Right now I am standing under the awning of a Subway. No, not the underground trains, the sandwich shop. Anyway, it’s raining, it’s around half the temperature it was when I left home this morning and there is a tree across from me with what I can only assume is all of the lorikeets in the entire world each screeching like a teenage girl on a roller coaster.

As I’m waiting here in this shite weather with my ears being assaulted by a thousand tiny, colourful birds, I am contemplating my last 24 hours…

So far I have been told twice by our 3-year-old to stop fighting with Co-Consul (we have had a couple of rare arguments), I have crashed the car (hence argument #2), clashed heads with Co-Consul in the middle of the night and split my lip (hoping it was accidental) and tonight, due to the driving rain, I opted to take up the offer from a colleague of a lift to the station rather than take my usual bus.

I waited 20 mins for a train which comes apparently every 10 and my live timetable suggested it had been 35 since the last train. This was a bad sign and I knew it, but I was at the station now and there are no homeward bus stops within cooee of the station, so I waited. After my 20 mins, I get my train and we had gone exactly 2 stops when the nice lady on the intercom explained that the train would not be moving any further, that the bridge was closed and we should take a bus. Immediately I understood why the train was late and realised that had I taken the bus I would have been very close to home right now (if busses are still running over the bridge, it had to be train-centric trouble).

As quickly as I could with the crush of dejected commuters, I got off the platform, out of the station and to the bus terminal  – I had only 30 minutes in which to get home before Co-Consul had to leave to go out. At the bus terminal I found around 300 people waiting for the promised busses. I would be 301 which would mean I would be heading home on bus #5 and there were currently no busses in sight. I dashed around to the taxi rank, staying close to the road and looking out for a chance cab (there were none), when I arrived at the taxi rank I found another fifty people. Taxi #51 for me. I took the desperate measure of trying to find a taxi on the complete opposite side of the station and shopping centre and, of course, the story was exactly the same over there.

I was screwed.

So I called Co-Consul and explained the situation. Knowing the only option which would get her to the theatre in time, she bundled the kids in the car and came to pick me up.

…later that evening…

Though she knew it was not my fault, Co-Consul was stressed by the whole ordeal of bundling numerous overtired kids into a car and rushing out to rescue me (and her night out) and I didn’t help when without my glasses I put us into the wrong lane back over the bridge and we missed the turn-off to the city.

Long story short – abysmal 24 hours. I have a sore lip, the insurance company is likely to gleefully put our premiums up, Co-Consul is (fairly reasonably) mad at me and I haven’t done any work on my WIP tonight.

*sigh*

OK…Positives:

1. Everyone (certainly in our family) survived
2. Co-Consul made it to the theatre on time (just)
3. Kids went to sleep without too much effort
4. Work is going fairly well this week
5. Trains have now replaced Busses as my least favourite mode of mass-transit
6. I came out of it with a blog post
7. Tomorrow is Friday

 — IEK