{"id":3559,"date":"2016-11-17T12:15:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T11:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2023-01-02T17:17:08","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T16:17:08","slug":"the-woman-in-the-scarf-signals-a-bad-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=3559","title":{"rendered":"The Woman in the Scarf Signals a Bad Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"scarf\"<\/a>Every morning I see the woman in a scarf. It\u2019s either black or red; and once it was a tan scarf that looked like one I\u2019d had as a kid that was unthreaded to death by a washing machine when I was 12.<\/p>\n

Other than the scarf, the smoking woman dresses sort of like she\u2019s about to take part in an equestrian show. She wears tall black boots, tight trousers, and a tan field jacket. She is always smoking a cigarette.<\/p>\n

The woman in the scarf is my morning time gauge.<\/p>\n

We pass each other three mornings a week, always somewhere between 7:15 and 7:20, when she is on her way from the metro to her office in the buildings near my flat and I am on the way to the metro to get across Prague. I have no idea where her commute starts, all I know is that I see her every morning. And depending on where I see her, I am either on time or very late.<\/p>\n

There really is no in between. I am never late and I am never early. It is the by-product of being an obsessive son of a bitch. The latest I ever am is between fifteen and twenty minutes early for work, which is just about on time. Any closer to H Hour of a class equals late, and throws my day into a descending stairway of grumpiness.<\/p>\n

But today, I am running late, meaning I’ll hopefully get to work ten minutes early. Maybe five minutes early. But this is barring any holdups on the way and holdups are a thing that permanently roost, make love, and multiply in the mind of an obsessive SOB. Just as they are today.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why I am late today. Maybe it\u2019s the fact that it\u2019s dark. Always dark. I have been getting up at 5 am for a few weeks to get my writing in before work, but today it just didn’t happen. Even after I woke up and I simply had to get up and put water on my body before putting on clothing, I still didn\u2019t move. I just lie there asking the lizard people who run our Matrix to let me stay in bed. But I got no answer, so I got up and put water on my body and coffee in my body and then I left. I’ll have to eat my grapefruit in between classes.<\/p>\n

I pass the woman in the scarf just near my corner, when she is already finished with her cigarette. Even she eyes me in a way that asked what I am doing all the way back here and then she checks her watch. We obsessive SOBs know one another. I shuffle forward in hurry.<\/p>\n

The rest of the day will be completely thrown off now. I usually spend my tram time reading and my walking time making mental tweaks to lesson plans. But today all I can do is worry that I might be late, so on the tram I alternate my gaze between Lucky Jim<\/em> and the clock at the front of the tram. I wonder if the woman in the scarf’s day will be any better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every morning I see the woman in a scarf. It\u2019s either black or red; and once it was a tan scarf that looked like one I\u2019d had as a kid that was unthreaded to death by a washing machine when I was 12. Other than the scarf, the smoking woman dresses sort of like she\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/scarf.jpg?fit=612%2C969&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-Vp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5772,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions\/5772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}