also devised a plan to call my parents when I get in said cab and act like they’re at home waiting for me.  Maybe that way the cabbie will decide to keep the axe in the trunk and go after easier prey on the other side of the Charles.  One of my goals in life is to keep myself off the cover of the Herald and I feel like being the victim of an axe murderer/cabbie might push me onto the front page.

We’re getting close to Boston and people are starting to gather their things – although I think the family in front of me is considering leaving their 2 year old on the train.  We can only hope that conscience will win out.  Otherwise, the night just gets worse for our conductors. The Nalgene Drunk took her last swig. I hope it will last her all the way home.   On second thought, she really should have given some of that to the family with the 2 year old. It would have only been Christian.

If I live through my cab ride, I’ll let you know. Don’t hold your breath.

In a possible attempt to get a better grasp on the complexities of the adolescent female mind (or something) my youngest brother is reading the Twilight novels. He has composed some a most interesting quiz.  I’m not sure what happens when you tally your answers…but enjoy?

1: A creepy guy who knows more about you than he should, follows you around, and experiences drastic mood swings asks you to take a day-long drive alone with him. Would you take him up on the offer? Would you take him up on his offer if he was a vampire? If your answer is yes, please explain.

2. When vampires are slaughtering dozens of innocent people in the next room over, how do you react?

• A). Kill them with fire
• B). Run away.
• C). Touch your boyfriend’s face.

3. You are a vampire, and you become acquainted with a girl who’s constantly complaining and depressed, but who smells delicious. She is:

• A). A constant downer.
• B). Your one true love.
• C). Dinner.

4. When an army of ravenous vampires is coming to kill your girlfriend, you:

• A). Ready the H&K Autocannon.
• B). Run away
• C). Throw a party for your girlfriend.

5. You walk outside into your front lawn and see your husband battling a vampire. You:

• A). Wade into the fight, shotgun blazing and chainsaw roaring.
• B). Run away.
• C). Commit suicide.

6. Your new boyfriend tells you that he creeps in through your window each night to watch you sleep. Your reaction is to:

• A) Booby trap your bedroom window with a claymore.
• B) Get a restraining order on him.
• C) Tell him that he’s romantic and ask him to watch you every night.

7.  What kind of guy do you fall for?

• A) The sweet, kind, sensitive guy.
• B) The jock.
• C) The pedophile.

8.  You and your family are about to have a huge fight against an army of vampires to protect your girlfriend. During the upcoming battle, you plan to:

• A) Pilot a Longbow Apache loaded to the gills with Hellfire missiles.
• B) Wade into the attack with a shotgun in each hand, and a sword slung over your back.
• C) Hide in the woods with your girlfriend.

9.  Your girlfriend’s sleeping bag isn’t warm enough. What do you do?

• A) Make a fire.
• B) Give her yours.
• C) Ask another guy who’s hopelessly in love with your girlfriend to snuggle in the sleeping bag with her.

10. Your girlfriend cuts her hand at a birthday party. You:

• A) Get her a band-aid.
• B) Ask if she has AIDS.
• C) Flee town.

11. What do you look for most in a man?

• A) Good personality.
• B) Intelligence
• C) A body that you can describe for ten pages pages nonstop

12.  Walking in the woods one day, you run into a human girl with a family of vampires What do you do?

• A). Leave them alone.
• B). Ask them why they are making friends with the local food supply.
• C). Spend the next ~800 pages in a fruitless, seemingly pointless quest to kill/eat the girl despite the increasingly powerful forces arrayed against you.

13.  Your boyfriend (who, for the record, is an overprotective, underdeveloped, insufferable twit) disables your car so you can’t visit your best friend. In reaction, you:

• A) Break up with him.
• B) Sic the chief of police on
  him.
• C) Graphically make out with him for five pages.

14. You just found out that your wife is preganant. How do you react?

• A. Ooh, I think I need to sit down a minute.
• B. I’m gonna be a dad! Yeah!
• C. KILL THE BABY! Kill it, kill it, kill it!

My sister, rather than agreeing with the above statement, has argued that I simply do not have the capacity to empathize with a bride sobbing over her flower arrangement. This is clearly nonsense.  The question is not whether I possess empathy, but whether this is a job that requires empathy. I would maintain that empathy is absolutely not neccessary.

Planning a wedding, in my opinion, is like completing a military obstacle course. By using logic and employing efficient and rapid movements, it can be navigated with a minimum of fuss and/or injury to one’s person. I also apply this metaphor to child rearing.

A  Realistic Guide to Surviving (And Even Enjoying)  Your Wedding

1. None of your bridesmaids will  like the bridesmaid dresses. Half of them will actually hate it. The other half won’t care. They will all tell you its charming.  The best thing you can do for them is to make sure they don’t have to go into debt to afford it.

2. No matter how nice your family and friends are, you will have at least 7 gossipy judgmental women attending who will criticize everything from your hair to the flower arrangements. At least 1 of them will make some kind of comment about your weight. Probably in front of you.  They’re just bored. Don’t pay attention – they feed off of attention.

3. While decorations, flower arrangements, lighting etc is all very nice, the only thing anyone is going to remember is the food. So don’t mess up the food. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be good and there has to be enough of it.

4. The dresses for the mother of the bride and groom and going to be just as much trouble if not more than your own dress. Especially if one or both of the mothers is disagreeable. A few things: (a. Don’t let either of them wear spaghetti straps. Just don’t. (b. Do not allow your mother to wear a dress that looks like your dress. This isn’t cute, its weird. (c. Make sure to have someone subtly check that they haven’t bought the same dress.

5. While its understandable that you would want some kind of payoff for having to plan a ridiculous party for lots of relatives that you do not particularly like, do not openly discuss your hopes of “striking it big” through your bridal registry.  Wedding gifts, its worth mentioning, are gifts. Not obligations. Its tacky to expect people to give you stuff or to complain when the haul isn’t as hefty as you had hoped.  If the wedding is actually a front for accumulating stuff from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, come up with a more creative front.

6. One of your relatives will do something extremely inappropriate and humiliating – perhaps proposition a bridesmaid, for example.  Make your peace with this now.

7. If you aren’t going to have alcohol, that’s fine. Just be prepared for everyone to bring their own. Some of them will not even bother to be subtle about it.

8. On a similar note, if you have two families that aren’t exactly going to “blend” well, the best thing to do is to keep the liquor flowing.

9. Having 18 bridesmaids may sound like a nice way to include all your friends, but it actually just means you have more people to keep track of, more opportunities for personalities to clash, and more people to fit onto the stage. Resist the urge. Your friends will get over not being a bridesmaid and some of them will be extremely relieved.

9. The best weddings are when the bride and groom actually like each other, the bridal party consists of decent, reasonable,  and friendly human beings; everyone has enough to eat and drink; and the band knows how to play a polka. If you have this covered, stop worrying about little things like coordinating flower arrangements, whether the chairs match the table cloths, and if the bridesmaid dress looks good on everyone in the bridal party.  The best wedding I’ve  attended involved my wearing a bridesmaid dress that didn’t fit so well, a reception at a firehall, a simple but tasty turkey dinner, and a lot of polka dancing.  And it was fabulous.

Glenn Beck states those who like the World Cup,

“… they’re the most likely to riot…I haven’t seen the baseball riots.”

Clearly, Sir, you have never been on the T after a Red Sox/Yankees game.  As well, if you really want to address the very important and urgent issue of rioting in sports, I would suggest that the problems with hockey are more pressing than the problems with football.

Gordon Libby comments,

“This game … originated with the South American Indians and instead of a ball, they used to use the head, the decapitated head, of an enemy warrior.”

I rather wish this was true, because it sounds extremely impressive. Unfortunately, its not. In fact, most people trace the origins of football to medieval Europe.  Libby is probably thinking of Tlatchi, a mesoamerican game, which resembles volleyball more than it does football and very sensibly utilizes a rubber ball rather than a severed human head. (Not so sensibly, this ball usually weighed close to 10 lbs)

Dan Gainor sees soccer as part of a marxist plot, claiming,

“The problem here is, soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport…the left is pushing it in schools across the country.”

The end of this plot, according to the paranoid Mr. Gainor, is the  “browning of America.”  Dear me. If poor and/or brown people enjoy the sport, there’s obviously something nefarious going on. What’s next? Soon they’ll be smuggling burritos, pad thai, and other non-European foods into the public schools.

And then finally, Mark Belling (guest hosting Rush Limbaugh’s show) finally showed a glimmer of sense when he stated,

“What I really want to do is make fun of the World Cup, but I’m not going to make fun of the World Cup because when you insult soccer you get the same reaction from soccer fans that you get when you insult an aging Democratic senator’s hair, they go nuts and blow it up all out of proportion.”

Precisely, Mr. Belling, precisely.

Best passage:

Heck, a few weeks ago I saw a dude spread out a linen handkerchief on said unoccupied seat and spread out an honest-to-pete PICNIC on the seat next to him. Complete with friggin’ soup, the least appropriate bus food since lighter-broiled s’mores.

I’ve met this guy. He also picnics on the green line. At rush hour.

So, as I’m madly snapping photographs, a skinny hipster walks in front me, realizes he’s done so, and apologizes. Absorbed in figuring out how to change my shutter speed, I smile absently and say, “Oh, don’t worry.” Skinny Hipster stops dead on, stares at me, and says, in a deep and awed voice, “You have the most beautiful smile, I’ve ever seen.”

I start – who is this kid? – , smile again, say, “Oh, why thank you,” and start thinking about my shutter speed and how dorky would it be if I called Randi because I think she has the same camera and would the librarians be even more pissed than they already are if I used my phone in the library. Skinny Hipster doesn’t move on, but continues to stare. At my mouth.

“You know, I’m a poet,” he says, still wide-eyed. “And, you know, I would just love to write some poetry about your smile.  Its just… Do you mind if I write about it?”

Now I have to look up. Nervous laugh. Out loud, “No, no, write away.” In my head, “Why do you need my permission to write a poem? Why are you staring? You’re standing right where I wanted to take a picture.”

“So, as part of my process, you know, do you think we could go somewhere, and I could just look at your smile and write some verses?” His eyes are even wider now – could he be on drugs?He reaches for my hand and shakes it before I know really what’s going on. And I immediately start to wonder why I always manage to get the weird ones and whether a divine power somewhere is snickering at me.

More nervous laughter and a slow shake of the head. “You know, I have to do…this,” I motion vaguely towards my camera. “And, then, I’ve got to…meet someone…and so, I don’t think today is quite the time…” I try to make my voice sound apologetic as it trails off.  He’s still got my hand and is pressing it in a increasingly urgent and disturbing manner. Creepster.

“Such is life,” Skinny Hipster shakes his head mournfully, and with one final squeeze, let’s go of my hand. “Memory will have to serve I suppose.” He backs away a few steps (Who does that?) and then turns and walks down the hall.

“So sorry,” I call after him and start scuttling away towards the other end of the hall, ignoring the librarian who bumps into me and gives my camera the death glare before she starts chasing after  a man speaking loudly in Japanese on his cell phone.

Just another day in Boston.