people stomping up and down the aisle. sweating and attempting to shove bags, laptops, jackets, duty-free into the overhead. looking at zone 5 people with pompous disregard. i-got-here-first-and-have-the-right-to-ignore-personal-item-limit-rule. i love to travel. if it weren't for other travelers.

but then thats not entirely true either.

i went on my first airplane trip when i was 6. to visit my grandparents in northern louisiana. it was more of a cropduster with room for my raggedy-ann and overnight. i was big stuff. eyes like saucers waving good bye to mom. i loved the take-off even then. loved the clouds. loved even more where i was headed. grandma made play-doh from scratch.

next time i flew i was ten. headed to hawaii with the family in a gigantic tank of a plane. three rows across. my lil brother with mom across the aisle and me with dad in the middle aisle. champagne. sounds terrible for a father to be feeding his 10-year old champagne, but then you don't know my father and the fact that was the first, last and only time we ever had an alcoholic beverage together. he didn't even drink at my wedding. or dance. with me or anyone. you would have to know my dad to understand why that is comforting. and why that single glass of bubbly with him somewhere over the pacific is still one my favorite moments with him. i didnt like that flight so much as i wasnt near the window and you cannot really feel the take-off in a 747. kinda like getting a bus to catch air --- and as great as it was when keanu and sandra did it... well, that was hollywood. but i liked the flight for the moment with dad. stolen. my personal travelmate and co-conspirator.

my uncle had a plane for a while. flew grandma and some cousins around in it once. he was an ass and i hated sitting there and having him take me anywhere. hated the take off because he was there polluting it. hypocritical abusive exhibitionist. sit around in nothing but his stained whitey-tighteys and yell at my cousins and i to switch our pjs for skirts and buns before having breakfast. claimed we were whores. we were 8, 11, and 12 respectively. i didn't know what a whore was. i thought he was mispronouncing oar and couldn't figure out why that was an insult or bad or something to not be on a saturday morning. hated that man. don't care that some murmured that it was agent-orange induced. his brother was just like him and the chances that both of them had identical experiences leading to identical outcomes is as likely as an 8 year old being a whore simply bc she wore her care bears pjs to the breakfast table. hated that flight bc he spoiled it. all of it.

andre chartered a jet to fly us all to nyc. champagne caviar and white leather seats. they were all excited. he was putting the pressure on for a commitment. THE commitment. swearing that he would get help for his flaccid dick and that he was sorry for lying to me. big time spender. loved large parties. large presents. overstatements of semi-truths. was his irish heritage he claimed. another overstatement. he was a polish kid that went to notre dame. claimed he broke his nose walking onto the fighting irish. it looked just like his fathers, and was broken during intramural flag football. we have this trip we are taking. i know big gestures are his thing. i am sick that i am going to ruin the trip for everyone if he proposes. bc i will not marry him. he saves me the question. disappears the night before. literally. supposed to be at the house after a working dinner and by 2 o'clock is still mia. so i call his best friend. who is going on the trip. and who also does not know where he is. and we comb the town until andre answers the phone at 3:30ish. drunk. stupid. laughing at my once again not understanding that working dinner means shit faced and ugly into the wee hours. so i get on he flight and paste a grin and miss the take-off. but ignore him and that and focus on the conversations floating around me. learn more about those people in 3 hours than i had in the 8 months i had known them. facetime without distractions will do that. flying perk.

there was ttrip to cjoes wedding. when usairways robbed me of everything. but wont go into that again. it made for a good story. still pissed about those dresses though.

flew to st louis to meet bradley's family. and to jax to witness char and drew take the big leap. excellent trips. first one for the destination and the trust. bradley and his family ahead, he had not brought anyone home since 'her' and this felt like a big deal bc he wouldnt acknowledge it as such. second one for the optimism. a wedding between someone who i love dearly, who lost someone we both love dearly, to someone that --- as she inscribed in his ring "you save me" --- saved her from the drowning all-consuming abyss that is heartbreak. both flights were shared with pleasant and entertaining co-fliers. i gained a friend on the way to st. louis, starr dickson. seriously. thats her name.

i just got engaged.

to someone that wants me to leave this life that i have begun to build here in the mile-high and join him on his journey. our journey. but it doesn't feel like our journey. it feels like i am on my own charter, with people i really like, who have packed well and aren't snarling at me for disrupting their shitty 1.5-sf of comfort... and someone is asking me to leave all that for a flight in a 2-seater helicopter that i am not the pilot of nor have any choice in the destination. there is not a take-off with helicopters. thats why they are used to get people in and out of areas that they shouldnt or otherwise couldnt be. we lost jacques bc of a helicopter. lucky shot from some pissant on the ground and he was gone. sorry, i am rambling.

i dont want to be rescued. i dont want to be snatched out of this life. i like the journey that i am on. the direction i am heading and the people that i have on board. how do i tell that to someone that i love? that i love them but THIS is where i need to love him from. this window seat. heading THIS way with THESE people. baggage carefully stored for take-off. champagne for those that want it. raggedy anns and peanuts for those that don't.

because after 32 years of flying, countless conversations with strangers, some of whom became friends, take-offs, touch-downs and in-flight beverage service --- i finally know why it is that i like airplanes so much. there is always a reason to enjoy the flight. either the take-off, the travelmates, the conversation, the destination ---- but seldom can you have all of them. and i finally do. and i don't want to give up a single one.

 third party went and muddied the waters by repeating the same information to the other like-canine-minded person and >bam< next thing you know we are chatting like magpies about the sweet quirks our dogs share. and then in another half second we are planning play dates. for our dogs.

so back to the conversation with my co-worker. she has a eskie that she shang-hied from her sister bc said sister was subjecting HER chloe to will-bending and both parties were noticeably miserable. now the pooch is allowed to bark as nature made her. loves her humans and tries to please them bc reasonable, and ones that take her NATURAL tendencies into account, boundaries are set. my girls will never, ever be a slobbery, fetchy, waggy laborador. ever. ever.

i'm just a normal boy that sank when i fell overboard my ship would leave the country but i'd rather swim ashore without a life that's sadly stuck again wish i was much more masculine maybe then i could learn to swim like 'fourteen miles away' you're floating up and down i spin, colliding into sound like whales beneath me diving down i'm sinking to the bottom of my everything that freaks me out the lighthouse beam has just run out i'm cold as cold as cold can be be

i want to swim away but don't know how sometimes it feels just like i'm falling in the ocean let the waves up take me down let the hurricane set in motion let the rain of what i feel right now...come down let the rain come down

where is the coastguard i keep looking each direction for a spotlight, give me something i need something for protection maybe flotsam junk will do just finethe jets, i'm sunk, i'm left behind i'm treading for my life believe me (how can i keep up this breathing) not knowing how to think i scream aloud, begin to sink my legs and arms are broken down with envy for the solid ground i'm reaching for the life within me how can one man stop his ending i thought of just your face relaxed, and floated into space

i want to swim away but don't know how sometimes it feels just like i'm falling in the ocean let the waves up take me down let the hurricane set in motion let the rain of what i feel right now...come down let the rain come down

now waking to the sun i calculate what i had done like jumping from the bow (yeah) just to prove i knew how (yeah) it's midnight's late reminder of the loss of her, the one i love my will to quickly end it all so thought no end my need to fall into the ocean, end it all into the ocean, end it all into the ocean, end it all into the ocean...end it all (zayra)

okay. so it really didnt turn out to mean being patient. it kinda turned out to mean being an idiot. and now taking it on the chin and moving on is the next order of business. sometimes you 'just dont see it coming'. and you really dont expect an intimate who has expended time and energy to get you to let your guard down to be the one you 'just dont see it coming' from. i mean, if i were in a ring surrounded by ropes, with shiny shorts and some gloves on, i might have had a clue. but i wasnt. so i didnt.

watched my first ultimate fighting match two weeks ago --- and was more mesmerized by the amount of males mesmerized by the match than the actual match itself. Couture vs. Sylvia. the title holder got his ass clocked by an older, smaller, coming-out-of-retirement fighter. i am sure he didnt see that one coming. no one did. he was in a ring --- with all the gear on, prepared to possibly take a punch or two. and he still didnt see it coming.

i could go into some long-winded analogy. but frankly, i just dont have the attention span for it on this one.

i got clocked.

and its not even like i knew that was an option. if anything, i was the ringgirl happily circling the ring waving the numbered sign marking the round about to begin and i got coldcocked by one of the fighters. so i spent a hard minute lying flat on my back staring at the hazy sky and wondering wtf just happened....

then i got up and the roomie and i went out. and i realized that being a coldcocked ringgirl has its advantages. your acquaintances buy you drinks. you get joked by people that you didnt know you know from the gym. your friends come out in support. tell you how you didnt deserve it. hot, tan friends insist you head to costa rica with them immediately. hot, tan, latin friends promise to fly you to see your sister in denver your very next open weekend. and  hot, tan, australian friends [as you drool over their yummy accent] give you carte blanche on their yacht they are having brought up from miami for the summer.

viva la ufc. viva la ego resuscitation.

'expectations are just bitter disappointments in training' said the tshirt. someone looking at the world as always being rosy is dubbed an optimistic pollyanna. the realist refuses to wear the pessimist label. declaring his view as the one true one, not a half empty cup. lily allen emotes on it while skipping through the london ghetto in a red promgown. point of view. what you see ahead. the crash when it conflicts with another view.

sometimes i overcommit. affectionately referred to as doublebooking by some. not so affectionately as idiocy by others. my roomie has the same issue. we are very busy people. or so we tell ourselves. that happened last week. two gigs in one night. so we had to chose.

the roomie and i are game people. as in we love board games. card games. a skipbo deck, a monopoly board. a memory game. checkers. chess. any of those break out and we are some happy clams. we were thrilled when we got the invite to a highly lauded game night. gamehost had hyped the night for a week. BYOG. bring your own games. supposed to be a gaggle of like minded peeps getting together. i got sick and stayed in. she headed out armed with drinking jenga and skipbo. oh----and a bottle of jameson. we like our game nights with some sauce on occasion. she arrived to find that the games were more of a not-happening variety. there was half-hearted trivia pursuit in progress. she watched it die a slow death. nothing else broke out. except drinks. game night wasnt really a game night after all. it was just another reason to get together and drink. false advertising. she was crushed. so she left. and moved on to venue two.

a birthday party. no promise of games. no misrepresentation. it was a social gathering to celebrate grants surviving yet another year. cake. beer. laughs. so the roomie shows and has a grand time. she didnt get her game night. but at this party she wasnt expecting one. so she wasnt let down. she got what she came for. cake. beer. laughs. and left happy. and wishing  that she had chosen door-number-two from the getgo.

she and i socialize alot. random adventurers we call them. head out for the evening with only the expectation that the night will be fun. and random. we expect to have entertaining conversations with total strangers, bump into some old friends and to capture some of it on film. [is it still called film or does a digital pic get another name?] we have yet to be disappointed. and bc we are gamegirls we have made a little something up to entertain ourselves on these nights out. we collect business cards.  in a jar on top of the fridge. and the really funny part is the reaction one gets when telling the latest addition to our collection that there is indeed 'a collection'. couple of times the cards have been confiscated. by persons unwilling to be a collectors item, a game piece. the player does not necessarily always enjoyed feeling played.

i think i am in love with someone. completely smitten. it feels absolutely great. it feels great even knowing that our long-term goals may be catastrophically incongruent. he was one of the ones to refuse me his card. and last night we had a tough conversation. THE tough conversation.

about games. game night. birthday parties. kinda.

he may not be in for some of the relationship perks that i still want in my future. he's been burned and badly and it makes him skittish. the severely sunburned flinching at the sight of a beach. and now his invitation to join him for gamenight is sounding more like just an extended birthday party. which are also fun. but for someone expecting something different, is it a dealbreaker for either of us? if we have communicated our expectations clearly, can we move on together? the good book says love is patient. so does he. he asked for it specifically. to be patient with him. to stay at the birthday party and perhaps a game or two will break out.

i think i can do that. he is the best time i have ever had. ever. hands down. his opinion matters. his friendship matters. his health. his daughter. and pollyanna's worst case scenario? months of puking, crying and heart searching until he's just another another biz card in the collection over the fridge.

game on.

how do you define a friend?

speaking of my standards for friends...

• the person you can call when your tire is flat at midnight
• you know the way around their kitchen and can open the fridge or find a glass wo asking
• you can kick off your shoes at their front door
• you know each others childrens/pets names and worry about their parents health
• you can fearlessly disagree

i know its a short bus list. but then again, i am a southern girl and barefeet and kitchens.... well, they are really important.

watched brad pitt in the mexican last night and i blame him for this trainwreck of a thought.

my future baby's daddy has found himself in love. really in love and enough so that he is wanting his peeps to meet his honey, so there might be a trip east to west or vice versa sometime in the future. apparently she is someone that he has been neighbors and friends with for 3 years, who wanted a relationship with him after some intimate tete-a-tetes, he declined and has now seen the error of his ways. he sounded like a kid in the candy shop, she called while we were talking and he voice went up a couple of notches as he broke time records getting off the phone and over to her place for "snuggles and recap". apparently she had been gone for 48 hours. so sweet. and so great to hear. vicpapa and i have been friends for longer than i like to admit is possible --- he's met the entire family, been to more family events than any other friend, we've traveled together, laughed together, cried together, fought, confided and championed eo for 13 years. seeing him FINALLY get some loving from someone that can appreciate the certain idiosyncrasies that are the columbian male --- thats priceless.

 i think my lil-bros marriage might be on the mend. its been an oil and water relationship from the start. literally. he boils oil for a living as ChemE and she champions clean air, pure water and tree-hugging. he works for a large international oil firm. she for the large international law firm that sues his firm. texan. vegetarian. conservative. liberal. beer drinker. acid tripper. the kind of relating that requires the patience of mother teresa, the insight of Gandhi and the humor of ---- someone really humorous?! (sorry, no one coming to mind) we all hoped to see more dharma/greg will/grace out of them but the last year has been more oscar/felix and rose vs. rose. not too fun to watch. even harder to lamely attempt to support them both. bc i love them both. she has been a dear friend for almost 16 years. he has been my brother for, lets just suffice it to say since he was born and leave it at that. i hoped that her crazy edge would get him to lighten up. instead the frustrations of his conservative judgements have turned her bitter and rebellious. the breaking point where if nothing-i-do-is-good-enough-then-fuck-you. and now he is stretching as he has never stretched before to save his marriage. hopefully rekindle something that he unwittingly stomped the life out of.   

the todd is headed to south africa. pic safari. with a rekindled romance. someone that has been in his life for over a decade. in and out of it several times. the marriage word and the kids word bunted about while the inNout tango was going on. she wanted more. he wanted time. she let him take all the time he needed, but chose to move on with her life while he did so. a fringe relationship that never totally went out. and now they are going on safari together. and he perked up at the engagement ring paper weight i gave dee for christmakwanazukah (yes, our tree is still up---so what?). so he is thinking that now maybe the timing is right. that they have done the cyclic dance and its time to make it official. he could go on in a monogamous relationship forever. but she needs the security of a legal commitment. and, not speaking for her, but speaking for her, every girl wants to have her prince declare his undying affection where it can be witnessed. a "you like me, you really really like me" moment.

all three romances sound like very different storylines. theyre not. vicpapa spent the last 2 years looking for something that was literally next door. my lil-bro had to almost lose her before he realized what he really truly wanted was living right next to him. the todd took a bit longer, but came back to the same conclusion. "she" was right there all along.

so what is it that makes the just-right happen? time? distance? loss? for girls raised on jane austen and fairy tales none of the storylines jive with white horses and shiny armor. but all the same, they do. emotional baggage can be a real bitch. demon wrestling. dragon slaying. the hysterically monumental task of bringing two lovers together. sorting through toohot-toocold-toohard-toosoft to get to justright.

james asked julia who later, after james got offed by brad, asked brad "when two people really love each other, but they just cannot seem to get it together, when do you say enough is enough?"

julia said "blahdiddity blah blah wonk wonk"

brad said "never." [cue white horse and shiny armor and goldilocks sighing about justrightness.]

this is going to be a longwinded story about a beer. consider yourself warned.

roomie and i decided about three months ago to go on a quest for a local hangout. which landed us at what i will affectionately dub BBG. its a dive. tacky tiki in decor. but not the fullly embraced tacky tiki. like the tiki that doesnt want to admit its tacky. we-are-classy-tiki-and-totally-lacking-in-self-awareness tiki. thats not really important, but it does set the stage. so once we firmly planted our flag there, the next question was "beverage?"

and thus begins our paul harvey-esque tale. with a bar manager that looks and acts like jack black.

"got red stripe?"

i did mention this was an attempt at a tiki bar, right? so you would think that sol, corona, XX, fruity concoctions, and.... red stripe, would be standards. but no. not standard. not that day. not the next week. nor any week following. nor any of the following 4 months. despite consistent asking. and consistent, but varying and entertaining, excuses:

• you dont come in often enough
• we had a case and the band took it (leeme see the receipt sent the GM into hiding)
• we just ran out
• we ordered it for you but the case came in busted
• we sent it back bc you didnt come in
• its a national shortage

until the exchange began the expected banter bw we and they. we knew they didnt have red stripe. they would never have it. we could continue to ask. and they would continue to make excuses. it was the accepted level of the relationship. we wanted something they didnt and would never have. so we joked about it. and ordered something else. and accepted their excuses. it was just beer. and we were just looking for a few laughs. then last week jack black changed the rules. and actually wrote up a contract with the roomie. if he didnt have red stripe in on tuesday then our total tab was on him. seriously. so we made an event out of it. knowing he would not have it but still hoping that he would. hoping against hope that he would. still just beer. but still thinking it would be grand.

tuesday. packed house. av made an event out of it and invited a crowd. drum roll..... no red stripe. not in the ice. not in the cooler. not in the kitchen. AND to crown it off... no jack black either. so we had another stripe-free good time topped off with skaryoke and a impromptu house party. all without mr black and mr stripes help.

wednesday. return to the scene of the crime just to make sure jackyboy knew he'd been called. he was in the back so luvlybrian let him know we were there. and returned to tell us that he was on a phone call but would be out shortly. uh-huh. born. both of us. born. have mothers. but not yesterday. not born yesterday. that little fucker was high kneeing it to the quickmart next door. or the grocery. scramblin to make good on a bet that came due yesterday. the day we WERENT born. sure enough. 6 minutes and 32 seconds later, not that i was counting... jackster strolls out, props his hand casually across the back of a stool and says, "see yall are here for the red stripe, good to see you, lemme go grab it out of the cooler." and swaggers off like he has just beat the rap. WHAT?!

we died laughing. i almost collapsed from a coughing fit (URI). then we called him on it. on it and on the glistening moisture rolling off his forehead, his attempts to disguise his panting, and the red red red glow of his cheeks. the quarter-mile stretch to farm fresh about killed him. we admired the day-late-dollar-short dedication.

you would have thought the anticipation and his hard work and our laughs would have disguised the lukewarm temp of the brew. or the cloying sweetness of the taste. or the less than satisfactory first swig.

but it didnt.

apparently our tastes had changed. from first interest. and request. to the final request. sometime in the interim the request had become a habit and not truth. didnt want the red stripe. just kept asking because it remained unavailable.

i know this is just a beer. but really, how many times do i chase things i cannot have simply bc i cannot have them? the thrill of the hunt. lost sight of the original goal. it becomes about the quest, the game and no longer about the object of my affection. my tastes change along the way. by the time someone is actually willing to be/do/share what i have needed, i am over and done with it. disinterested. bored.

incredibly tired of jackblackage. how many times do i chase a stripe, red or otherwise, before it makes a full on whipping?

blogs are not just read by cyberfriends and sistahs. sometimes they are googled and read by your saturday night date. the one you met on friday night. and adore. yes, read by HIM before he picks you up at 7.

first he said he liked the deer pics. which freaked me out bc i was at lunch with friends and what was he doing in my house?! roomie was at work... did i leave the back door opened?! so you text back. and  ask. and he answers "rants". which leaves you mortified. then relieved. then mortified. bc on one hand --- he knows alot about you and how you think. then on the other hand --- he knows alot about you and how you think.

but when he becomes sundays plans too... your heartrate will attempt to return to normal. attempt i said. bc you realize that all you ever wanted to be when you grew up was a chippette and this auditioning... this audition has robbed you of your ability to eat, sleep, think, tie your own shoes or do anything but think about chipmunks.