I often get tired of the mundane rat race Northern Virginia brings: the traffic, the buses, the trains, planes, metros, fast-paced people walking across the street in heels while juggling eight bags and trying to text at the same time. I don't understand it. WHY does someone feel it's necessary to send a text message while crossing a main intersection in 5 inch stilletos with not even a glance upward to check for cars? Stupidity, I tell you. Stupidity. I have to tell you, though, I've done that once or twice myself. I guess that makes me stupid, too.
Traffic is everywhere: 28, 29, 66, 95. You name it. There is no room to breathe along these highways and even if we leave at 5am to "beat" the traffic, there will still be an accident or construction or a road being paved. It does little good to try work around the masses because the masses are everywhere, all day, every day. We left the beach on a Sunday at noon last month thinking that we would be home free. Home free we weren't, until about six o' clock that night. It only took us about four hours to get there on our trip down. What gives? Unpredictability. On top of that, Google Maps calculated it would only take a bout three and half hours. There is NO WAY AROUND IT.
The lines at the grocery store are ridiculous around this area, too. Unless you shop at 3am, which I don't plan on doing at any point, you're hit with seven or more people long in front of you at each line. Specifically Shopper's. Of course, no corporation wants to open up a new line and PAY someone to ring your food when you can ring it up yourself. But forget about the fact that I'll be holding up nine people behind me while frantically trying to hold on to my bananas and panicking to find the right code for them on the machine (which, by the way, is also yelling at me to put my tampons in the bag because the sensor couldn't tell I already scanned them). "Customer needs help on Line 2. Help...on Line 2 please." Now, half of Shopper's is looking at me with the lights blinking while I'm trying to hold on to my bananas and figure out what I did wrong on the debit card machine! CAN YOU JUST SCHEDULE AN EXTRA PERSON to ring so I don't have to go through this mortification anymore? PLEASE?!?!
Ohhhh the things we do to get by in this life. CVS is also a nightmare, especially trying to pick up prescriptions. Half of Manassas is there at any given time of day picking up pills and complaining that they had to wait too long. And also complaining that they "would prefer to get health care in Canada." Well move there. GO!!
We rush to make our toast in the morning before work while jotting down more stuff on our to-do list, all the while quickly over-feeding the cat with a heaping bowl full of X's and O's because we're trying to pour our coffee at the same time. We get tired of the stop -- go -- stop -- go, mundane pattern of our foot on the brake on the trip in and listening to Lisa Baden try to be funny on WTOP. It gets to be ENOUGH!
But strangely enough those same things often comfort me. The words Woodrow Wilson Bridge and Anacostia Freeway, Outer Loop, Inner Loop, and Nutley St. make me feel right at home. Even the dials on my radio give me comfort. I know that the PER crew will be there for me in the morning and the Junkies (EB, Cakes) and Mike and Mike will always have something new to say. And even though Lisa Baden's voice gets on my nerves I still can't help but know that if ever I moved from this area, I'd miss her.
I guess living "up" here in all this madness makes the madness more bearable when the same radio friends, local coffee brew joints, and names of daily driven roads are all around. They at least bring me familiarity and comfort to the scene of this fast-paced life that is. I sometimes now look forward to the long, rainy, and congested drives to Regal Ballston Common 12 on Friday nights because after that draining, burdensome, and stressful week at work I can spend the extra time talking to Isaac on the way there, thinking about the great time we're about to have in the bustle of the city with our dear friends (and what kind of blog I'm going to write about it later ;)). Or, I can kick back my head and rest it on the comfort of my Honda headrest while I decompress to the busy sounds of horns blowing and the scene of washed out brake lights ahead.
As I grow older, I grow accustomed to my surroundings as they've become my home, my comfort zone, my niche. And the patterns that sometimes break me, shape me.
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