Ridin’ the Bus

Today was my day off, and I slept in till 8:30…beautimous! Baby Daughter called and tried to get Grandson Biscuit to talk to me on the phone, but he wasn’t interested. However, he did sing ” Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat ” to me…our song, so to speak.
After Dr K left for work, I went downstairs, changed the filter on the hot tub and ran some shock through it. It’s a wonderful thing, the hot tub; it’s one of the inflatable kinds, and I love sitting in it after a hard day’s work, but I’m going to have to sell it because….well, we need the money. Let me know if you’re interested. Will sell it for half what it cost us 6 months ago.
Anyway.
My brother who lives at the homeless shelter here in town took the bus over to visit me. He has yet to find a job, and has been going back and forth to the V.A. for medical treatment and therapy. This man is one of the hardest working people I know; he takes pride in his work, and wants to be employed and get back on his feet so badly he can almost taste it. He’s been pretty bummed out about the job situation, so today I thought we’d do something fun: ride the bus.
First I made lunch, pigs-in-blankets with beer brats, and home fried potatoes.
Then we walked to the nearest bus stop, and hopped aboard an empty bus about 5 minutes later. I wanted to go across town to a beer/wine brewer’s shop to get some extra ingredients for my homemade grape wine, so we took the bus as far as Cornhusker Hiway, got off, and I gave my bro a crash course in crossing busy streets…I say “crash course” because when he stepped off the curb, he stumbled and nearly fell headfirst onto to pavement in front a line of traffic. We went to the brew shop, the one my Dad always went to when he was in town. This place was always the landmark Dad used when traveling through the city. He could find just about any place he needed to go as long as he started out there. I told the owner that his business would suffer now that Dad was gone. He was surprised and saddened to hear of his death; he said he always loved to hear Dad tell his stories. I bought the items I needed, then we walked over to a supermarket a few blocks away. I promised my brother that this store, of all the grocery stores in town, was the most dangerous one and frequented by more white trash than Walmart on “payday”. It was a bit ironic; I was dressed in baggy jeans, faded sweatshirt, dirty shoes, and had a worn out beret shoved on top of my head to cover the bad haircut I gave myself. We bought ourselves a couple of bottles of soda; Bro bought a 6 pack of soda that he was going to sell to his “shelter mates” for $1 a bottle, a win-win deal because he would be making a profit, and the buyers would be paying 50 cents less a bottle than what they’d fork out at the closest convenience store.
We hopped on the next bus at the closest stop. This bus went clear the way out to some residential area that even I wasn’t aware of, and at the end of the line everyone(except Bro and I) got off. On the trip back to downtown, we enjoyed the view of the colorful leaves, Halloween decorations, and children (on fall break, no school this week) running up and down the sidewalks. It also gave us time to make fun of people on the street, talk smack about cars going by, and also discuss things like the importance of taking antidepressants and how great it was that Bro hasn’t had a drop of alcohol to drink for over 6 years. We had a lot of soul-to-soul during that short time while we were the only people on the bus.
It took a long time and a lot of bus transferring before we got back home around 6 pm. I really missed taking my mandatory day off nap, but having spent some quality (albeit white trash) time with my brother made up for it.