Behold:

Note to self: next time you decide to post photos of your undergarments to the your blog, consider picking a slightly prettier pair.

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You know, it just occurred to me that the above photo looks a little crass. Here it is again in black and white:

Now it’s classy!

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That is my bra, which, in a sleep-deprived hazed, I seem to have left on the towel rack of our bathroom sometime on Saturday, shortly after we got back from Europe. I have zero recollection of having put it there. I’m not even entirely sure why I took off my bra in the middle of the day (though to be fair, it was something like 1 am in Paris, which is a perfectly acceptable hour at which to not be wearing a bra). I suspect it had something to do with the subsequent nap I took.

Later, feeling somewhat refreshed, I got dressed and headed to our friends’ wedding reception. There, I had a slice of cake that was so good, I might have proposed to the woman who baked it, promising her that we could be really fat and happy together.

I also had one and a half drinks which, as some of you know, is enough to make me forget that I can’t dance. I crawled into bed near midnight, humming indie rock love songs. And Sunday morning, when I went into the bathroom, I saw this:

Another bra has arrived. Clearly, this bathroom is their spawning ground. Soon, this land will be crawling with tiny little training bras.

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No recollection of how that one got there, either. If a third one shows up, I’m blaming poltergeists.

The view from our seaplane as we flew over the Great Barrier Reef.

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The other day, I botched a batch of homemade cookies that I had been making for get-together with friends (or maybe my intent was just to sit in front of the TV and eat all of them by myself. Whatever.)

This shook me to my core. A large portion of my life is devoted to the creation and consumption of baked goods. It is, as a friend of mine noted, “one of my core competencies.”

I won’t lie: I’ve had baking mishaps before (if you have a copy of The Geraldine Handbook, please see pie, peach for more examples. Also, smoke alarms and tearful fits). But this failed batch was particularly upsetting because I had such high hopes. These cookies were going to be PERFECT. I’d made the recipe before, and had finally figured out the right tweaks I’d wanted to make. I halved the recipe (because even I have my limits, which are heeded only due to the threat of diabetes), but forgot to halve the quantity of butter I was using.

The result: flat, greasy, somewhat bland cookies.

Rand found me in the kitchen, having a sort of sputtering tantrum over a dozen oily disks of baked failure and what was left of the dough. I’d realized my mistake too late – there was no way of fixing it.

In what was not my proudest moment, I crammed two cookies in my mouth, chewing ruefully.

“What are you doing?” Rand asked.

“Eating my shame. Wanna taste?” I handed him a cookie. He took a tentative bite.

“Babe, I know all the guys probably tell you this, but your shame tastes great.”

I managed to smile and pout all at once, with my mouth full of cookies. In Hollywood, this is known as being a “triple threat.”

“Seriously, honey,” he continued, “if this is failure, I’d say things are looking pretty good for you.”

We ended up bringing the cookies to our friends’ house, imploring them all to “taste my shame.”

In the end, I guess, they weren’t all that bad. But it was a good reminder that high expectations will inevitably lead you to disappointment.

Which is why the day we went snorkeling on the outer reef was so damn perfect – because I had no expectations whatsoever.

Hell, up until a few days prior, I didn’t even know we were going. Rand had booked the tour as a surprise, but had then forgotten what day it was, so he had to ask the tour organizer (honestly, it’s amazing that he’s able to pull off any surprises whatsoever, given his memory). That was when I found out: we were going to take a seaplane to the outer reef. We’d land on the water, dock on a small, glass-bottomed boat, and spend the late morning snorkeling.

I tried to accept all of these things as mere facts. I tried to keep my thoughts rational, my expectations low. I willed my brain not to editorialize. But, like always, my brain fought with me.

Me: We are going to go snorkeling in the outer reef.

My Brain: Are you effing kidding me? HOLY CRAP WE ARE GOING SNORKELING IN THE OUTER REEF. THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST THING EVER.

Me: No. No, no, no. We are not going to go into this with high hopes. Remember what happened with Iron Man 2? I cannot handle that kind of letdown again. Nope. We are going to expect nothing, and if something good happens, we will be pleasantly surprised.

Brain: I AM GOING TO EXPECT EVERYTHING. THE DAY WILL BE AWESOME AND PERFECT AND FULL OF SEA TURTLES AND KITTENS.

Me: Seriously, please be reasonable about this. We are going snorkeling. There will be no kittens.

Brain: YES THERE WILL BE. Now, do the cha-cha dance or I’ll give you a migraine.

Me: (does a half-hearted cha-cha) Is this sufficient?

Brain: You don’t look like you mean it.

And so I tried to reconcile excitement and caution, tried to keep my high hopes within the realm of reasonable. I do this often, and it’s made my life and travels so much easier. If you have no expectation for a day to be perfect, you aren’t nearly so distraught when something inevitably goes wrong.

It’s become for my rule for having a great time on any trip: set your expectations low. Don’t hope for perfection. Just hope for not a disaster.

That way, when perfection (or the nearest thing that you can get to it on this earthly plane) does come along, you will have, as Rand later described it, one of the single greatest experiences of your life.

That’s what happened to me.

We started the day with a lovely breakfast which we managed to eat while simultaneously swatting away cockatoos. We then walked to a large boat ramp at one end of the island, and waited for our seaplane to arrive.

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I suppose it should have been romantic, staring at the water like that, but somebody was jumping around, giddy with excitement. Like a five-year-old on his birthday. Who’d eaten waaay too much cake. And also, the cake was laced with methamphetamines. (It was not me.)

Finally, the plane arrived.

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THE PROPHESY HAS BEEN FULFILLED.

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It was a seven-seater. The pilot and one person sat in front, and there were two rows of seats behind them, with one seat in the very back. The plane was already full of passengers, except for the bench seat directly behind the pilot. Rand and I squeezed in. I’m generally a claustrophobe, and I wondered if the close quarters would bother me. Miraculously, they didn’t.

As for Rand … well …

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Let’s just say he was pretty excited about the whole thing.

Because the small plane was so loud, we had to wear giant headphones. They blocked out the noise, and were connected to the PA system that our pilot spoke into, so we could hear his narration of the landscape below us. The best part of the headphones is that everyone who puts them on is suddenly a total badass, thus finally breaking your lifelong streak of looking like a dorkus.

See? Told ya.

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We drove out onto the water …

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and began to pick up speed.

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It was like being in a incredibly smooth-riding speedboat. And then, suddenly, seamlessly, we were airborne.

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Rand accepted this reality with the same level of restraint that he had had all morning. Which is to say, none at all.

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And though I could not hear him, I knew – I just knew – that he had the theme to Indiana Jones in his head. And sure enough, later, as we landed, I could hear him humming the score quietly to himself.

If there was some way that I wasn’t already head over heels for him, that moment alone would have done it.

The trip to the outer reef was forty minutes or so. I suspect it will forever remain one of the best plane flights of my life. (Even better than the Virgin America flight where I ate two bags of salted caramel popcorn and watched a movie with Martin Sheen in it, and then found out that Martin Sheen was sitting one row ahead of me in first class.)

Our pilot was a rakish blonde Australian named Lee. He, like so many other people working in the Whitsundays, decided to leave his nine-to-five job in the city, and now spent his days flying people around the reef. The view from his office was pretty great.

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As we flew, the ocean beneath us slowly became clearer and bluer. We saw a murky white substance sitting on the top of the water. We initially thought it was pollution, but Lee explained that it was entirely natural: these were coral spores, and were how the reef regenerated.

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I have had the privilege (one which I don’t deserve) to see many wonderful things in my travels and in my life. Some things, understandably, prove so amazing or significant that they stick out in my memory. There’s the first time that I saw Rand, wearing designer jeans and an air of confidence, both which were a bit big on his small frame. There was the first time I saw the Manhattan skyline when I was 14, looming out in front of me as I rode the ferry from Governor’s Island.

And there’s the first time I saw the Great Barrier Reef.

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There was even a heart-shaped reef.

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My husband, who has wanted to see the Reef since he was 10 years old, seemed pretty happy about the whole thing, too:

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Slowly, Lee began to circle the reef, and bring the plane lower and lower for a landing …

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We were all transfixed, watching as the turquoise water below us grew closer and closer.

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Just as seamlessly as we’d taken off, we’d landed. We were in the middle of the reef. In a few minutes, we’d be swimming in it.

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And I hope you’ll forgive me, but that’s where I’m going to stop today. I have loads more to tell you about our time in and on the reef. About the sea turtles and the schools of fish, and how sometimes you can have a marvelous day, even as you struggle with high expectations and a brain that demands to see kittens on a snorkeling trip.

Sitting in a tapas bar in London, I ruminate on whether or not there is pee on my coat.

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I know some of you are reading that and thinking, “Girl, no. I cannot spend another three weeks reading about the ins and outs of Anglo-Irish conflicts,” and to those dear folks I say, fear not. The thing is, this trip kind of sneaked up on me, and I didn’t really make any plans or do anything while I was there that is worthy of a blog post. I mostly just shopped, and ate sticky toffee pudding, and had more than my fair share of travel freak-outs. Including a particularly teary and noisy one that happened after I sat in what may or may not have been a puddle of urine in a Dublin cab. 

I will tell you about that, of course. As well as our hotel in London, which I kind of thought was going to trap us in its winding and nonsensical hallways forever. But these aren’t necessarily things activities which I think you should repeat; quite the opposite, actually. If you visit London or Dublin, you should probably try to avoid the same pitfalls that I did, and do things besides shopping and eating desserts and sitting in what-I-really-hope-wasn’t-pee and getting yelled at by crazy women in fur coats (an unrelated but really fun story).

But first, I need to get through telling you about South Africa. And I may need to pop back (metaphorically, at least) to Milwaukee and finish telling you about my visit there, and crap, I just realized that I completely skipped telling you about Portsmouth, New Hampshire, didn’t I? It seems that my travel plans move faster than I can blog, which is bound to be a problem because next week Rand and I are off to Australia, where we will spend several long days in the Whitsundays.

Needless to say, this is an awesome problem to have.

So I need to get my head down and start blogging, immediately. I will hopefully be covering a lot of ground. Some of it will be useful. Some of it will not. And this story I’m about to tell you falls into that latter category, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth telling. It’s about one of the loveliest flight attendants I’ve encountered, possibly ever. Hearing it probably won’t help you decide where to stay on your next trip to London, or where to eat in Dublin, or anything like that. But it might renew your faith in the human race. It certainly did for me.

I really wish I had gotten her name, so I could tell the good folks at British Airways about her. Instead, she’s now a part of travel folklore. The kindest flight attendant, ever. It sounds made up, but I swear, she’s real.

She was fortyish, with close-cropped blond hair, and looked a wee bit like Emma Bunton (“Baby Spice” to us Americans). Her demeanor was sweet without being treacly, familiar and warm without being overbearing. I spotted her before my flight, chatting to some young parents who were flying with their baby (who looked to be barely a year old, if that) for the first time.

Later, I watched her walk up and down the aisle with the little one in her arms, giving his parents a bit of reprieve. She gently rocked him, and the expression on his face, pressed into her shoulder, was one of pure contentment.

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” she whispered to me. I nodded.

She walked through our cabin, smiling, checking on folks here and there, adjusting a blanket or whispering inquiries as to whether or not they were okay. Later, I walked to the central galley where she and her colleagues were gathered.

“You must look out the window,” she said, gesturing to the small porthole in the emergency exit door. I peered out. “Isn’t the terrain interesting?” she asked. “It’s so different.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, absentmindedly, wondering how someone could fly so much, and still find so much joy and newness in the act. The message wasn’t lost on me.

She asked me if I needed anything, and I shook my head, too embarrassed to ask her about herself, or even for a glass of water.

At the end of our flight, she wore the same bright smile she had at the beginning, as she squeezed past the passengers pulling bags from the overhead compartments. She was heading back to the young parents and the baby, to see if they needed any help. The little one was crying.

“Oh, I know,” she said sympathetically. “You want to stay here and sleep, but it’s time to go!”

I asked Rand what he thought of her, and he told me that he loved how she much she loved.

Perhaps we’re being presumptuous in thinking that, but I really can’t come up with a better way of describing it; her actions were filled with love. She loved her work. She loved to fly. She loved the people around her: the little baby, the parents, and perhaps even the pedantic grey haired gentleman who stood up too early when the plane landed.

She loved. And can I tell you something? It was contagious as hell.

THERE IS A GREMLIN ON THE WING. No, I kid. It’s just a Celica.

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Dear Alaska Airlines,

Hi! It’s me, Geraldine. You might remember me from such notable trips as AA Flight #476, Seattle to L.A. (the one that was so bumpy, NO SNACKS WERE HANDED OUT, which turned out to be not that big a deal because I spent the evening throwing up, anyway) or last month’s AA Flight #12, Seattle to Boston, during which I could not stop farting (a.k.a., Stinks on a Plane) and also, I lost my camera.

Let me know if that thing turns up, okay? There are some photos on there that I want. In particular, several snapshots of a collage I made of Elvis Presley being eaten by a robotic T-Rex wearing a bow-tie. I used my copy of Alaska Airlines Magazine to create the masterpiece. After all, you said it was mine to keep (also, your editorial staff keeps ignoring my article pitches on how to conceal your farts on cross-country flights. Granted, I am clearly unqualified to speak on that topic.)

I have utterly lost my train of thought.

No, wait, I got it!

I wanted to say thank you. And also, to tell you guys to stop wasting the nice seats on me.

Here’s the deal. On my last flight, I was given seat 17A, the window seat in an exit row. My beloved was sitting across the aisle in 17Q or something like that (the alphabet has never been my strong suit).

As far as riding in coach goes (because let’s face it: people like me do not get upgraded. We embarrass the patricians), my seat was pretty swank. It’s got lots of legroom.

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I mean, lots of legroom. The seat directly in front of 17A is missing, either intentionally, or as a result of an incident with the Hulk, or maybe the architect was just drunk. That happens sometimes, you know? How else can you explain Antonio Gaudi?

Structure on the top of one of Gaudi’s buildings in Barcelona. Out of context, it looks a wee bit naughty, no?

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While this seat is highly desirable, it was utterly wasted on me. I’m 5’2″, which isn’t very tall to begin with, but on top of that, I have “disproportionately short legs.” That’s an actual quote from the woman who taught that spin class I went to once and only once (I was emotionally scarred. Also? Spinning is awful. It’s like torture, except that no matter how many secrets you spill, it won’t stop. After I screamed my social security and pin numbers for the fifth time, I was asked to leave).

I don’t even use the 3/4 of an inch of legroom that regular airplane seats have. Even after I shove my bag underneath the seat in front of me (nobody does that, by the way. I’ve been watching), I still have gobs of room. Sometimes, my feet don’t touch the floor. They just dangle, much the way a child’s would.

If it sounds like I’m bragging, it’s because I am, just a weensy bit. It’s not often that a girl with “disproportionately short legs” (seriously, I should get that trademarked) has a leg up on everyone else, you know?

Also, did you notice that pun I just made? Go back and read it again, if you missed it. It’s very clever.

So what did I do with all the space I had on my last flight? I tried slumping down in my seat and extending my legs as far as they would go, just so I could say that I tried to appreciate the gift given to me, but people started staring and pointing.

“What the hell is the girl in 17 A doing?” someone asked.

“I don’t know,” someone else replied. “I think she’s drunk. And she may have designed the plane.”

Also, my extra legroom meant that my bag was waaaay up ahead of me, making it very difficult to reach the cookie I had in there. I finally got to it after we landed, but by then Rand had seen it and I had to share with him.

Stupid matrimony.

I would have much rather had the aisle seat, since I have a weensy bladder and need to get up often, but the guy sitting there thought I was kidding when I said I had too much legroom, and LAUGHED OFF MY REQUEST TO SWAP SEATS.

So I sat there, with my gobs of unused legroom and my full bladder, and tried to think of other things, but then I started obsessively dwelling on the fact that I was in a exit row.

Officially, let me state that I don’t have a problem with sitting in that row (I have clicked many a button confirming this fact while checking in online). You can be damn sure that the second anything goes wrong on a plane, I will be out of my seat and ready to use my pillow as a flotation device. Sometimes I bring my regular pillows into the shower, just to practice.

It’s just that I’m not sure I should be the first person with access to the door in case of an emergency, you know? I’m worried I might jump the gun and try cranking open that sucker in the event of something minor, like when someone gets a paper cut on their copy of US Weekly, or when the beverage cart runs out of Bloody Mary mix.

Plus, I’ve heard that the door weighs 50 pounds. Occasionally, I’ve tried lifting 50 pounds at the gym, and I can definitely do it, but damn – that’s a lot of weight, you know? Sometimes when I’m working out, I have to inspire myself, so I start screaming stuff like, “Don’t worry, fellow passengers, I WILL SAVE YOU ALL,” while bench-pressing.

That gets me almost as many weird looks as the seat slumping I mentioned earlier.

Anywho, please give some thought to the points I made in this letter. I can’t really remember what they were, but it was probably something important.

Sincerely,

Geraldine

P.S. – Please consider handing out more of those Biscoff cookies. Those damn things are delicious.

I’ve adhered to many of these rules for a while now, and I figured they were common knowledge. But the more I travel, the more I realize that they most certainly aren’t. So please forgive the obviousness of some of these edicts, but they must be stated. And with that, I give you the Ten Commandments of Air Travel:

1. Thou shalt do all thou can to hold in thou’s farts. If thou really can’t contain thine own flatulence, thou canst either get up and release it in the bathroom, or at the very least turn on thy little overhead fan thingy.
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2. When other people are trying to sleep, and thou has a window seat, thy little plastic curtain shalt be lowered so that the blinding light of the sun does not shine directly in the faces of other passengers.
   

   Thou should not do as this man hath done.

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3. Thou should store only one bag directly above in the overhead compartment, and the other bag should be placed underneath the seat in front of thou. I’m sorry if that gets in the way of thine legroom, but those are the rules. Thou should have thought about that before lugging all of thine crap onto the plane as carry-on luggage.
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4. Thou shalt be forgiving and patient with crying babies, for they are in pain and in need of sympathy. (Thou can totally feel free to get angry at any of the following: bratty children who art old enough to know better, drunken frat boys, and anyone who speaketh so loudly, they can be heard from more than three rows away).
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5. Thou shalt not bring really stinky food onto the plane, if thou can help it. I understand that thou is hungry, but that stuff is going to stink up the cabin for the next three hours. Seriously. I don’t know how thou can eat that stuff.
   

   Thy food is odoriferous.

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6. Flight attendants are not thine own personal slaves. They should be treated with respect and kindness because they work really damn hard and don’t need thou giving them a hard time or hitting on them.
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7. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s arm rest. Unless, of course, thou is seated in the unholy and accursed middle seat, at which point thou gets to use both armrests, because that’s only fair.
   

   Also, thou should keep thy unkempt toes to thyself.

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8. If thou hast an aisle seat, thou shalt get up without complaint when others in thine row need to pee.
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9. Thou should really be able to lift thine carry-on into the overhead compartment by thyself. If thou really needs help with that sort of thing, perhaps thou should have packed more lightly.
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10. Thou shalt not kill.

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I couldn’t find any photos of my old cat, so here’s one of Anton, my dad’s pug. One little fuzzy bugger is the same as the next, right?

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Growing up, we had a cat.

You know what? That statement isn’t quite accurate. We actually had several cats. But there was one cat that sort of stood out from the rest. A spry little calico with markings that I still remember by heart: one eye was rimmed in black, the other in orange, like a little harlequin. She was brilliant and affectionate and in the 17 years that we spent together, I can only remember her scratching me once, unintentionally.

When we finally had to put her down, after a miserable tumor in her face made it impossible for her to eat, I cried. My brother cried. My grandmother cried. And my mother cried, as she pulled the cat into her arms, looked down into her face and said, “Honey, I really hope you have a soul.”

The point is, we loved that cat. As much as was sanely possible for someone to love a cat, we did.

“Sanely” being the operative word here.

Several weeks ago, when Rand and I were flying back from Denver to Seattle, we found ourselves seated next to a very pleasant dark-haired woman. She noticed that there was an empty seat in first class, and she asked the flight attendant if she could move into it.

Bold move, no? I kind of had to respect her for it. I wasn’t too surprised, though, when she was told no. We were flying Alaska, and I knew that there was a long line of folks who were waiting to be bumped up to first class (hell, we were among them). Unless the woman was the next name on the list, she wasn’t going to get the seat. But her request did bring the empty seat to the attention of the flight attendant, who went to see if anyone was sitting there.

She returned to us, her eyes wide.

“The woman in the window seat bought both seats,” she explained. “The second seat is for her cat.”

We all stared blankly at each other, letting the news sink in. The woman had bought a first class plane ticket for her cat.

She bought a first class plane ticket FOR HER CAT.

Federal regulations are such that animals can’t come out of their cages during flight, even if they are registered therapy animals (of course, this rule is occasionally overlooked, and I’ve known people who have flown with little dogs on their laps or next to them on the seat). This woman had bought a spare seat for her pet with the understanding that it might have to stay in its carrier the entire time. Which, from what we could see, it did. That cat sat in its carrier, which was resting on the seat adjacent to her for the entire duration of the flight.

Now, I’m a firm believer that you can’t judge people on how they choose to spend their income. I mean, I probably spend at least the cost of a first class plane ticket on cupcakes every other month, and heads would roll if someone told me that was wrong.

If we start criticizing others on how they spend their own money, our own finances come under scrutiny, too. And it becomes sort of infinitely regressive. Run up to the woman with the first class cat and scream, “You could have donated that money to charity!” and she could just as easily say the same thing to you about any number of purchases you’ve made.

Plus, how do I know she didn’t donate a great deal of her income to charity already? Maybe she had no children, and had bequeathed everything she owned to the Humane Society. Maybe this cat was all she had in the world and they were taking one final trip together.

And they were flying first class, damn it.

So I can’t judge her for it … but still, I won’t lie: it boggled my mind. Because while I have had a cat, and loved it dearly, there was no way she was ever going to fly first class with me. Not unless she was buying.

I’ve never understood the need for personal space.

I’ve been known to follow Rand around the house, shadowing him as he moves from room to room. Usually, it will end with an exchange like this:

Rand: Um, honey?

Me: Yeah?

Rand: Can I be alone for a little bit?

Me: Seriously?

Rand: Yes. Please.

Me: FINE. FINE, then. I guess I’ll just leave.

Rand: I would appreciate that.

Me: (Storms out of BATHROOM, slamming door closed behind her. 30 seconds elapse.) … Are you done yet?

Rand: (Sighing, defeated) Yes.

Yeah, I know. High-maintenance sort of guy, isn’t he?

I suppose I get this trait from my mom. (The personal space part, I mean. Not the following my husband around the house and into the bathroom. My mom doesn’t do that.) Like me, she has no real issues with being physically close to people. She hugs everyone. Even though I’m solidly into my thirties, she’ll occasionally pull me on to her lap. Nevermind the fact that I outweigh her by a solid 20 pounds.

Of course, these are people I know and love. I don’t mind being close to them.

The more time I spend smashed into airline seats, usually sandwiched between my husband and whatever poor stranger has the misfortune of sitting next to my flatulent self, I’ve started to realize the importance of personal space. It hit me rather acutely a few weeks ago when Rand and I were flying to Denver for the weekend.

We’d gotten an upgrade, which rarely happens. We were positively thrilled. Ours was the last row in first class before the economy section began.

I sat, delighting in my seat, and my view, and the array of snacks that sat before us. And then I went to utilize my arm rest, and saw … well, I saw this:

Ten little unholy piggies.

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The gal behind me was using my armrest as a footstool. You can see from the window above exactly how far her toes were extending into my personal airspace.

I reacted thusly:

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Now, I understand that in order to make air travel profitable, perfect strangers often find themselves sardined together like drunken lovers at a college party. But usually folks try – often in vain, but still, they try – to keep their arms and legs and other body parts to themselves. And at first, I was quite bothered having her toes mere centimeters from my freshly washed hair.

But then I realized that if these toes belonged to a loved one, I wouldn’t have minded nearly so much.

And I got to thinking … about how alone we are in the world. About how I’ve sat next to strangers for hours – on planes, and buses, and trains - and not said a word to them. I thought about all the times that Rand and I sat side by side, looking at our phones instead of talking to one another.

When you travel, you might be constantly surrounded by people, but how often do you truly get to know them? And really, what better way is there to get to know someone than by inspecting - at freakish close proximity – their toes?

I stared at them, marveling at their gnarled beauty. I memorized every little nook and cranny, every neglected callus and flake of dried skin. looking at those toes, I felt less alone in the world. I had made ten crusty little new friends. In my mind, I dressed them up and gave them a personality.

“It is I – Professor Pigglesworth. Fetch me some roast beef, will you darling?”

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And just like that, I began to delight in those toes, infringing on my personal space.

HOORAY FOR TOES!

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When she finally moved them, I was almost sad to see them go. It was like saying goodbye to a dear friend.

Or ten little ones.

As a kid, I wanted the window seat. Now I prefer the aisle, so I can get up to pee.

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There are days when I feel far older than my 31 years (Wait, am I 31? What year is it …? No, I’m still 31. Dear god. Losing track of my age is not a problem I used to have). When something happens that makes me realize that I have been on the planet for three long decades, and then some.

Take, for example, the time I had the following exchange (via Google chat) with my brother-in-law, who is 10 years my junior:

Me: … it must have been around the time River Phoenix died.

Him: River Phoenix?

Me: Oh, dear god, no. Don’t. Just don’t.

Him: Who’s River Phoenix?

Me: NO. You can’t actually not know.

Him: Wait … is he related to Joaquin?

Me: “IS HE RELATED TO JOAQUIN?” I … WHA … PLEASE STOP TALKING.

Him: Hold on, I’m looking him up … Okay, you can’t get mad at me for not knowing who he was. I was, like, three years old when he died.

Me: I TOLD YOU TO STOP TALKING.

I know. It’s just horrifying. The kid was born in the nineties and is able to drink. It’s enough to make you curl up and weep for your lost youth, the untimely death of poor River, and the cancellation of Pete and Pete. And it makes you realize how many of the immutable pillars of your childhood mean nothing to younger generations.

When it comes to flying, where the rules change every time some idiot tries to bring down a 747 by hiding C-4 in his underwear, this is particularly true. Traveling in planes today is not what it was when I was a child. Here are some of the things I remember from air travel during the 80s and 90s that will sound utterly shocking to younger generations:

1. There were tiny pre-wrapped soaps. I suppose it was simply a sign of more careless, excessive times: in the 80s and earlier, airplane bathrooms were stocked with individually packaged miniature soaps. I remember loving these, and would hoard them in my carry-on (I don’t know why I did this. There was never a soap shortage at my house, from which I could save my family by showing them my hidden stash, and be hailed a hero). Eventually, I guess the waste became costly: every person who used the bathroom would grab a soap, unwrap it, use it, and toss it. Now most planes have soap dispensers. Certainly less charming, but a hell of a lot-more eco-friendly.
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2. Airplane food was bad. And I mean really bad. These days, I’m never that fazed by airplane food, because it is SO MUCH BETTER NOW THAN IT WAS.
   

   Believe me when I say that this is a serious improvement.

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   I remember once, when I was six years old, peeling the tin foil back from my meal and seeing an orange hemisphere floating around in dark brown sauce.
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   “What is this?” I asked my brother.
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   “A peach.”
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   “Yeah, but what’s it in?”
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   “Gravy.”Dear god, I kid you not: there was a peach FLOATING IN GRAVY. Twenty-five years later, that venture into culinary purgatory still haunts me. (Granted, most airlines don’t even serve food nowadays, but I still think that’s an improvement. At least they aren’t scarring people for life.)
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3. There was a smoking section. ON THE PLANE. Which, of course, was right next to the NON-SMOKING SECTION. And wouldn’t you know it, that pesky smoke would never stay on its half of the plane.
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4. There were pillows and blankets everywhere. Seriously, economy class looked like a harem. Sometime in the last few decades, though, I think someone finally realized that no one was washing the damn things, and that the blankets were harboring diseases that pre-dated manned flight. So we bid adieu to pillows and throws along with the illusion of comfort. On the plus side, we substantially reduced our chances of dying of consumption.
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5. You weren’t charged for extra luggage. Or, at the very least, it was rare. I remember, on my trip during my youth, traveling with approximately seven carry-ons.
   

   Pssh. In my day, I had three times this much luggage.

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   Another time, I boarded a plane with a Rubbermaid tub that vaguely resembled, in both shape and dimensions, a coffin (I swear it wasn’t even considered oversized). And I met a guy who told me that when he left for college (some 20 years ago), he was told by one agent that his bag was too big and he couldn’t take it. So he said okay, walked down a ways, and plopped it on the conveyor belt with no problem. I don’t know how these things happened. But they did.
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6. We kept our shoes on. It’s true, kids: we really did. And our belts. And if we set off the metal detector, we simply removed the offending item, plopped it on the x-ray machine, and went through the metal detector again. No pat-downs. No weird blue naked images viewed by a lonely, underpaid TSA worker. Nope. You might have a metal-detecting wand waved over some of your squishier parts, but that was it.
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7. There was one movie, and to watch it, you had to buy headphones. When I was a child, the price sounded astronomical – something like $3 a person – so we’d never end up getting the ear buds. We’d just crane our necks in an attempt to see the one screen near the front of the plane, and try to discern the plot by failed attempts at lip-reading. Nowadays, on international flights I have my own screen.
   
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   Sure, it’s great, but where is the poetry? Where is the hardship that made us appreciate existence? Sometimes I watch the screen without headphones on so I can remember what it feels like to be alive.
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8. The airlines would hand out medicine. Just tell the flight attendant (or, as we called them back then, stewardesses and stewards, the latter of which was a rare sight) you had a headache, and you’d get tiny little packages of Tylenol in return. It stopped sometime in the late 80s, when someone realized the practice was expensive and highly litigious.
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9. You had to call to book a ticket. That’s right: you had to speak to an actual person. Comparing prices required making SEVERAL telephone calls. And then – get this – you’d have to go to the airport to pick up your ticket, or have it mailed to you (really, kids, I’m not making this up). Once, I nearly missed a flight because the airline mailed my ticket late. I finally got it, a few hours before we were supposed to leave. And – wait for it – THIS WAS IN 2005. YEAH.
   
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10. You could pack whatever the heck you wanted. A friend came to visit me sometime in the late 90s. After he disembarked, he was having trouble undoing his bag, which he’d secured with twine. So he reached into his carry-on and PULLED OUT A THREE-INCH-BLADE WITH WHICH HE CUT THE string. He then stared at his knife and remarked, “It’s kind of weird that they let me travel with that, huh?”
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    And, oh, the liquids in our bags were plentiful. Our carry-ons sloshes and splashed with all the  shampoos and lotions and soaps we had in there, in quantities far exceeding 3 ounces.

Sigh. Those were the good old days. When flights included a little plastic pair of aviator wings that would inevitably poke you in the finger. When you could take whatever you wanted on a plane with you.  When you could hoard tiny soaps to your heart’s content.

Don’t leave me floating on a cloud of nostalgia by myself. What memories do you have about flying that would seem absolutely foreign to kids today?

Who knew keeping your shoes on would be such a luxury?

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I am not a gambler. Should there be any doubts of this, note that I was in Vegas for two whole days and the greatest risk I took in a casino was ordering a savory crepe (don’t do it. Cheese is no substitute for Nutella, and anyone who says otherwise is likely trying to sell you something. Probably cheese).

But the TSA has turned me into someone who takes chances, who rolls the dice again and again, because if I win, I get a bit of humanity back. How? Via the TSA’s new PreCheck program.

The TSA’s website doesn’t offer a ton of information about how their precheck system works. But here’s what I learned:

• You must sign up for it beforehand. Rand and I did so via an online form through Alaska Airlines which had virtually no information on it. It wasn’t an agreement by any means. It just asked for our name and frequent flier numbers.
• We were eligible via Alaska Airlines because we both have status on the airline.
• In signing up for the program, we agreed to let Alaska share our flight itineraries with the TSA, along with our frequent flier numbers. (This surprised me, as I assumed the TSA already had access to this information).
• The only airlines currently participating in the program are Alaska, American, and Delta (with plans to add more this summer). They usually only offer the ability to sign up for the program to their frequent fliers. Active service members are also eligible for the program. Or you can apply for the Global Online Enrollment System; if accepted, you will automatically be eligible for the PreCheck.
• In addition to flying a participating airline, you also need to be traveling through a participating gate at a participating airport (Yeah. Lots of caveats there).
• Even if you meet all the requirements and are traveling on a participating airline at a participating airport through a participating gate, you still might not be selected. From the TSA’s website: “… no individual will be guaranteed expedited screening in order to retain a certain element of randomness to prevent terrorists from gaming the system.”
• If you are selected for PreCheck, you won’t know until you get to the gate. The airline will encode the message on the barcode of your ticket. If you are traveling with someone who has not been selected for pre-check, they don’t get to ride your coattails.

Based on all of this, it seems highly improbable that anyone would be selected. But if The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy taught me anything (besides that I should always take a towel) it’s this: highly improbable is not the same as impossible.

And so, on our flight down to Vegas, flying Alaska and departing through SeaTac, the improbable happened, and we were selected. We were sent into a separate, shorter lane (the one folks get to use when they are frequent fliers or first class). Our IDs were checked against our tickets by an agent, and then we headed through security.

There was no line ahead of us – just a metal detector. And that’s when the TSA, for the first time in years, treated us like normal people. Here’s how:

• We didn’t have to remove our shoes (and thank goodness, as I wasn’t wearing socks)
• We could keep our laptops and TSA-compliant liquids in our bags.
• Sweaters and like jackets did not need to be removed.
• We could keep small amounts of metal – such as that found on jewelry or belts – on.

So we tossed our bags on the conveyor belt, walked through the metal detector, stared at each other incredulously on the other side, and that was it. It took roughly 45 seconds, if that. It was like we’d died and gone to 1998. Traveling was suddenly easy. Security was a breeze. I no longer hated the TSA!

We’d hit the jackpot.

We managed to luck out again on our way back from Vegas. And this time, I was gambling big-time. I was wearing a dress.

Why is this significant? Because I am often selected for the full-body scanners. And every time I am, I opt out, and am subject to a pat-down. I was willfully walking into a situation where I might have to be patted down while in a dress. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I wasn’t going to change.

I mean it’s a really pretty dress. It’s a white dress covered in green leaves, packs beautifully, and cost me $6 at the Goodwill. And according to that dress, I’m two sizes smaller than I actually am. Besides, I’ll admit: I was kind of curious. How were they going to pat me down on my legs? The procedure is that they run their hand up your leg until they meet “resistance” so … were they going to reach up the skirt of my dress?

That sounded mortifying, but better I have it done voluntarily so I can tell others about it, then have someone else get caught off guard. Nope. The dress was staying on. I’d suddenly become a gambler.

But it didn’t matter: we were selected for PreCheck, and breezed through security in Vegas.

Of course, it doesn’t always work so smoothly.

At Newark airport this past Sunday, we were again sent through a quicker line for frequent fliers/first class passengers. I was hopeful that I could keep my shoes on (and I wasn’t wearing a dress), but soon realized we were headed towards the regular queue. And nearly everyone was being sent through the full-body scanner. The line was quickly stacking up as the agents refused to send anyone through the metal detector.

Rand was selected for the full-body scan ahead of me. He opted out, and the agent began telling him – in impatient tones – how it wasn’t dangerous, etc. Rand held up his hand gently in objection and said, “I’m opting out. Thank you.”

We have years of experience: Rand gets a pat-down in London, February 2010.

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The woman ahead of me was sent through the metal detector, but I was selected for the full-body scan. I opted-out, was submitted to the same speech, and then sent through the metal detector before the pat-down.

It’s ridiculously, really. I was no different that the woman in front of me, but because I’d demanded to be treated like her (to go through only the metal detector), I was subjected to more screening. The TSA punishes those who dissent. It’s creepy to think about.

It’s also disturbing to consider that, with the new TSA PreCheck, those who are eligible are usually the upper class. Think about it: if you travel a lot, you likely have the finances to do so. Most of the folks who are frequent fliers are also first class passengers (one of the perks of flying a lot) – so a strange dichotomy is created between the haves and have-nots. The three-child family who takes one trip every few years is sent struggling through security while the businessman who travels all the time breezes through.

If you fly first class, you are treated better, even by security.

Don't fret: if we ever fly first class, it's usually by mistake.

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We ended up making it through Newark fine. We are often patted down, so it was no big deal. But I’d seen what it had been like to be treated humanely by the TSA, and I was having trouble going back to how things were.

Is the TSA PreCheck worth it? Absolutely. There’s nothing to lose, really. If you don’t get selected, you’re treated like everyone else – a shoeless nobody getting their nether regions prodded by a stranger in latex gloves.

But if you do get picked for PreCheck? You get treated like a person by the TSA. Which, really, is like hitting the jackpot.

More than a few of you are likely thinking, “Well, obviously. It’s not normal for a grown woman to constantly obsess about baked goods and Jeff Goldblum. At least she finally admitted it. Now she can get help.”

And to those folks I laugh and say, No, no, no! I’m not talking mental sickness (I will write JEFF GOLDBLUM 4-EVER on the cover of my notebooks until the day I die, even though it’s been years since I’ve actually needed a notebook for anything.). No, I mean I’m actually feeling ill. Sick. Able to breathe through only one nostril, which keeps switching and I only notice it after the fact.

I blame my husband. He seems to be an incubator for all sorts of illnesses, yet never shows even a hint of a symptom.

“Everyone in the office is sick,” he’ll say, and within a matter of hours, I will be afflicted despite NOT HAVING SET FOOT IN HIS OFFICE IN WEEKS. You’d think that he’d at least have the decency to feel rotten himself after giving me consumption, but no. NO. He just walks around with his rosy cheeks, haughtily breathing through both nostrils without a care in the world.

“I SEE YOU EXHALING OVER THERE, YOU SHOW-OFF.”

Here he is eating candy off the floor of a museum and suffering ZERO consequences (note: it was part of an interactive exhibit, but STILL).

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I would be cursing him even more had he not arrived home from work with a slice of lemon pie for me. (A slice which I just realized I probably can’t taste because of aforementioned clogged nostrils. That’s it. I’m so wiping my nose on a voodoo doll of him.)

I’m trying to keep in mind that it’s not as bad as it could be. If I’m going to be sick, at least it’s while I’m at home, where I have lots of soup and tea and countless episodes of The Office to cringe through. Because I’ve been sick on the road, and let me tell you: it sucks. Profoundly. I’ve talked about things you can do to make it better, ways to explore a city while quietly hacking up a lung.

But I neglected to mention one thing that I always travel with: my mobile medicine cabinet.

It’s nothing particularly fancy. It’s an old plastic cosmetics bag that I have constantly stocked with all manner of things. Before I go anywhere, I throw it into my suitcase along with my neti-pot, and I’m ready for any eventuality from sore throats to bug bites. And so, as I sit here too congested to bother telling you about the British Museum or Antonio Gaudi (soon, I promise), I’d like to share with you what’s inside my little cosmetic bag of medical tricks.

But let me say, before I wax poetically about all the over-the-counter goodies we get in our country, that I do think we tend to over-medicate a lot. Antibiotics should not be taken hastily. Pain meds shouldn’t be downed like Skittles (also, a lot of medications have candy coatings nowadays, which is just MESSED UP).

I generally try to fight most things off with a mix of fluids, rest, and whining (it has an eventual, though not immediate, 100% success rate). But there is something incredibly comforting about having this stuff with me, just in case (I doubt it needs to be said, but still – I’m in no way a professional, and this is not medical advice. Obviously, you should talk to a doctor before taking any sort of medication, over-the-counter or otherwise):

1. Sudafed. I realize it’s one of the key ingredients in any good family meth recipe, but it’s also a godsend at 35,000 feet when your sinuses won’t clear up and your head feels like it may, if left unattended, explode. Plus, new restrictions mean that this powerful decongestant is difficult – if not impossible – to buy in a lot of states (in Oregon, it’s only available by prescription), so I always have some with me.
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2. Ibuprofen. Not only will having this in your bag come in handy if you get any aches or pains, but it will make your travel buddies forever indebted to you when they need some and you can deliver. “Why yes, I do have some Advil … It will only cost you YOUR SOUL.”
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3. DayQuil and NyQuil (in tablet form). I’ve heard that supposedly you can’t take liquid caplets on a flight without putting them in your 1-quart bag, but I’ve never had a problem packing these in my carry-on. Which is a good thing, because I honestly have never found an over-the-counter medication that holds a candle to Day or NyQuil.
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4. Band-aids. Forgive me. I obviously mean ”adhesive bandage strips.”
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5. Moleskin. For when days of walking a city in search for cupcakes starts to irritate your tootsies, this stuff is a life-saver. I usually stick it straight on the inside part of the shoe that’s bugging me.
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6. A small pair of scissors. As long as the blade is less than 4-inches, you can take these with you in your carry-on (pack them carefully so you don’t accidentally stab yourself while rummaging in your bag).
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7. Antibiotic ointment (Neosporin) – This stuff is actually not terrific, and should – like all antibiotics – be used rarely. But if you get a nasty scrape, it’s always nice to have (pack it in your 1-quart liquids bag).
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8. Hydrocortisone (anti-itch) cream. Perfect for bug bites, irritations, topical allergies, and any other skin issues that come up (again, pack it in your 1-quart liquids bag. And use sparingly, as long-term use can thin your skin).
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9. Anti-diarrhea tablets. If you have them with you, you save yourself the embarrassment of having to explain your symptoms to the tiny Scottish woman working at a drugstore in Glasgow.
   

   Fun fact: they spell diarrhea differently across the pond.

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10. Nail clippers and tweezers. Make sure the clippers don’t have a blade or knife attachment, as those are forbidden by the TSA (nail files are just fine, though).
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11. Meclizine. I’m constantly looking for ways to combat vertigo, which often hits me while I travel. Meclizine is some potent stuff (use it sparingly, or you’ll just might end up wandering through Boston, sedated), but it’s available over-the-counter, and will send your nausea packing.
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12. Neti-pot and solution packets. I swear by the neti-pot. If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s basically a tiny teapot that you can use to irrigate your sinuses. I know, it sounds gross. And it kind of is. But it’s also fascinating (YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO LOOK AWAY), and it cleans the heck out of your nostrils – perfect when you’re sick, or recovering from a nasty flight.
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13. Aquaphor. I use this petroleum-based product on cuts and scrapes, but it’s also great for intensely dry skin or chapped lips. It comes in tiny tubes that fit easily into your 1-quart liquids bag.
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14. Benadryl (or any other antihistamine). You never know when allergies might pop up, especially while traveling.
    

    Like when an unexpected sheep encounter leaves you sniffling.

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15. Tissues. A necessity for sniffly noses, these are also handy when you find yourself in a bathroom without toilet paper (which happens a lot during my travels).
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16. Multi-vitamins and echinacea. I’m terrible about taking vitamins when I’m healthy, but I do it without fail when I’m feeling sick, in hopes of getting my body back to normal. It might be just a placebo-effect, but hey – placebos work.
    

    Mimosas are great for a cold, because they deliver lots of Vitamin C. And champagne.

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17. Wet-wipes. Ideal for all those times I can’t get to a bathroom, but still want clean hands. And they’re perfect for disinfecting germ-ridden places you encounter while traveling: folding trays on airplanes, remote controls in hotel rooms, the steering wheel on your rental car. Just don’t go overboard: it’s easy to get carried away and find yourself in Lady-MacBeth-OUT-DAMN-SPOT territory.
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18. Any prescription medication you might need. I always carry mine with me in my carry-on or purse, so I know it won’t get lost, and I bring more than enough for the duration of my travels (you never know when you might get delayed, or want to extend your trip).