If life were more like Mario Kart, I'd at least get to throw turtle shells at these people.

My morning commute is not too bad in terms of distance. My office is only about 5miles away from my home, and during the summers it's a quick 10 minute casual drive down the road, and the numerous stoplights are barely noticeable - and this is a very busy street, it goes across almost the entirety of Houston, which if you don't know, is a MASSIVE city, which on top of being ridiculous in size, does not have the convenient grid layout of most other large cities which makes it difficult to navigate foranyonethat hasn't lived theirforan extended amount oftime and makes forcountless intersections, hence all the traffic lights in such a small area.

However, the majority of the year – this otherwise brief 5 mile trip takes me anywhere from 20-30 minutes to travel, which is aneternity for such a short distance. Equate it to walkingout to get your mail and although your mailbox is only a few yards away, it takes you an hour to get there because time and space keep bending around you in order to**** with you all the better.Like a really annoying dream.

So, what could nullify the simple logistics and physics of this trek? Children. Oooh yeah, here we go... hold your hands up, this is the peak, it's pretty much straight down from here.

This stretch of road has 14, that's FOURTEEN school zones. There are 3 churches, 2 elementary schools 12 stoplights and at least 2 sets of traffic cops slowing the **** out of everything, and naturally, there's the moving roadblocks that are school buses. Now, if you have been paying attention to my blog for awhile, you will know that I openly hate everything that I've just listed… and these things stand in my way between the comfort of my home andwhereI make mymoney, which really just doubles down on whatever seething rage lay beneath the surface of my ridiculously charming exterior.I don't have road rage, per se…I'm generally indifferent if I'm not on a schedule...but if I was ever capable of taking human life it would be every morning and late afternoonMonday through Friday on that 5 mile stretch. I've got churchies forever turning into their worship box, waiting for the nonexistent full minute gap in traffic to make their left turn. I've got school buses lumbering along at the blazing speed of 15-20 miles an hour even outside of school zones that are stopping every 30 feet, because god help us if these little ****** all gathered in one area. The traffic lights are timed pretty much the same, so if you get stuck at one, you are officially stuck at all of them, and then of course the 14 ******** school zones… placed as if the city planners had a bunch of extra signs left over and just stuck them all on this road, presumably to annoy me. The worst time of year however, above and beyond all others…. the beginning of the school year.

This is a time where not only are the school buses out rolling around blissfully unaware of their detrimental effect on my life and pursuit of happiness, but the traffic is three fold. Why? It's because at BOTH the elementary schools I must push past have lines of cars wrapping OUT of their parking lots and down the street through at least two traffic lights – who are these idiots? They're parents. These semi-sentient breeders, so enamored are they with their offspring that they deem the bus system unfit to transport their seeds from one place to another, and therefore they must do it themselves. This wears off after a month or two of course, but every year is the same. Oh and it's not enough to take up one entire lane for the use of waiting to let your brat out of the car, but they also use the one remaining lane that would otherwise let the rest of us with places to go pass, for trying to cut into the obscenely slow moving line. It's a big production, these kids getting dropped off – the car gets up to the marked "drop off zone" and EVERYONE gets out… pictures are taken for their first day of school, mothers are weepy saying goodbye to their future fry station operator, while the fathers give exasperated sighs and check their watch before lamenting that the kid will be back home in like 6 hours. I often wonder how any of these kids ever get to cIass what with the days of waiting in line and the broadway play they have to participate in upon departing the vehicle.

Meanwhile I am trying to develop the ability to set things on fire with my mind. Once I've managed past these cesspits, I have to focus though – there are still several school zones to go after all, and there is a denser population of teenage drivers to contend with as there is a high school in the area as well… not on my path of course, but these cretins use this road to get there. It's the standard faire, guys with trucks driving them like they're in a dragster, girls in big SUVs talking on the phone, texting, putting on makeup. Car pools of morons laughing to themselves, and fantasizing about Justin Beiber or whatever it is teenage boys do these days. You have to keep on your toes around here because you can and will get sideswiped if you aren't 100% on the defensive… once I've made it past this area though, it's pretty much smooth sailing on into my office, there's only one more school zone and three more traffic lights to go. The school zone itself is rather pointless, it's about 10 yards, and just barely covers the intersection it boarders. Most people ignore it. After that, as long as the traffic cops aren't stopping traffic for a ridiculous amount of time to allow 3 very distantly spaced vehicles and then wait just in case a fourth one comes, I can usually coast in to the garage. There is an optional route I could take, via the freeway, however it is without fail, gridlocked during the hours I need to use it – so I use it maybe twice a year, if that.

Now, the only thing that can slow me down at this point are the idiots attempting to navigate the apparently mind numbing circular pattern that must be traveled within the garage itself. Some people, for some reason, completely lose their ****once they get into these garages. I can't fathom why, there are giant arrows that say which way to go, which way not to go, and yet – more often than not, I am stuck behind the one person who can't read arrows. Or park. Finally I make it to my spot thankfully reserved for me, and then down the elevator and into my office where the remaining brain cells commit seppuku upon encountering the stupidity that oozes from the majority of my coworkers.

The home trip is basically all that in reverse, except add in that bastard who gets on the elevator and presses '2'.