Nascent.

Apparently, my welcome band, full of job offers, cute and reasonably priced one-bedroom apartments did not get my change-of-address form.  It's probably still stuck in Oz along with a horse that is constantly changing colors, which I believe I was supposed to receive on my seventh birthday.

I never really thought of myself as an impatient person, because apparently I do not know myself at all.

 I think I'm beginning to understand why people in their twenties are so selfish, whiny and indecisive (I have been a combination of these three things my entire life because I am advanced)

We've had all of this time to go to school, learn things, fill our heads with ideas, examine every option in exhausting multitude.  The world is ours, full of potential and jobs and every door, window and skylight is flung wide open for our perusal.

 When we reach our twenties, we take a bull-fighting run at the windows of our choice...only to find that the glass hasn't been removed.  There was just a lot of Windex, and like so many birds, we find ourselves a little dazed and a little more boxed in than we had initially anticipated.


Really, though-- I'm fine.  Sometimes, I check in with myself and say "Are we sure we know why we are here? And why we left?" and my conscience gives me a big thumbs up and reminds me of panty hose.

  I'm where I need to be--for now.  The best thing about Ann Arbor is how it never feels like home, but it always feels comfortable.  These are my streets, filled with nice yellow autumn leaves and people who will help me get back on my feet, but it never feels like a place that can keep me for too long.  Even though I lived here for four years, much of that time was spent elsewhere--home, New York City...et cetera. I haven't entirely overstayed my welcome.

 I still haven't counted the Big Apple out as a part of the plan yet. She is certainly the Endgame, but something tells me that moving there, feeling as at loose ends, being as broke and confused as I am now is not the way to settle into a life in New York.  I could be wrong, but I think that this is the point where I have passed "right" and "wrong" and entered the realm of "decide" or "remain unhappy". 

Nothing in Ann Arbor is as I expected it to be, which is probably the biggest adjustment I am experiencing so far.  most of all, I have been surrounded by friends with offers of couches, snuggles, beers, winter subleases, and ears to listen to the knotted ball of a yarn I seem to be spinning.  I don't know how these people found me, or why they still like me, but there are some serious karma points being raked in here on their end.

I think the thing that scares me the most is my reluctance to embrace the madness, sit down for a second, and realize that it is really, actually all temporary.  The way that I feel is temporary.  The duffel bags on my friend's floor is as temporary as the worry on her face when she sees me come home without a job (again). It really can only get so bad from here. And that bad is not really very bad.  I moved to a bubble-town, where bad shit is a rare and mild occurrence.  And, despite the disaster magnet that is strapped to my ass ( I can never reach it to take it off because my butt is too big), I know that things are going to settle down really quickly, and I won't feel like a deer sprinting through the woods for long, because I will find a nice thicket and settle down.
 

sometimes, you actually have to live very much like a refugee.

So, I ran away from home and also from my job.

 There are roughly a billion reasons why, and I think the Kafka-esque series of posts that proceeded this one are a pretty apt rendering of my slowly disintegrating mental and physical state.

 I don't entirely know how it happened. I was going to tough it out, and  then i put on my uniform yesterday morning, and thought no. this is so entirely wrong. I have to get out of here. This is not the adventure I was looking for. 

In reality, it was a prolonged issue.  It wasn't a snap decision, and I'm not really feeling at all sad or regretful about said choice.  Being broke and unemployed blows, and going to Ann Arbor where I have no home, money, car, or job was probably a little rash. But I feel safe here.  Here feels perfectly temporary. And I've still got a dozen or so good people who take me out for beer and listen to my life quandaries and hold my hand when I start hyperventilating.

For the moment, I am happy. And I think i'm realizing that sometimes, you just have to get back to happy before you can make any decisions, move forward in any way. And if all of this is a huge mistake?
 I'm 22. 22 is the age to make mistakes. I've got to make a couple of them or I'll be too afraid to act, which was sort of the issue to begin with.

 my inability to make a decision to be happy caused so many more problems. Of course, feeling at loose ends, scared, unhappy and disillusioned is very "normal" for being 22.  This was not "normal 22 caught -in-the-feels, though. This was spirit-guide sending-- "you're on the wrong boat" feels.  These were not the droids I was looking for.

Essentially, laying in bed and preferring to not move because moving means you have to think about the job/lifestyle you have chosen is probably a sign that it is not the life for you.  Could I have stuck it out and muddled through? Absolutely.
  The fact is, I did not want to. I did not want that. "muddling through" could be the title of my memoirs, but I think that learning how to stand still for a second might be a better use of my time. And titles like "math is a feeling" and "big butt, little girl" would be way more eye-catching on a bookshelf.


For now, this is a whole new adventure, and I'm sort of (entirely) improvising.

For today, I am going to play my guitar under the Engineering Arch. It was one of those things I'd always planned to do--to the extent that I brought my guitar there, and then...I didn't set it up.  I freaked out a little, for no apparent reason, and I never actually did it.
So that's the plan for today.

New York City, home, and staying here are all immediately reasonable options, and probably a combination of the three is where I am headed.  It might take me a while to get where I am going, but I am going to get there, by hook or by crook.  There are only decisions, and none of them are right, but that means that none of them are wrong, either.

it started when

I spilled my granola three days ago.
It just toppled over--all of my back up sustenance for the weekend.

Ready to literally brush it off, I went to the front desk to request a vacuum. No, no thank you ma'am, I made this mess, and I'd like to clean it up myself. my mess, my job.

She said she'd send someone with a vacuum, but no one came.

Everything in the room started piling up, so I started to reorganize my stuff.  Re-fold my shirts and pants, all kept neatly on the floor. There is no dresser space, and the closet is full of the $700 polyester uniform that we have been mandatorily issued. It gives me hives.

I found a pile of cockroaches under my shoes.  They had smelled the fallen granola and no doubt planned a picnic accordingly.  A gathering of Gregor Samsa lookalikes, large enough to put the poor salesman to shame.

 I called again, but it was too late for vacuums.

I rented a car. Getting out felt good, but I came home to that pile of bugs and food.  I spent money i didn't have, just to get away.

i tried to go on a run but the neighborhood is unsafe.   highway filled & devoid of sidewalks.  No sidewalks and men twice my size who like to stare uncomfortably long.  I turned around.  The hotel driver told me that was a good plan.  He told me to go run in the gym next time i got the notion to be physically fit.

Just run in place until you are too tired to think about how you got nowhere.

It was just me, alone in this hotel room, waiting for eight weeks to pass by so that I can get along with my little half-life.  "Full of travel".  Full of a thousand cockroach infested hotel rooms, alone, waiting for the time when I can have a life.

I dreamt that my hands were covered with bugs. my eyes, my throat clogged with them.

Just outside of my apartment, there are crushed eggs, as if some would-be delinquent wanted to be rebellious, but was too afraid of causing too much trouble to go full-on and destroy this hotel with eggshells.

tick. tick. tick.

I cannot sleep because of the full moon.

Tonight, there is a full moon, and I accidentally took a caffeine pill instead of a sleeping pill, so there are several reasons why I am chosing to write at 11pm instead of preparing for my 5th consecutive 4am wakeup call.

Up in the air, most flight attendants are meeting for the first time.  When we work a flight, we usually don't get much (read: any) say as to who we are working with. Sometimes, there is a little preference given as to where you want to go--if you've been working long enough.

 Still, the galley is the stage where every F/A has a chance to recite his or her autobiography.  Once the drinks have been served, the door has been armed and the lavs have been checked, a main cabin F/A digs into comped food-for-sale items, coffee (which is cold by now), and  the story of his or her life.

my trip to LaGuardia was no different.  I learned all about the daughters, sons, lovers and husbands of the two women training me.  Both of them were very sharp and professional, albeit a little jaded.

Since I'm a sap, the story of the #2 (galley) flight attendant has been stuck in my head.  It's had me wondering about the choices we make--career and adventure often do not align with a conventional path.  Love becomes secondary, and afterthought.  Things don't work out like we planned.  And then they do, sort of. 
A note:  I am an old woman (named after my mother) and I don't have a perfect memory. This is just how I remember it.


" When I came to training in the late seventies, I was engaged to a guy from home, back in Cleveland.  Well, I ended up being based in LaGuardia.  Imagine--a little midwestern girl with a dust speck-sized engagement ring, in New York flippin' City!
 I was having such a ball that I left the guy right then and there.  Gave him a call two weeks after indoctrination, called off the wedding, and didn't speak to him again until--well, I'll finish the story.   A long, long time.
So, I kept working at LaGuardia until Dallas opened, then I transferred down here and met my ex- husband, who was a pilot working out of Dallas, too.  Let me tell you what--he is just a complete ass.
He was when I married him too, but--you know how pilots are.  They seem like they really have it all together.  They can take you places, they understand your work schedule, they're quiet...the only reason a man like that is ever quiet is because he is afraid he'll accidentally let it slip that he's sleeping with another gal at your base.  Dallas is big enough that he got away with it for as long as he did. And now? He won't pay a cent over child support, and  Even that's late.  Just a total pig.
The man makes twice what I do and he doesn't want to pay his fair share of our daughters' college tuition? What a jerk.

Anyway, so's I caught up with my old ex-fiance last winter On facebook. One day, he just adds me to his friends list, out of the blue.  I says "is this Danny? Like, Danny, Danny?"
 And surprise surprise, it is.  He's got a girl the same age as my girls.  He even got divorced--divorced the same year that  I did.  Is that wild or what?! So's I tell him I'm heading into Cleveland to visit my baby sister and it turns out he still lives there.  I invited him to our family barbeque for my nephew's graduation, and guess what--he came.  Sur-real.
The man hasn't seen my baby sister since she was..15?  The last time he saw my parents, they were younger than he and I are now.  It was so weird, some real time capsule bull-shit.

But yeah. Nowadays it's nice.
We go out to dinner, keep in touch---we're friends now.
Nothing serious, I don't want nothin' like that.
 He might want that, but I knows better.
 I just think its nice that something like facebook can bring you back to your roots.  Yeah, I mean sometimes I get to thinkin' "what if"--
 but I've got my girls, and I've already got a bastard to hate.  Its nice to have someone to be friends with.
I'm minding my Ps and Qs and keeping it friendly, but not too friendly.   I know men, and when he insinuates something like that i should stay over, I stand my ground and I says to him
 'oh no sir, not this time'.

But just like that, he came right up to my old dad, like he was still lookin' for approval from the old man. After how many years?
  It was just somethin' else. made me feel like I was twenty-two again.

 The only advice I gots for ya---don't marry a pilot.  At least not an airline one.  I hear navy pilots aren't so bad, but I  can't speak for them.  I can, however, tell you from  real experience-- Don't marry a pilot."

Silver Linings

Today I got to go to Target.
In two days I get a weekend.
Look at these wigs we found.
Now we have lice.

This is Conchetta, Other Liv and Yours Truly, of course.

A Reasonable amount of time left in Texas.

Today marks the beginning of week six (of eight) in Texas.
I am so close to being out of this Jack-in-the-Box parking Lot, I can taste it.

This weekend, I'll be working (in uniform) on a 767 bound for San Fransisco. 

Sorry I've been lax on the posting. If I haven't been sleeping, I've been studying. If I haven't been studying, I've been watching Season One of Breaking Bad and having nightmares about being forced to sell meth to first class passengers (I hope the NSA has a sense of humor).  Have you heard of Breaking Bad? It's a good show. I really think it's going to take off.

I'm getting to the point where I know most of my classmates pretty well.  I thought that eventually, a common thread would start forming between us, something that brought us all together to decide on this bizarre career path.  "I want my baby to be like Kate Middleton", "I want to be just like my mother" and "I want to wear a (brand new leopard-skin) pill-box hat" are high on the list of reasons people are choosing this career, but none of them really define who we are---except for that we are all apparently lunatics and Bob Dylan fans.

There are a fair number of people in this class whose mother/father/partner/sibling is a flight attendant/pilot and who realize that the job offers some serious benefits. One particular girl, whose dad is a  pilot and mom is a flight attendant, has never paid for airline travel. She cannot imagine a world that is not readily available by aircraft.  Therefore, she has secured her future in the sky by being a flight attendant, too.  And she's dating a pilot.  I like to joke that they're going to give birth to an S80.  I hope she flies an airplane down the wedding aisle.  I could go on with the aircraft-related love jokes.

Other girls are following in their mothers' footsteps after hearing about the wild adventures and craziness associated with being a F/A in the previous century. I love that I can tell my parents that they're so "last century".

 Others used to be flight attendants, walked away for some reason or another ("I got married"/"I hated it"/"I was furloughed after 9/11"/ "I didn't want to fly on a metal sheet of death anymore") and are now coming back to the job.  Out of? Love of the career? Inability to find a fulfilling job with the same kind of benefits? A rosy speculation of the past lent by a faulty memory?  Several of the above.

Some people were just sick of working at a restaurant or bar. This job is all about service, so several years of service related duties means you are a perfect fit.

many of my classmates consider themselves to be artists of some kind--and (mostly) for good reason.  Opera singers, actors, dancers, writers, painters-- we don't entirely know how to keep a regular 40 hour week, but we do know how to kiss ass and be spontaneous, so here we are. Armed with an inkling of hope to continue our artistic lives, here we are.

About half of us are not really sure how we got here. We have a vague idea of why--something about wanting to travel--and a head full of indecision.  For many of us in this category, we are learning an entirely foregin vocabulary related to our new-found (glory) airline life.  We are learning how to wear high heels and itchy pantyhose every day, and reluctantly spraying our fluffy, unbrushed hair into tight buns.  Half of the time, we are not entirely sure of what we are doing.  We're just sort of along for the ride.  When those senior mommas strut in and say "I've been flying for as long as you've been alive", we cringe a little.  We thought this would be a good job to sort of figure it out with.  See the world.  Eventually find a place to settle down, get a non-rev ticket and never return.  Disappear into Bolivia, with few upfront costs.  We are afraid of settling into something for a year, much less thirty years.  We think we are trying to find home, but we might just be running away from everything.

  For the record, Olivia from Bolivia is a children's story waiting to happen.



"Gotta see, Gotta know right now."

Try not to be a jackass on 9/11: The guilt issue.

if you thought that I was going to avoid the whole 9/11 elephant in the room, you are incorrect.

 I love addressing elephants in the room, beating dead horses, and telling both sides that they are wrong, mean and stupid. Disclaimer: I think that most people are mean, wrong and stupid. For some reason, I like people anyway.

9/11 is a tricky subject.  Tricky in that we have somehow managed to politicize death, and one of the worst examples is this, as it is largely seen as more of a political statement than a human tragedy some ten years later.

 First off, I don't like to dip my toes in other people's tragedy.  When 9/11 happened, I was ten.  I remember being very annoyed that recess was cancelled, and very confused that many of my teachers had itchy red eyes that day.  I remember my mother turning off the TV after about fifteen shots of the buildings crashing down were shown in succession
 I don't remember  feeling sad.  I was, after all, ten years old.  I did not know a single person who lived in New York City, and I did not know where Afghanistan, Iraq or the bulk of the Middle East were. "Terrorist Cell" probably sounded like a computer game to me,  perhaps a really intense version of Oregon Trail.

This is to say, in many ways, 9/11 was not a part of my world, except to that  what I saw on television centered around the event, and every year  afterward some teacher would ask the "where were you when" question. 

Of course the issue is complicated, as is every issue.
 
 9/11 was my introduction to the history of systematic, seemingly constant flow of violent massacres worldwide.  I was 10, after all. Previously, my understanding of complex political and religious agendas was essentially nil, and thank goodness for that. A little reprieve from that kind of knowledge is not the worst thing you can do for a youngster. Teach kindness first.  Save the violence for middle school.



But now we are so clever. Our heads are full of this secret knowledge that was always there.  People die unfairly everywhere, so why glorify one day?  The United States never gets bombed because we do the killing first. We are bullies, and we got what we deserved. After all, what is one act of tragedy in comparison to the thousands of atrocities that are committed every day? Where are the parades in honor of that? Why don't they ship Paul Simon to Darfur every year so that he can play the Sound of Silence there? Where is the equality of outrage?

or, on the other side of the spectrum: 9/11 is an example of how the rest of the world is jealous, and to sate that jealousy, we paid the price of needless lives. America is the best, strongest country in the world because we managed to get over this event, pull through, pull together, and kill those terrorists. 

Should we constantly post flags of the Twin Towers in our yards and fly them rain or shine to constantly memorialize a morbid and complicated tragedy from our recent history? Probably not, especially if your level of involvement in the situation is equal to mine.  Like I said, I don't like to dip my toes in other people's tragedies.
The way I see it? Life is going to throw you enough shit worth grieving for. People you love will die. People you love will leave you. Strangers will do the worst things to other strangers. You will have enough tattoos and scars and unshakeable memories of horrific unfairness.  Sympathy is a virtue, and so is having a hand to offer those in need.  Claiming a tragedy as your own for political, social--or really any gain compromises the validity of other people's suffering. Don't be that dick.Be pissed about 9/11, but stop "never againing" it to strangers on the subway when it is Tuesday at 5 and everyone just wants to go home.

On the other hand, while you are right, my intellectual and worldly friends, this is not the only day that we should remember in infamy, this was a real tragedy. This happened, and reminding all of us that this always happens does not counteract the overzealous behavior of your opposing forces.  Do people overreact on this day?  Of course they do.

 Overreaction does not, however, negate tragedy. It makes one think harder about tragedy. It makes us more careful with our words.
It does not lessen the count of important, meaningful and worthwhile human lives that were lost on 9/11 in New York City, the lives lost in the ensuing war, and those lost in the wake of the tidal wave of the events that day.

American Airlines avoided much ceremony today.  In the morning, we listened to a phone call placed by a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11.  It is a suprisingly calm, fact-based report that "I think we are being hijacked. The purser has been stabbed, and I can't get to the first class galley to see what is going on."  This information led to the early realization that this was not an accidental crash.  By naming the seat numbers of the individuals she saw involved in the attack, the F/A also helped to  connect the dots even more. Instead of calling her family to say goodbye, this flight attendant did her job up to the last moments of her life.  She stayed calm, she did what she could.

And, as is tradition on Wednesdays, another class graduated from training.  12 years ago, American Airlines abruptly closed its training center, one day before a class was supposed to graduate.  Training ceased entirely for 12 years afterward (with the exception of 30 mandarin speakers).
 It started for the first time since then early this summer. 

Today, 12 years ago, two of my instructors were teaching at the center, and witnessed the rapid shut down of the facility.  The other two were on the line, New York based, and happened to have a lucky trip assignment or day off. Crew Scheduling works in mysterious ways.

I know that when people talk a big show on 9/11, it can be exasperating.  But the quiet sadness in the eye of my least dramatic, least showy instructor as she exclaimed that it was "unbelievable" that flight attendants still go largely unnoticed for the work they did on that day was the closest I have ever been to the reality of the event in isolation. 
 It reminded me that having a stance on 9/11 on 9/11 is not quite a proper way to gauge your proficiency in American Government and 20th Century World Politics.
 Politics aside, this is an event that happened.  it happened to people. A lot People died. End of story.

  Any strong aversion to violent death is a step in the right direction in my book, no matter how dumb I think your politics are.  We can argue tomorrow. Today, I was sad that so many people died in such a horrible way on this day.