2001-07-09 - 10:32 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Some song, called "Hold On", which I think might have been a slave spiritual, that we sang in 2nd grade music class. Something about "better keep your hand right on that plow". I don't know why these things are stuck in my head twenty-some years later.

Twenty-some years. I am old.

So, I am back from vacation.

Well, my body is back, that is. My mind is still elsewhere.

The little thingie in my inner ear that gives me balance is still out of whack after five days on the boat. The first day off the boat the earth rolled, all day long. Made me stumble occasionally. At this point, only the bed rolls when I am half asleep. Hopefully this will wear off soon, although it's rather amusing really. Wheeeeeeeee!

I'll tell ya, I slept like a ROCK on that boat. As it is, I can't stay awake on a plane, train or car because of the vibration. When I learned to drive, I had to learn all the routes to my grandparents' houses and such because I spent my entire childhood car time reading and sleeping instead of paying attention to where we were going. So, then you put me on a boat that both vibrates (it's a powerboat, not a sailboat) AND rocks all the time, and I am like a baby, sleeping 20 hours a day.

I have notes, chronologically by day, so I guess I'll just write up some snippets.

Friday, June 29th

There is a little manicure station at the airport now. I was completely charmed by this. Next time I go to the airport, I'm having my nails done. I went over to chat with the manicurist and told her I was sorry I'd had my nails done two days before. She said, "Next time, remember I'm here."

I have list of some things I was pondering while waiting to board, some of which make no sense to me now, some of which are too complicated to get into now. But so you can see what kind of crap I think about in dull situations like waiting to board, here's the list:

- kids bored in airport will just start playing with other kids they've never met before
- gorgeous woman WHTB black with perfect skin that I couldn't stop staring at
- woman with lots of plastic surgery and it didn't "take" too well on her face that I also couldn't stop staring at
- when I was a kid - fun to drop off Dad at airport for his business trips
- niceness -- why is it so important to me to be nice?
- feeling of religion/oneness with others/rock concert
- altruism -- is this when you do for another at the epense of oneself?
- is Heinlein sexist? (I was reading Stranger in a Strange Land)

We had to sit in the back of the plane. Last row. We grumbled a bit, but it beat the hell out of sitting apart. I have a superstition about holding Poindexter's hand during takeoff. We had aisle and middle, because Poindexter must be on the aisle, so that he can get out easily since he has a bladder the size of a pea.

One of our favorite lines from an "NYPD Blue" episode is when there is some incident on a bus when the bus driver steps off to take a leak. Greg Medavoy is interviewing the driver, and sympathizes with "Many's the time I've regretted my small bladder capacity." BWHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love Medavoy. But I digress.

We were five rows away or so on the way to our seats, me walking behind Poindexter, and I caught sight of the girl in the window seat in our row. She was gorgeous, in a perfect yet still innocent sort of way. Big eyes, blond hair, reminiscent of Heather Graham. The kind of girl a guy would always hope he gets to sit next to on a plane.

I leaned and whispered into Poindexter's ear, "Do you want the middle seat?"

He looked over, saw her, laughed, and said no. Bladder wins.

She turned out to be only fifteen, but she really was astonishingly pretty and quite nice in a shy sort of way -- nowhere near as snobby as you'd expect someone who looks that good. She was reading her girlie magazine and making sketches and taking note of the fashion pages. Stylish girl, she was.

Her 14-year-old brother was on the opposing aisle seat, and has excellent bone structure but is caught in an awkward stage (show me this guy in 5 years and he'll have packs of drooling women surrounding him).

The brother made Poindexter laugh for the entire flight, complaining about how the seats didn't recline and asking the flight attendant for wings (the little plastic pins), and grouching a lot about not having any snacks. They ran out of snacks before they got to us. Fuckers. They did find a few spares lying around and brought them over later.

Saturday, June 30

Today I ran a lot of errands. Looked for blue shoes. Went to the library, using MIL's card, and met Nathan Somebody-or-other who works there. He said she "is one of our favorite patrons here at the library, because she loves to read and loves the library."

When I got home and told her what he said, she told me that he had asked her out to lunch! Like, on a date! She said she didn't think her husband would like that much. Apparently she wasn't wearing her wedding rings at the time. Poor Nathan.

Not that men pay attention to rings, anyway. One time I was dressed in cutoffs and a tight shirt at the grocery store and had a very handsome young man offer to help me load the groceries into the VW. Not wanting to seem rude or like a feminazi, I said sure. (I could have said, "No, thanks, I'm fine", but I still feel like this is being rude.) I mentioned "my husband" at the first opportunity, and he said, "Oh, you're married." The expression on his face was comical. Not like he was disappointed that I, specifically, was off the market, but a look that said he was irritated that he had been wasting his time on a married woman. If he had looked at the rings on my finger right away, he could have saved himself the trouble.

Anyways, Saturday was when I got outvoted and the fambly decided on a five-day boat trip instead of a four-day one. I had reservations about being on a boat for that long, but was feeling like a good sport so didn't fuss.

My issues with the boat were as follows:

First, I get the boat equivalent of cabin fever rather easily when anchoring. When we just stop the boat in the middle of the water and spend the night, I am freaked out by the fact that I can't step out of the boat and go for a walk. I feel trapped, even though logically I am not. I also don't like being so far from civilization. I'm a city mouse, as you've heard me go on about ad nauseum. Fortunately, for this trip we were going to be docking at marinas, and land would be just outside the door.

Second, the forward cabin, on the previous trip, made me claustrophobic. First, it's triangle-shaped, which is weird. Next, imagine a queen-sized bed. Now imagine the bed has walls and a ceiling immediately around it, with just enough room to sit up in bed. Gack. The room itself is the size of a queen-sized bed. I think the ceilings are about six feet. Don't even get me started on the bathroom, which has floor space (not occupied by a shower, sink, or toilet) of about two square feet. The first time I went in there and shut the door, when I was done I couldn't turn the knob to open it later and my heart leapt into my throat in total panic. Fortunately I figured out how the knob worked before I had to bang the door down yelling for Poindexter.

To be continued...

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