News

I am getting better at airplane travel. I’ve even started looking out the window and seeing the amazing landscape down below, but that’s for shorter flights. Eight hours ahead of me and I was actually pretty calm. I even slept a little, until the flight attendant reached across both Jon and I with a hanger to close the window shade right beside me. I don’t know what trust issues you have, but for me having a stranger lean across me with a largish object in their hands while I’m sound asleep and move something almost beside my head woke me up, and that’s putting it kindly. To say I woke up with that nightmare moment when you realize that dream figure looming over you isn’t in your dreams, but real with something long and weapon looking in their head, and . . . I never went back to sleep, because every time I started to relax, another flight attendant would walk by, and I’d be thrown awake again. I also had to open my window shade with my anxiety that high because among many things that makes plane rides difficult is my claustrophobia. With the window closed I had trouble breathing, I know it’s illusionary, but there it is. What I didn’t realize is there was some method to the scary madness of the woman who’d leaned over us. Dawn came right through my window. Everyone else was a snooze in their seats, tucked in like the Who’s down in Whoville, while I, the Grinch, sat staring out of my small window at the first faint hint of light. The light began as just the ability to see the clouds, but then did a spectacular show of molten gold, orange, and red. The colors seemed to burn through the clouds until the sun floated into sight, yellow and shining and too bright to look at. Jon informs me that he got to see most of the light show, because the flight attendant bumped his seat, and the window shade did make quite an abrupt sound when it slammed down. So we got to watch the sunrise over the ocean. The bad thing was that the light began to seep across our fellow passengers who were all still asleep in their seats. Which was why the flight attendant had tried to close our window, so the people would sleep as long as possible, which would make their life easier as well as the passenger’s. I did try to lower it some, but I couldn’t close it completely, because I got panicky again. Sorry to all our fellow passengers, I did not mean to be the Grinch to your naps, but it was either that or have a panic attack. We watched two episodes of THE BIG BANG THEORY on the screen in front of us. The show has quite won us over; clever writing, good characterization and wonderful performances, besides hard not to love a show that derives it’s humor from physics jokes, and sexual double entendre, sometimes in the same bit of dialogue. I also started reading Susan Wittig Albert’s newest book, "The Tale of Briar Bank.” It’s a cozy mystery with Beatrix Potter as the amateur detective; yes the creator of Peter Rabbit. I find the books charming and very relaxing. They have become some of my favorite books for reading on tour. I had purposefully saved this book for the next plane ride.