Poorly planned rude, snobby Easter.

I don't know when we last spoke, but I know it's been a while.

Sorry.

On Friday, I worked for Shabbat, and the first night of Passover and was introduced to a Seder plate. I only watched the first five seconds of the ceremony before Monkey wanted to go, go, go so we went, went, went to play and let the adults do their thing.

We went to Mom E's house and left T and the new baby at home.

I had a nice chat with Helen, a woman from Romania who works for Mom E, keeping house and cleaning up after her parties. She's super nice and on nights when we've been trapped there before, she has been the only thing to keep me from screaming or falling asleep. When she's not there I just sleep.

Saturday morning E took the two big kids to temple and I took care of Monkey until it was time for me to head out. I put him down for a nap and got all ready to go. T asked if I would watch the new baby while she showered before I left.

I jumped all over that one.

I fed him a bottle and told him how stinking cute he is. He has big, round eyes like Monkey and also R and Monkey's giant fat lips, but his nose is tiny like J's and I think he has my hair. His eyes are always open while he's eating, something I have never seen before.

The babies in my family seriously link food and sleep, like good fat, lazy babies, and they nod off while they eat. I have a brother who still does that. He's half asleep before dinner is over. It's a miracle he hasn't drowned in a bowl of soup yet.

But New Baby, as he is so amply named, perks right up when he's eating and looks around and takes it all in. He's so cute. If I didn't live here already I might steal him. Tonight, while caught in the trance his cuteness brings, I accidentally offered a service I have only ever offered to one of my sisters before.

When my sister had her baby I was home visiting for a few days or something and I offered to stay with her one night and watch the baby overnight, including feeding. I know how refreshing one solid night of sleep can be after several horrid nights. Being a sleep-disorder sufferer makes me really, really sad for new moms who can't sleep. Lack of sleep is, in my opinion, one of the worst feelings a working person can feel on a day-to-day basis.

So, I told T if she wants to pick a night when she feels at her wits' end and turn him over to me, I would do it. Once.

She's excited; I can tell.

I fed him and gave him back to her and left here a whole fifteen minutes early, excited to get away for Easter weekend.

I headed into the city to catch a bus to Boston to spend the holiday with my alter-ego personified. I mean, friend.

I made it all the way to Penn Station before anything blog-worthy happened.

For some reason, my bus boarded late, and while we were all waiting, somehow, two lines formed. I was in a line that started at the gate and ran straight back. When I arrived it was the only line there. Sometime between when I got there thirty minutes before departure time, and when we actually boarded, ten minutes after departure time, another line formed intersecting the first one.

When we were given the ok to board and the line started to inch forward, the two lines merged flawlessly, each person letting someone in from the second line.

When my turn came, I let in two people who were together and stepped forward, claiming my rightful place behind them. A girl from behind them in their line stepped up beside me.

Now, I'm not shy.

I looked at her politely and wedged myself between her and the pair I had let merge.

When the line moved again, she tried to come forward again.

I looked at her less politely.

Things progressed this way for a few more steps.

Near the gate, with her still elbowing her way into my personal space, I turned to face her.

Now, in retrospect, I could have easily let her ahead of me and been nice about it, but that's not what I did. I go on the offense when I enter the bus terminal, train platform or taxi plaza. The people here are INSANE and if you don't fight for your place you get trampled to death. It happens every day in the subway. Look it up.

So, face to face with my nemesis for the moment, I simply smiled a tight, forced, irritated smile.

"Were you in that line or this line?" She asked, indicating each as she did it.

"This one." I pointed. "For a while."

She started to shake her head with a smug look on her face that made me want to hit it repeatedly, but I think that's still illegal, so instead I prayed SO HARD for a calm, clear, curse-word free head, and spoke again.

"I think this was the original line, but everyone's merging anyway. It was my turn. That lady was ahead of me, these two men came in, now it's me."

She kept shaking her head and my blood went from room-temperature to raging-fire. Near the point of explosion, I stepped in front of her again and took my place on the bus without looking at her anymore.

I've seen that smug mug most often on my brother, and I'm allowed to pummel them. It was so hard and disheartening to not have that reaction to this girl that I almost had a nose bleed.

Once we were boarded our driver explained the delays. There was an accident in the Lincoln tunnel, you know, the tunnel that buses are supposed to use to leave the city since they aren't allowed on the bridge? Yeah, that tunnel.

We had to kill forty minutes while the driver figured out what to do next.

In Hartford, Connecticut I transferred to another bus where the token Annoying Girl used her loudest voice possible to talk to everyone around her about NOTHING.

My iPod almost didn't get loud enough to drown her out but then I put Linkin Park on and they seemed able to scream louder than her.

Boston.

Well, near it.

Ashley, Ashley's dad, dessert, dinner, dessert, dessert, dessert, drinks, movie...

Church on Easter Sunday.

What an excellent sermon. People always brag about their amazing pastors and quite frankly I don't believe them. After being under some of the greatest pastors and preachers in the world all my life, I tend to be very skeptical about the competency of your pastor.

Ashley's bragged about hers before and I was like, yeah, right, I'm so sure.

He was awesome.

I like a good, smart sermon that leaves me feeling pretty bad about my behavior and he did that in such a positive way.

We ventured on to Ashley's mom's house for dinner and I held Ashley's newborn baby nephew because she is afraid of newborns (wuss) and her mom gave me a chocolate peanut butter bunny which I am polishing off this very minute.

Her mom also hid Easter eggs in the yard for the adults, filled with money, so I made a few bucks which was totally awesome. Especially later when I needed to tip my cabby for driving like a madman.

We left there and went on together to the airport where Ashley had a flight back to school and I had literally, HOURS, until my bus home.

I waited until the last possible minute to book this trip because first T hadn't had the baby yet and then she had but she wasn't doing that great and then I knew I was going, but let's face it, I'm lazy and so it wasn't until my day off last week that I actually bought my bus tickets.

I used Peter Pan on the way there because they were cheap and the times were pretty good. Several better times had sold out already, but I found one that worked and selected it.

Coming home, I was actually leaving from Boston, while going in my destination was a suburb of it.

The buses that ran from Boston were different and Peter Pan did not run at that terminal. I found another company that has been recommended to me and had buses available for Sunday night. Well, bus. It had a bus available. Everything else was sold out.

Just to be sure, I checked Amtrak and saw that not only were they sold out, but they had sold out at over $130 a seat, so I wasn't missing much there.

I had purchased my Megabus ticket and now, with Ashley headed off to a plane, I settled into an airport chair and nodded off for an hour. Then I moved to another chair and did it again.

I got a bite to eat and a drink, bought a $2 bus ticket to get me from the airport to the bus terminal, and thought for a minute.

I stood in a line for over an hour before realizing I didn't need to. I found a bench, napped, read a magazine, napped again.

This was pretty much my evening.

I was so BORED.

I was being selective with what I used my phone's battery power for since none of the public transportation depots in Boston have power outlets. WHAT IS THAT ABOUT?

I have been in so many airports, bus stations, etc, and there is always something.

Boston is so stingy.

I finally found one marked "staff only" and after watching some guy sit on the floor and use it anyway, I followed suit. Only I don't sit on floors in bus stations, so I sat on my bag and hoped I didn't catch anything from being so close to the floor and the people around me.

I don't understand how teenage and college age boys get so smelly.

They seemed to be swarming all around the entire station with bad hair and horrible clothes. One stinky mess in purple jeans kept walking past me and I nearly passed out each time. Don't they have showers in Boston?

All night long I stalked gate 11, because it had the time stamp and city destination that matched my ticket, even though my ticket said gate 12.

Gate 12 said "Philadelphia" and I can only imagine how bad the people willingly traveling to Philly must have smelled.

Exactly two minutes before my boarding time the gates were corrected and the hundred or so people in line for Philly were suddenly standing under a New York sign.

The only clean person in the terminal, an immensely attractive man who I hoped to propose to later, asked me if I was going to New York. I said yes and that our line should just band together, stay strong, we would make it somehow.

That's not what I said, but you get the idea.

Our driver called us through the gate 12 door and we walked over to the correct bus. It was a double decker and I've never been in one before so I dumped my bag on the guy packing them up and ran upstairs to get a seat.

It was departure time, midnight, and I was EXHAUSTED. Ashley had kept me out to all hours of the night on Saturday and all my naps on random benches were amounting to nothing.

I slept like a rock for the four hour trip.

I woke up in NYC, accidentally involved with the man to my left whose shoulder I had slept on. I don't know why I can't stop doing that! I'm a shoulder tramp. In some countries these are marriages! You sleep on a man's arm for more than an hour, you're an item.

Fortunately, this is America and I wasn't pregnant, so I got off the bus, retrieved my bag and then just stood there.

It was 4:19 AM and we were most definitely not in Port Authority.

I would remember later that Megabus drops off at 28th street and that I knew that. But at 4:19 there is no knowing or remembering.

I needed to get to a higher numbered street and I guess so did everyone else, so I followed the crowd until we reached the Madison Square Garden entrance to the LIRR.

I was so excited to get into that terminal. I ran down the escalator, into the LIRR, bought a ticket and went to check the big board.

I would remember later that the Great Neck branch has no train between the 3 o'clock hour and the 5 o'clock hour.

I died a little inside as I realized I would have to sit and wait like the rest of them. Only, the rest of them were drunk and one of them kept talking to everybody, asking for money, tickets, water, who knows what else. I sat on my bag and cursed everyone I know for being at home, happy and in their beds.

I somehow made it to boarding time.

Got on the train, fell asleep.

Woke up two stops passed mine.

It was now 6 AM and I was so miserable I couldn't believe it.

I got off the train, waited ten minutes, got on another one, got off, frantically beat everyone else to the one and only cab at the plaza, jumped in it and cried out my address like a crazy person.

I made it! I made it home!

I dug out an extra dollar from my Easter egg, thanked the man several thousand times, ran inside, ditched my filthy bags, showered in scalding hot water, washing away the stench and scum of Boston and the line going to Philadelphia, and ran to my bed.

I leaped on it in a state of pure joy, texted my mother to let her know that I was alive and slept for the best hour and a half of sleep I have ever known.

At work time, I dragged myself up the stairs, made a pot of coffee, drank it and muscled through day one of Passover vacation with my munchkins.

I laid in the yard while they played or something.

I gave them lunch and drank another pot of coffee.

T's mom brought dinner, bless her forever, and T, exhausted from my lack of presence over the weekend, helped me put all the kids to bed before 7.

I went to my bed, my precious, beautiful bed, and fought to stay awake until at least ten so that I wouldn't wake up with the sun this morning.

It didn't work.

I woke up with the sun and vowed to never, ever take a red-eye bus home on a work day again. EVER. EEEEVVVVVVEEEEERRRRRR.