jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

I feel like I’ve got a lot of stories to tell and things to think on from this week, so maybe I’ll be breaking that into seperate entries. Right now I just need to relive my flight out to LA.

Monday afternoon I had a car pick me up at the office and take me and my colleague Mary out to JFK. We grabbed lunch at the airport and boarded. All good so far. I slept, I read, I watched many hours of Animal Planet (Song has digital television). As we get close to LA the flight takes a turn for the bumpy. No big deal. Then the pilot gives the flight attendants the order to strap in. I hate that, that’s when my comfort line is crossed.

The turbulence picks up, but I’ve felt worse. We’re in the clouds now, and I know that’s usually bumpy. The sky is dusky and reddish, and as I look idly out the window I see lightning… hit… the… plane. Now I know that lightning hits planes, and that it’s not terribly dangerous. But I’ve never watched lightning actually zap my flight. It hit the tip of the wing and zipped toward the body of the plane and then dissipated. I caught my breath and looked at the young woman next to me. She had been looking the other way and missed it. She was already scared, so I just went back to looking out the window — a little more intently now.

Next the flight attendant comes onto the intercom and reminds us to stay buckled up. Nothing unusual there. Then she says this:
Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts buckled. Do not unbuckle or stand up for any reason. Please make sure the area around your feet is clear. Passengers in the emergency aisles, please make sure that the exits to the doors and windows are not blocked by anything.

Everyone got busy shoving all their stuff as deep under their seats as they could. My heart was pounding, hands sweating. But I was also a little bit proud of myself because I don’t like to fly and this could be a time and place when I had a hard time thinking straight or even keeping composed. The plane was just silent, everyone was scared. As calmly as I could I fished around under the seat in front of me until I found my shoes. I figured if I was about to running through wreckage I’d better be shod. We all got rid of our blankets and got ready.

And then we landed just fine. The plane did a steep descent, and then as we got good and low the air really smoothed out. The last five minutes were totally uneventful and had a standard landing. There was a lot of nervous laughter and some shiny eyes, and that plane cleared in record time. So we had the record for scariest recent landing at LAX for about a day and a half until Jet Blue made their emergency landing last night. That had to SUCK to be on that plane.

Coming home was much better. Non-eventful, whatever kind of flight.

I’m on day 9 of this weird throat thing/cough. It’s a long time to carry a bug, and I can only assume it’s because I haven’t had any good rest in a while. And tomorrow I’m off to LA for the week. I’ll be in the office until about 1, and then won’t be back until Friday. I’ll be semi-reachable, but since we’ll be shooting I’ll spend a lot of time away from my computer with my cell phone off. I can’t wait. I love hotels, I love room service, I love that someone else makes my bed and that I have a bunch of cable channels to watch while I eat from a little tray that I’ve set up on top of the blankets.

This trip is just me and Mary, who’s on the production team (meaning she’ll go on shoots for lots of different areas, she doesn’t work just for Coaches). I’m happy about that, as I can see us being friends. It’s not that I don’t like my coworkers, but I’m very careful to draw a line between work and personal life. I generally don’t like the two to mix at all. From my six years at CNN I have only one friend who I kept. And even then, I rarely saw her outside the office until after I quit. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about this, but I absolutely do.

I’m continuing to battle a bit of insomnia. Worrying about money seems to have taken the place of worrying about the wedding. I got wiped out by some back taxes a few months ago and this is as close to the bone as I’ve ever lived. Damon and I are looking hard at ways to economize. We just went down to one cell phone account that we’ll now share. It will be a hassle, but not a massive one. Mostly I’m content to let him have the phone. I don’t like to talk on the phone anyway. But I need to take it with me while I’m in California, and he’s going to hate that. But unless we can produce a wand that conjures money, we’re just going to have to deal. The worst part is that it’s looking like being cash poor is going to have a big impact on the holidays. By my estimation, we’re not going to get away with less than $1,000 in travel expenses for Christmas. Plane tickets are a freaking fortune, and we have to stay in a hotel or b&b because everyone is his family smokes, and I spent the last holiday there in an asthmatic haze. But he’s dying to see his family, his sister will have had her baby and I’ve got to figure out a way to make it happen.

For today’s update I will will be passing by the facts: I’m sick, it’s the anniversary of 9/11 and New Orleans is underwater.

Yesterday Damon took a vacation day. His off days are Thursday and Friday, so we don’t ever have a full day together. But we did yesterday. We celebrated by sleeping in and then jumping on a train to Coney Island. It was such a freaking fun day. Here are some vignettes:

Things we ate:
— corn on the cob (me)
— clam strips (Damon)
— fried shrimp (I start, Damon finishes)
— onion rings (Damon)
— french fries (I start, Damon finishes)
— ice cream (Damon)
— Nathan’s hot dog (Damon)
— caramel apple (I start, Damon finishes)
— beer (Damon)

We walked on the beach and waded a bit in the ocean. Or rather I waded a bit. Damon stayed at the edge so that he wouldn’t have soggy, sandy sneakers all day. The people watching is unbeatable. There’s a wonderful combination of hipsters, Russian immigrants (my favorites are the old men in their bikini bottoms), families and a sprinkling of tourists. I think it’s probably pretty thin on tourists since it takes almost an hour to get there on the subway, and there’s so much to do right in Manhattan.

I found what looked like a breast implant on the sand but Damon said “Don’t touch it!” and then told me it was a jellyfish. We saw many more jellyfish implants after that.

After putting in some good coastline time we headed over to the rides. It sounds lame, but I got such a thrill out of watching Damon ride the rides. Because no way was I getting on the things he wanted to ride. There was one called Break Dance where the cars spin you at warp speed in about three different ways at the same time. Oh, and they’re tipped forward. Imagine The Rambler, and then imagine something 10 times wilder. 95% of the people I watched ride that thing looked positively sick and wobbled off like they could really use a stretcher. Damon, on the other hand, rode it with a huge grin, waving at me and making faces. He’s got amazing equilibrium, and no matter how much it tossed him around he was always able to turn in his seat and find me instantly and give a little wave.

So we tested that ability by moving on to a ride where they strap you into a harness on a wheel that goes way up in the air and then spins around, hangs you upside down and backward, dangles you face down 30 feet in the air, all seeminly at random. So I watched my husband spinning upside down over the pavement. Everyone else on the ride was clinging to their harnesses, but Damon stretched his arms and legs out wide. Which was very funny because it made the woman next to him scream, and nearly did me too. Once again his strange ability to maintain was demonstrated when he got off the ride and then told me the things he’d seen me doing on the ground.

After a few rides we decided to head out to the end of the pier, as the sun was going down. But just a few yards down it we were hit by this awful stench. A little investigation showed us that there was a small, dead whale that had washed up on the beach. The smell led me to believe it didn’t beach and die, since it wouldn’t be so ripe so fast. I think it was a baby, it was about the size of a large sea lion. It was terribly sad to see, as there was at least one visible slash wound that I took for a propeller cut. It was drawing quite a crowd and police and parks services showed up in no time. We decided not to dwell and moved off in the other direction to see the sun go down.

All the rides lit up as soon as it got dusky and that meant it was time to hit the Wonder Wheel. It’s an amazing ferris wheel with two rings of cars, one on the very outside of the circumfrence and then a smaller ring within. The inner cars are on a sort of figure eight track. That means that when the wheel passing a certain point, both rising and descending, that your car will go sliding down and backward (or forward) about 10 feet, hit the stop point and then swing back and forth at that point. This can make quite an impression on the descent because it happens quite high in the rotation and it feels like your car is about to fly off the front of the wheel. I was very very brave about the whole thing in that I didn’t cry at all.

After that Damon took one more turn on the Break Dance and then we capped the evening off with a round of mini golf. I lost, but I should have won. I choked on the 7th hole and lost my lead, to be beat by 1 point at the end. I love mini golf.

We came home then and collapsed on the couch to watch Hoosiers. Damon gets all teary every time Gene Hackman says “I love you guys.”

What a perfect day. It was great fun at every turn, but on a deeper level it was one of those days where all the junk gets stripped away and we felt so totally ourselves. And the beautiful thing about that is that it reminded me just how much I love my husband. I mean, I know that. But I felt so lucky to have him, to be me, to be healthy and priveleged. That’s what it means to be happy. At least to me.

One hilarious note about Coney Island: It’s still got that sort of 1950s style in many places – murals, facades of drive ins, etc. But the current style is definitely turning to hip hop. Most of the ride operators were black guys with big gold chains and jerseys. There’s one ride called The Polar Express (I’ve seen it lots of places and it’s always called that). The backdrop is painted with polar bears and glaciers. But where some of it was worn away and needed repair they’ve painted in portraits of Tupac and Biggie. Did I mention that I forgot to put the memory card in my camera? Kicking myself still today.

There’s also an attraction called “Shoot the Freak.” There’s a drop off and empty space between two buildings and you can look down about 15 feet from the boardwalk railing. Down there is a sort of junkyard scene. You pay a guy three bucks and he hands you a paintball gun with 15 shots in it and then he calls out the freak. Some guy comes out from behind a big umbrella and runs around and you get to try to shoot him. The barker pitches the game by shouting things like “Shoot him in the head! Shoot him anywhere you want! He likes it!” I did not try to shoot the freak, but I admit that I watched someone else shoot him.

A lovely three-day weekend is drawing to a close and I’m dreading going back to work. I’m trying not to let work stress multiply in a way that makes everything seem bigger than it is. So my mantra is: Don’t let it matter more than it matters.

But that’s been difficult.

The short story is that I’ve been taken off responsibilities I enjoy and am good at and put on ones that I hate and am bad at, simply because it’s a job that’s a total mess and I have a history of success. I know part of what went into that decision is that about six months ago I took on an assignment that had gotten terribly bungled and I had it fixed up in no time. But that was editorial, this is far more technical. I hate technical work and am not very good at it. But there doesn’t seem to be another good candidate so I’m stuck. Regardless of the fact that the person who had it before me has a much better skill set and he couldn’t get it done.

So, you know, boo hoo for me. I know I’m still getting paid (and I’m 95% sure more layoffs are around the corner) and my boss likes me. But, while I’ll acknowledge that, I’m still pretty unhappy at work.

I’m fantasizing about taking a year off — just moving to our cabin in the woods and taking a whole year to write and think and rest and reject the corporate world. We could totally do it. It costs about $4,000 a year to live there. It belongs to my father, but he says that as far as he’s concerned it’s mine and we can move there tomorrow. I’d love to just sit deep in the woods and write not nearly as well as Thoreau. I don’t think Damon would dig it, and we’d have to sell our apartment, but I keep thinking of how I could make it work.

So maybe the answer is that I just need to start looking for another job for now. But I don’t even know what I want to do. I feel like I’d like to make a big change, not just take another editorial position. But doing something new without taking a major financial hit will prove difficult/impossible. But if we’re going to stay in NY (which we do like a lot) then I’ll need to keep up my salary.

I hate complaining and I feel guilty for doing it. Maybe this will get it out of my system, at least a little bit.

It’s hard to think about posting, and not posting about Katrina. And yet I’m aware of my lack of eloquence, my lack of insight. What on earth could I possibly add that hasn’t been said before and better. Coastal erosion, hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico, various environmental degredations that made Katrina’s impact possible… we know. A slow and sloppy response… we know. I’m sad and frustrated and frightened for the city and for the people who got stuck there. I can’t stop thinking about all the pets. And all the people who are dying because they run out of insulin or oxygen or the other things they rely on in order to live.

I wish I could go there and hand out water or help salvage or drive a bus. Which is the last thing anyone needs, really. I just wish I could.