Surrender

3:30pm, and every street locked up tight with stopped cars, so I did a u-turn in the apartment building parking lot where my former step-son once lived and where his father bought him out of his lease because he heard gunshots at night. Welcome to the city. Ho hum.

But to the point: I was enroute to yet another meeting with the Big Bank re: $$$, and, finally freed from gridlock, made a quick escape down Yesler Street, a hill which careens almost vertically into downtown Seattle, and which gives one the impression of being dumped into Elliot Bay aka The Salish Sea. Luckily I managed to hedge dunking, and zipped up 3rd Avenue, only to be greeted by a Do Not Enter 3-6pm sign: buses only. Feck!! And late, to boot.

Downtown Seattle is made up of one way streets, crazy steep streets, a freeway which slices through everything, and water. One would think that I'd have it all under my belt, having lived here since the previous millenium, but I try to avoid driving down here and WHY IN HELL DIDN'T I TAKE THE LIGHT RAIL? (Because The Bank was offering validated parking and I thought piece of cake lickety-split. Wrong.)

And then this story came onto NPR about the 1500 grebes who crashed into a snow-covered Wal-Mart parking lot at night, mistaking it for open water. I thought: I can't listen to this. It's too sad, I'm too anxious about this f---ing meeting. No stories about dead grebes. I wanted to cry.

The entrance to the free parking lot was down a one-way street on Mars, as it turned out; and after driving around first one block, then another, and driving under the freeway, encountering yet another Do Not Enter, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, I parked on the street, grabbed the leather briefcase that my deceased mother-in-law gave me 14 years ago that I've never used, and high-tailed it down the sidewalk to the highrise (floor 17) (did I get the correct bank of elevators for god's sake?!).

Jesus Mary and Joseph: life shouldn't be this hard.

And all in vain.

(Did I mean: Life shouldn't be this hard and life shouldn't be all in vain? Maybe.)

Getting back to the car, my parking expired, I switched on the radio, and there it was again: the dead birds, trying to find safety, only to crash-dive onto Wal-Mart blacktop.

This is our world, folks.

No matter how hard you try to follow the migratory patterns proscribed by your specie, you are doomed to end up beak-down in a parking lot with a Price! Rollback! special on a Disney Cars Lightning Mcqueen Twin Bed just footsteps (or wingbeats) away.

I felt the doom of every last grebe, heading for a safe port in a storm, only to be smacked to death by corporate America, by greed.

(Now put your glasses on [this is not victory, but compromise, and so must be whispered]:

Upon returning home, I called yet another functionary of the above-mentioned Big Bank, who, months back, had offered me a see-no-evil-speak-no-evil refi, and who I'd kept on the back burner if all else failed.

Within about ten minutes I was approved: Merry X-Mas to me. Ho.
It's not as good as I wished, but for us poor slobs making less than $200k per annum, it's almost acceptable.)