Boarding

Not that I will be boarding soon, I have about an hour and thirty minutes before my plane starts to board.

But.

I am in the boarding area to London.

Where I will have an hour layover and then.

Yes.

Paris.

I will arrive in Paris tomorrow at 5:15p.m.

About 24 hours from right now.

Of course, Paris is 12 hours ahead and the time traveling is not actually 24 hours.

There is some time travel happening.

In a manner of speaking.

My flight to London is 11 hours 45 minutes.

Yawn.

That’s a long time.

I hopefully will take a very big nap.

I am nervous about my ankle, it’s hard to travel with a sprain, the air pressure in the cabin, having it lower than it should be, I should have it elevated as much as I can, but that’s not going to happen.

I am also sitting in the boarding area early hoping to chat with the flight crew.

I want to see if I can switch seats.

I’m in the middle.

I have done a long flight in the middle before, but not with a bad ankle.

I am going to see if they have anything in first class, smile real big and bat my eyes.

Although, I’m not one to really use feminine wiles to get my way, a smile, and a please and a thank you generally go far.

I use my manners more than anything else.

I doubt it will happen, but I will ask.

Can’t hurt to ask.

And.

I will ask for getting on early so that I don’t have to hobble on with every one else.

I definitely needed extra time to get through security.

I kept my shoes on and my ankle brace on and the security did a pat down and a chemical swipe of my shoes.

It was rather funny, but I wasn’t in a hurry and I was glad that they let me keep my shoes on.

I have my ankle wrapped pretty well and my plain Jane sensible walking shoes on.

I do hope that I will be able to do the museums and to be able to get to some spots that I want to.

Fuck.

At this moment I have completely changed my thoughts and plans regarding my flight, I am sitting in the boarding area next to a very loud woman who is reciting a great deal of evangelical text at great volume.

Listen lady.

It’s too late to save me.

I’ve already saved myself.

Take your proselytizing and go elsewhere.

PS.

I can’t hear you anymore now that I put on my oversized Head Candy noise cancelling headphones.

All I can here is the playlist my French friend put together for me.

“Pour Carmen.”

Merci bein mon amie, je t’aime trop la musique.

I also have been doing the internet fall into a hole looking at all the fun stuff that is happening in Paris this upcoming weekend and week.

I almost got into to the pop up sauna that is at the Moulin Rouge, but it was fully booked.

Oh well.

There are plenty of things to do.

I have been popping around the Time Out Paris magazine.

It’s fun to pursue all the things.

I don’t actually have any agenda anymore.

I can’t do Paris the way that I have done in previous years, at a full tilt boogie.

Nope.

I will be going slow.

I will be soaking in the City of Lights.

I shall be walking slow.

Moving slow.

Seeing it all.

Taking it in.

I’ll still go to plenty of museums, how can I not, but I will be pretty strategic about it, I don’t think I will do the Louvre, I mean, I may, but only a few certain parts, I will have to pick maybe one wing and then one floor instead of trying to do two of the wings, it’s just miles of walking and I don’t have miles of walking in me.

I figure I will find my spot and sit and stare at some art and get my fill.

Fuck.

I don’t know what I am going to do.

I am just going.

I mean I really do have to toss out all the ideas I had about what I would be up to.

I have to scale way back.

But.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing for me.

A little restraint.

That can be a good thing.

I know I will have an amazing time and I know I will have adventures.

I will meet people, I will see old friends.

In fact, I have a date to go to Rue Madame with a friend on Sunday and catch up with him and some fellows and then off to stroll, hobble, around Les Jardins de Luxembourg.

That’s the Luxembourg Gardens, if you didn’t figure that out.

I will definitely be sitting still more than I have in the past and I am thinking I may use the buses a lot more than when I lived there, the stairs up and down the Metro are going to be hard.

I can’t dash.

So, maybe staying street level most the time.

And going places where I can really get a lot of bang for my buck, like the city center, the Marais, etc.

Ah.

It’s all good.

I’m ok.

I get to go, my ankle wasn’t so badly sprained that I can’t get out of bed.

I mean, had it been as severe as the one I sustained three years ago I would have been fucked.

I probably would have cancelled the trip.

So.

I am grateful, super grateful, for that and I will not bitch or complain.

I shall take the experience as it has been given to me with a great big smile and a very sincere Merci bien.

Trop merci.

Merci beaucoup.

Ooh.

The flight crew is coming in.

Got to jet.

Er.

Hobble off.

Into the sunset.

See you in Paris!

Trop bisoux pour toi.

xxxxxx

Today’s Stats

Sometimes I just don’t know what to make of my stats.

Not the body ones.

Or the emotional ones.

Even the mental ones.

Nope.

I literally mean the ones on my blog.

How come so many people are searching that one particular thing?

Why would someone in Mexico want to read my blog?

Who is creeping on my page?

Cuz.

That shit happens yo.

Sometimes I get a great big spike in reads and it’s typically, from my experience, one reader going deep into the blog.

It always leaves me curious.

Who is that person?

Or what are they looking for?

Do they just want to get to know me better, but just a little too shy to ask?

Are they just keeping up with the life and times of Auntie Bubba?

I mean.

Today was not super exciting, but it was special, as is any day I get through without picking up or using and as I was surprise popped to speak at the place tonight, it astounded me, once again, how much my life has changed and how very much I have to be grateful for.

Even when I don’t want to lighten up or have fun.

My life is light and fun.

That does not mean frothy or insubstantial.

If anything.

I believe that it is ever more expansive and open and wonderful.

Deep and complex.

Yet.

Utterly simple.

Easy?

No.

My life is not easy, but by following some simple suggestions.

Well.

Life is manageable and I can let go of the results and just see what happens.

So much can happen.

Least of all when I expect it.

I mean.

Shit.

I’m going to New Orleans on Thursday and three weeks ago that wasn’t even on my plate, let alone an idea in my head, let alone an actual reality, a plane ticket, a room to stay in, a place to meet my fellows, a French Quarter to explore.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine last night on the phone and she mentioned that she has always wanted to move there.

Me too.

It’s been one of those places always on my radar, even though I haven’t been back in so very long.

I made her a promise that I would report back and let her know how it was.

I suspect it will be fabulous.

I suspect I have no idea what will happen.

But it will be good.

I know this.

Having done enough traveling in my life at this point I know how to do a couple of things, pack, and navigate around and get in and out of an airport.

Those things used to cause me an unbearable amount of anxiety.

Just getting to the airport was excruciating and exciting and flavored with fraught anxiety and a curious longing for the uplift of the wings, the expanse of land below me, the clouds and sky alongside my face.

How often have I pressed my face against a window portal, dreaming dreams and aching with some unnamable feeling, some longing for shift in perspective and the glorious wonder of new things to be seen and experienced.

New faces.

New foods.

New streets to wander.

New art to see and be exposed to.

So much wonder in the travel.

The escape from the mundane, well, I don’t think my daily routine is mundane, I should re-word that, the exodus from the routine, to the new and the glad return, the gratitude I have when I land back at SFO and the chill fog coolness swirls about me and the doors open from the baggage claim gates to the outside world.

I am reminded of every time I have flown in and out of the airport.

Of the first trip here when I returned to the land of my birth.

To my last trip from New York.

All the Paris’s and Chicago’s and Minneapolis’s in between.

The Orlando trips, the Madison, Wisconsin trips, those times to Maine and back, Anchorage, Los Angeles, Austin, London, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Boston.

There are still so many places to go and visit.

But there is always home to return to.

And I normally do with a renewed vigor and love for where I am and what I am doing.

I do a lot.

Even when I am loathe to admit that.

I do a lot.

Just writing this blog.

I mean.

I forget that.

The work here.

The graduate school program.

The nannying.

The doing the deal and going to yoga and cooking all my own food (for the most part).

The showing up and be willing to take suggestions even when I want to blow a big raspberry at the person making it.

The willingness to be wrong.

The ability to make mistakes and not beat myself up for not being perfect.

The trying.

The dating.

The sex.

The life.

The love.

The music.

The words.

All the things.

I mean.

I am many, many things.

I am certainly not perfect and I am a pretty open book, although sometimes I can retire into silence and not know what to say to someone or I will lose my voice when I need to self-assert, I will second guess, and not trust my gut.

Or.

Worse.

I will hear that still small voice and ignore it.

There’s a big difference in not trusting your gut versus hearing something, knowing it’s not good for you, or that there’s a lot of information to look at and choosing to ignore it.

Hope for a different outcome.

And even these mistakes.

They are not really mistakes at all.

Just another foot fall on the path to where ever I am going.

To what ever destination God has in mind for me.

This week it happens to be New Orleans.

Who knows where I will go next?

I certainly don’t.

But.

I’m game and excited and over joyed with it.

The ability to do these things that were once such fantasies.

Sitting at the end of the bar at the end of the night rattling off tales of where I was going to go and things I was going to try and places I wanted to see and things I was going to accomplish.

Most of the time it was no further than the floor underneath the stool I toppled from.

Or.

Some strangers bed.

Most often, a miserable repeat of what had happened the night before and the night before that and so on ad nauseam.

There are things that repeat for me today.

Routines, roads I travel, steps I take.

But instead of them being a horrid Ground Hog’s day of terror.

The repetition breeds awareness and it deepens more and more with perspective and experience.

Revealing a steadfast love that takes care of me no matter what.

Always.

Always here.

Always there.

Everywhere I go.

This extraordinary gift.

This.

Overwhelming.

Overarching.

Expansive.

And.

Genuine.

Love.