Airline travel normally doesn't bother me. Traveling relieves a person of looming obligations and tasks. Your job is simply to get where you're going. What you do in the meantime is Zen. You are free to BE. To read. To watch. To listen.
But I have to say, this two-legged trip into the green and golden plains lacked a little due to a few annoying seatmates. On the first leg to Denver I huddled in the middle seat, between two unthinking males. They both selfishly hogged both of my potential armrests without apology.
Not fair. You have a aisle or a window seat (with a completely free armrest all to yourself) and here I am in the middle AND I have no armrest. Not even half of one! I try to make my body so narrow as to not touch either of you unaware schlubs and I simply can't melt that far into myself so your shirts stop brushing my arm.
On the second leg, from Denver to Fargo, I was relieved to see a skinny shy teenager filling the seat next to my window seat. That is, until I realized his nose ran for miles and he refused to go blow it. He filled the silence every 23 seconds with a gooey obnoxious sniffle. Go blow your nose kid. And cover your mouth when you cough, oh my gawd, you better not get me sick. I cuddle against the window. I cover my face with my hair.
But none of that's here nor there as I descend into the cauliflower blue sky of my youth. As I watch the defined lines of the farms unfuzz in my view, I realize I forgot my camera. I'm sorry for that; I wanted to show you...
It's a joyous embrace with my mother, brother, sister, and brother-in-law. We drive happy and chatty to my grandmother's house. A content me wraps my arms around the little star of Nova, my beautiful and charming niece. For the rest of the afternoon relatives stream in and out of the house, a steady hum of talking and eating.
Towards the dark part of the night, we head to the main Broadway drag in downtown Fargo to watch my cousin play in his band Cousin B. Dempsey's bar is ripe with good sound and Josh rocks the bass, of course, and his band bedazzles us. All of this I would have guessed.
What I wouldn't have guessed was that everyone and their mother would be there. It felt like a high school reunion! My sister ran into her old friends. My brother ran into his old friends. I ran into my old friends. My cousins were there too. My oldest and bestest friend (and partner-in-party-crime) Tiffany met me there. Overly ecstatic, tired & unfed, and in-step with my former Fargo self, I definitely drank too much.
There's something about Fargo that lures me into this defunct version of myself. I've often wondered if it's the particular gridlines on the map. That particular place in space sucks me in a weird wormhole of myself but not really me behavior. But unchecked debauchery frequently rules. I'm sad this post isn't ALL sunshine...the punchline drags and blows...
On my two month anniversary of NOT smoking, I smoked three cigarettes. How poetic. Arg. There goes my two-month-anniversary how-far-i've-come-on-not-smoking blog post I was planning. Stupid stupid Fargo, you have me wrapped around your crooked finger. I need to unwind.
Don't leave me yet. Tomorrow is beautiful and pure, I promise. I felt and loved the day right as rain. With a copious amount of sunshine.
6 comments:
Trying to be the good committed blogger, I stole your subject and wrote about my last flying experience. :) It's funny how we revert back to our 'before life selves' when we go home isn't it?
omg it drives me BATTY! what's up with that? it's like my mind just shuts off and starts following some old train track of myself...too bad it always ends in a wreck tho ;-)
Darcy, You aren't framing this right.
If you had not quit smoking, how many cigs would you have consumed in a 60 day period? I don't remember you as a 'heavy' smoker but then you might have been trying not to do it in front of me and I'm guessing here... So if we say 10 a day? 10 X 60=600??? Therefore 3/600=1% which means you are 99% successful, NOT a 100% failure.
Now if you go back to the wedding when you slipped and compare that to the baptism - what are the identical factors that lead to said "slippage"?
1. Fatigue - you have had to travel to get there.
2. Excitement - you are thrilled to see everyone and forget to eat properly or even eat enough to offset the effects of the final thing...
3. Alcohol - lets face it. Drink makes us stupid in so many ways but you want to have fun so you have a drink but then you haven't eaten so it goes to your head and then you find yourself smoking again, probably because of...
4. Friends - how many of them are still smoking?
Now I know you want to completely quit and SO applaud that effort, but please stop beating yourself up for not hitting perfection! Just keep trying!!! You'll get there and if you slip - well, just try, try, try again.
THANKS VICKI!!!!! ur right. i think my dad gets in me a bit...his AA theory is that once you screw up, the next day is DAY ONE. it's like a total start over. perhaps with drinking, but i don't think it applies to smoking. that would be too disheartening for me!
and yes, it IS my friend's faults! i blame Tiffany completely and i'm only 10 percent kidding ;-)
every day is day one. there is no yesterday. there is no tomorrow. there is only now, so what do you choose to do with it?
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