Another Friday is here, folks, and that can only mean one thing: it�s time for me to stop dragging my feet, open up a Word document, and start a journal entry. It�s not that I don�t LIKE updating, y�all, seriously. It�s just that whenever I�ve got enough spare time to write, it means that I�ve got SPARE TIME. That�s like saying, �Here�s fifty bucks to go buy underwear.� I mean, yes, maybe I need underwear � and yes, underwear can be sexy and make you feel good � but fifty bucks is fifty bucks! I might need to spend the fifty bucks writing emails to my mom, or cleaning my room for the first time in about six months (give or take), and have to backburner my updating dreams. I got my metaphors mixed, here, but you know what I mean.
Anyway, I�ve got fifty metaphorical bucks now, and I�m spending them all on you! I expect play.
So I�ve been working this week, which was a happy surprise that came out of nowhere. It�s a very brief assignment, but it has led to an additional (possible) opportunity, for which I�m crossing my fingers. Especially since Stupid Unemployment never sent me anything for the two weeks I was out of work last time, and I now have to call them AGAIN and be on hold AGAIN and bitch them out AGAIN, and I hate that. I hate when I have to snap at people just to get them to listen to me. It doesn�t seem right, you know? I like to be friendly, because it makes everything so much more pleasant. But when you try to be friendly, people ignore you or take advantage of your good nature because they figure they can. So you have to be an asshole, and everyone hates you, but at least you get the job done. I really, really loathe that business construct.
However, I am very grateful that I am alive to engage in it! You see, I may have thought my mother�s driving was scary, but when I made that casual reference to my in-flight piety on cross-country trips, I didn�t realize how prophetic it would prove. I�ve always had an abiding fear of heights � and plummeting to a leisurely-yet-fiery death FROM said heights, while strapped to a chair inside a metal cylinder weighing several hundred tons � but over the years I�ve managed to bring that primal phobia under control. When I boarded my first of two flights home on Sunday, I just tried to push the reality of the situation into the back of my mind � like usual � where I could ignore it and just let it bubble up and manifest itself in some future night terror.
Our take-off was�bumpy. Our flight? Was like the opening episode of Lost, except without the pretty beach. It was like riding a tornado sidesaddle through a collapsing star. I have been in earthquakes more stable than the sixty minutes we spent in the air, and I was pretty sure that if I could bring myself to peep out the window, I would probably see the face of God. And He would probably have been looking at us, like, �Whoa, dude � I�m glad I�m not on that flight.� You know you sometimes hit those pockets where the atmospheric pressure shifts, or whatever, and the plane kind of drops a bit? And your heart shoots up into your throat like when you�re rocketing down a hill on a roller-coaster, and it�s kind of exhilarating, but when it�s over you�re still like, �Oh, thank God that�s over�? We hit about seventy-five of them in rapid succession and I swear our cabin practically lost the power of gravity.
I made so many promises to Jesus in that sixty minutes that I lost track. I don�t think I renounced any certain lifestyles, which was Ulrich�s worry, but still. And while I�m on the subject, I love that my instinct was to grab onto the armrests of my seat, as if that was going to help me in the event that we dropped thirty-THOUSAND feet to the earth, at approximately twelve million miles an hour. And also, who the FUCK was the girl next to me, that she was asking the flight attendant to POUR HER A GLASS OF ORANGE JUICE and then pass it to her OVER MY LAP while the plane was having a grand mal seizure in its merry, earthward plunge to certain death? Fuck YOU, lady.
Thank God it�s over.
Your Trivia Fact For The Week: Anne Bradstreet was the first published American female author. I�m Watching: Project Runway. I love that show, unabashedly. I�m Reading: I�m now reading a book on art theory, and it�s fascinating.