Home Again

When I sat down to write this post, this song popped into my head. But we're not homeward bound, we're just home. The trip wasn't such a horrible experience. It was relatively mundane. It was like being in a state of suspended animation for several hours. I thought I would be able to sleep, but I wasn't able to. I was quiet and still for a little bit, but no matter how far back I pushed my seat, I felt like I was sitting straight up and I never felt like I really dropped off. Oh well. There are worse things. I even took an Ambien and nothing happened. Again, oh well. I'm not a good airplane sleeper. I'm better at other things.

Plus, there was a baby in front of us who was whining and crying the whole time. He was mobile, but preverbal. How old is that? He finally fell asleep about ten minutes before were disembarked. I was reading a book on training dogs for quite a while. I wanted to pass it up to his mother. Couldn't have hurt. Her method of controlling him was to say things like, "G*d d**n it, Davy. I told you to sit still and shut the f*ck up. Leave that alone!" Of course all mothers have their own unique style. So I write that without judgement.

Years ago, when I was waiting tables on a boat off NYC one summer, I worked with a Puerto Rican chic whose goal was to get her skin tanned and her hair lightened so that it was the same color. sounds sort of creepy, huh? Well, one of our flight attendants was the 45-year-old, white, blond version of that. You couldn't really see where her over-made up face stopped and her overly-tight hair began. And then it went back in a completely controlled pony tail. She looked like one of the marionettes from The Sound of Music. Her eyes were lined in black and her lips were really red. A few months ago, I thought about how interesting it would be to interview people with what I thought were fairly severe looks. Not like piercings and all that. Just people like her who have taken the flight attendant look to an extreme. Or other looks taken too far. Something to think about.

Upon arriving in at Schiphol, Fred spotted the first Starbucks that is open to the public in the Netherlands. There's one behind the gates if you're flying within Europe and there's one at the Tommy Hilfiger main office, but they're not open to just anyone. This one is right in the terminal at Schiphol. I'm not saying that Starbucks is so great. I'm just saying that it's arrived here and I'm glad. It's like seeing a friendly face from back home. I'll be happy just to walk by it now and then. (Plus it means that there will be others soon...for me...to...walk by.)

So we're back and I've got a pretty sever work schedule starting today. I haven't slept, but I'm going to try to convince myself to forget that and just get through the day and go to bed early.

It was wonderful seeing Patty and them. It always seems like it's going to feel like we're there for a long time, but suddenly it's Saturday night and we didn't get around to doing a few things. It's fine. I got some books and some yarn and we went to Cosco. And we spent a good amount of time just sitting around and shooting the breeze. Time well spent. Now it's back to work.