Wednesday, January 12, 2011

even when I win, authority always wins

Is this thing on? Is anyone still out there? Let’s test this bitch out …. I was ecstatic last night to get an e-mail notification on my blackberry that I had been given an award from a reader to my blog. I was initially shocked that I hadn’t lost most of my followers since the diagnosis of my writers constipation. And then, even more shocked that I was given this award by someone whose blog I’ve never read. Someone likes me and not cuz they’re obligated! Thank you so much Rachel of Life and Me, I’ll be spending the next few lunches getting myself acquainted with you, I love discovering new blogs and people. But I must warn you, I am still in couch mode, and since my company released this:

I haven't spent much time blogger. And since my daughters laptop is the only computer at home, I’m also worried about getting on from there, because that’s the last thing I need - My 13 year old daughter who just pinky swore to me that I wouldn’t become a gramma before I turn 45 to find my blog and learn that her momma has the tendency to be a slutty drunkard. Thank you again Rachel for the warm fuzzies. And now for the award.



I can't pass it out to 15 newly discovered blogs though because I haven't discovered any. Most of them are from Aunt Crazy's blogroll, so I am giving her the award for doing all the work for me. It's a 3rd Party Award. I'm in joint venture accounting so I found that thought amusing. I do feel obligated to do some work for it though, so I took some laxatives and unleashed the fury. I have just spewed the longest story I have in a long time and here it is. My first real and full blog post of 2011. Maybe more suited for bathroom reading material. I won’t be offended.

(To follow the Award rules of listing 7 things about me, I'll highlight them throughout my story)



When John Cougar says that he fights authority, but authority always wins, I completely understand what he’s talking about.

I have a lot of fight in me. Actually, I wouldn’t call it “fight” so much an unreasonable desire to have things my way. And as recently realized, at very high costs. I don’t follow the rules too often. In some cases, I fly under the radar and get my way. In other cases, I lose. Miserably. The city parking company has officially defeated me. Every time I ripped a parking ticket off my car and threw it away, I was inching closer to my loss. And on January 5 when I went to renew my car registration and was forced completely against my will (much like rape) to pay $532 for my 2011 sticker, I knew the end was near.

I work down town, along with around 150,000 people also trying to strike it rich in oil and gas. Obviously, it’s not ALL oil and gas companies down here, but it’s close. And really, everyone should get into oil and gas. It pays well. I started working down here in 1999. Being 7 miles from home and a transit rider since age 13, I did what was most logical and convenient … I took the train in. Actually, convenient is really the wrong word all together. I had a two block walk to the bus stop, where I fought with a stroller filled with a sleeping toddler to get up the steps of the bus. After that 10 minute bus ride, I boarded a second bus, for another five minutes, which took me outside the daycare centre where I’d leave my daughter to be raised by women who didn’t speak English. Which explains her Punjabi accent even though I am as white as snow. THEN, then, I’d get on the train. And for 25 minutes, I was alone with my thoughts, with a chance for extra sleep, but most commonly … books. Eventually, when I scraped enough money together to buy a car, I got to skip the two bus rides and instead left my car at the train station by the daycare. So really, a ridiculous pain in the ass. I had a lot more strength and motivation than I do now. Built character I guess. But even then, I wasn’t playing by the rules. I didn’t pay for the train rides like everyone else, and after about 18 months, I was caught by the transit cops and made to pay a $250 fine. But over the course of those 18 months, I would have paid close to $1300 in transit passes, so really, I saved about $1100. Win. In 2004, I left my first job where I was getting pimped out to the oil and gas industry and making so little money that it hurts to think about. I ended up in a small friendly public company that was 9 months away from selling and making it’s employees rich. Well, I didn’t get rich, but from where I started out, it sure felt like it. Good-bye bologna, hello chicken breasts. And after one year in the real world, my company offered me a parking space. In the parkade. Attached to the building our offices were. For free. That was class. And absolutely preferred to what I was faced with daily. in rush hour. to my end of the city.


Unfortunately, in 2006 when my second company was taken over with much hostility by the company I'm currently with, they robbed me of my parking spot. With 150 employees compared to the 60 that we once had, they decided a transportation allowance was better for them than allowing us to keep our parking spots. Which made no sense since monthly transit was about $20 more than the allowance, and monthly parking was about $400 more. Yeah, good trade, fuckers. But the parking-seed was already planted, and I decided that I was never getting on another train again in my life. I spent the next few years paying for public parking out of my pocket. Or when I was feeling rebellious, I simply didn’t pay. Even when my car was finally towed and I had to pay a hefty fine to get it out of the towing yard, even when karma beat the piss outta me and my car was stolen from that same lot, I continued to tell the parking company to kiss my royal ass and only paid when I felt like paying. It wasn’t until I paid attention to a credit card bill one month that my parking addiction was just about leading to bankruptcy and probably rehab. I sucked it up, and in 2008, I bought some damn bus tickets. The problem since then has been finding a spot to park my car that gives me good access to the express buses so that I’m not standing on a crowded bus for too long that stops every damn block. My solution for almost a year was a grocery store parking lot. That seemed to be the solution for a few other rebel transit users and eventually, the grocery store hired a security guard that stopped us from using their lot. Fuckers. I even resorted to leaving my car at Sydnerellas dads house when he still lived in the city because he lived a block from that transit-hating grocery store. But he eventually moved out of town, abandoning his daughter and costing me a parking spot. Fucker. I was on a search for a street or lot nearby that didn’t require a permit. One day, I found it. The street with the free parking. I was complete. Nine others shared my happiness, if we got there early enough. Our happiness was cut short last month when business owners, or residents, or whoever the hell it was that ratted us out complained to the city. And eventually put up shiny new signs that read PERMIT PARKING ONLY, that I didn’t seem to notice for three fucking days, earning me THREE new parking tickets that I got in the mail after I paid the $532 worth of last years fines. And Monday morning, with the damn blizzard that rolled in, not knowing if I’d be able to find free parking on a street that might not have been plowed anyway, and with not enough fight left in me, I did what I said five years ago I would never do again. I grabbed a book and hopped on the train. They won. Those sneaky, ruthless parking dicks won. But I must admit (since I don’t want to be miserable forever) that it isn’t so bad. I go in an hour earlier, and leave an hour earlier so I'm just beating rush hour. Take that. As a matter of fact, I felt rested when I got home. I hadn’t been sitting in traffic berating every stupid ass on the road who doesn’t know how to drive for 30 minutes. I simply walked less than two blocks from my fabulous downtown office, waited less than a minute for a train that I actually got a seat on, and got down to business (started reading New Moon since I got through all of Twilight on the weekend). All of a sudden I was at the station where my car was parked. Close and free and legal. Then drove the six blocks home. This is my new routine; I can embrace it or hate it. For now, I am choosing to embrace it. I missed having time to read anyway, and my New Years resolution really was to stop calling all drivers bitches and whores, so this will help. And I do feel relaxed. This was really a win for me, even if it was for them too.

(a few blocks from my house .. nothing I really care to be driving long distances in anyway)

6 comments:

  1. Awesome. You got warm fuzzies from a lezza so that makes you officially gay.

    On a separate note, unlucky for having to pay parking tickets. When I lived in London I used to park in tight spots in free places where no one else could get in to. The bumper on my car was used as, well, a bumper. Shunt those fuckers along.

    Whisky time. Bye.

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  2. Oh my gosh, I cracked up that you credit Aunt Crazy for your blogroll. :D

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  3. Yep that is toooo funny, living your bloggy life Vicariously through A.C. ROFL

    Things are looking up then????

    hope so... :o)

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  4. holy shit that is a lot of snow!
    Enjoy the train and the books! ;-)
    Where is summer? LOL

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  5. Hey you! Happy New Year!!

    I love that photo of the people-encrusted train... my good friend here at work, KP, is from India... he drives like a mad man!!!

    :o)

    ~shoes~

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