I believe Christine Blasey Ford

I think the place I wondered into for dinner was called the Mad Rose. A good place to go on the night when you are mad and going to see a movie about a mad king.

I watched her testimony. I watched Kavanaugh's. That night when I'd had enough, I took myself out to dinner and to the Fathom Events' "King Lear" with Ian McKellan--a film of the play from London, captured live. "Lear" is a typical Shakespeare tragedy, by which I mean almost everyone dies. It felt like a party. Popcorn and my silent cheers every time another manipulative character met his/her bloody end. Though I flinched and squirmed when Cornwall gouged out the good Gloucester's eyes. Earlier in front of the TV, I'd felt like gouging out my own.

Christine Blasey Ford walked into an environment where she knew no one except the small coterie of lawyers, husband, and maybe another few persons that she'd brought with her. She was in a room mostly populated by men to talk about being sexually assaulted. In a strange city. In a different time zone. Participating in a process she knew so little about that she was surprised to learn just a few weeks earlier, that she'd need a lawyer. She was there to tell what had happened to her 36 years  earlier. A story of assault and how she'd feared for her life. A hazy story with many of its details lost to memory's inherent failings while other details had drilled themselves into her being.

Dr. Ford suffers from anxiety. Check. She suffers from claustrophobia. Check. She's afraid to fly. Check. Yet she flew to D.C. to appear at the hearing. Check. While the fear of flying yet flying conundrum seemed to puzzle a few people, I wasn't one of them. I am afraid to fly. Flying is anxiety and claustrophobia combined. But I have to fly if I want to get to the places I need to go. I need an aisle seat. Near the front or the rear of the cabin. I need booze. I need the strange man sitting next to me not to touch me. Not his leg against my leg. Not his arm against mine. I need more booze. I need something completely engaging to read. Preferably something somewhat terrifying. Though not something terrifying about flying. Terror to cure terror. A weird homeopathy.  I might watch a movie if there's an appealing one offered, but if there's genuine emotional content, often I will sob uncontrollably--like I did recently when I watched the the Mr. Rogers movie on the way back from Minnesota. Love and its companion emotions  move us in the face of terror. Those are the moments during the hearing that Christine Blasey Ford cried.

Bret Kavanaugh was in his element. D.C. Familiar faces. Scores of men ready to believe him, rooting for him, the esteemed federal judge. Yet he came in full of bluster and protest. He would not or could not answer many questions directly. I might believe that he believes that he did not attack Dr. Ford. But that doesn't mean that he didn't attack her. In the best case scenario that I can imagine the Bret Kavanaugh of then and the Bret Kavanaugh of now might not know one another, but there was a struggle going on inside the weeping man blustering and bullying in order to protect his honor. A knock-down, belligerent, eye-gouging battle wherein the now Bret would pluck out the "vile jelly" in order to not see the past Bret.

I was such a stupid 15-year-old. I would not have survived the wild 80s in a big anonymous suburb brimming with affluence and influence. But I know how boys can be boys. In 1970 I went to a party in the woods after prom with my date. A bonfire, the night night sky through the treetops. Stars in my eyes. Romance. A perfecting ending to big event of senior year. But the only other girl was leaving just as I arrived. "Hey, why don't you pull a train for us?" one of the football players asked minutes later. I didn't know what that phrase meant. I'd never heard it. The look in that boy's eyes told me. The laughter of the other boys told me. I remember all their faces in the firelight. And their names. I remember how my date escorted me back to the car and we left.

I want to hear the testimony from the other women who've accused Kavanaugh and those who have told about his drinking. There are so many survivors of sexual assault. I want those stories. Terror to cure terror. Voices to give voice. Every time a woman speaks, another woman will speak. I have to believe that story by story, vote by vote, jail sentence by jail sentence, impeachment by impeachment, change will push its way forward. And I believe that the good men, even those who have suffered from the madness of not understanding, of not believing will, like Lear, come around to see the truth of their own tragedy.

Get thee glass eyes, 

And like a scurvy politician seem 

To see the things thou dost not. 

---(Lear to the blinded Gloucester)

Here I Go!

I'm actually going to D.C. by plane, but this is more what it feels like. I hate to fly.

I'm terrified, but...

My dentist knitted a pussyhat and gave it to me!

What to Pack for the Women's March on Washington

Part I: The Plane Ride

Books and more books. Inspiration is good.

Vitamins. Because being healthy is good.

Drink coupons. Because.

My mom's wristwatch. Because she would be over the moon in favor of this March.

Here's a poem from "When She Named Fire." This is a volume of poems subtitled "Contemporary Poetry by American Women," edited by Andrea Hollander Budy whom I had the pleasure of meeting in residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts a few years ago.

What We Need 
by Pamela Alexander

A roof over
three squares.
Warmth to wear, 
something to burn

in winter. Water
music: sheets
of rain hung out
to dry. Time, or

the habits of light,
A road that thins
in hills. Hills.
Once an image

sufficed; now I see
we must speak.

Derailed.Figuratively speaking, thank god.

Yesterday the train I was on hit a car.

Or the car t-boned the train. This was how the incident was described by Amtrak.

I am a fearful flyer. I'm often anxious while riding in/driving a car. I like trains. They don't worry me. Even so, I always choose the middle car. Yesterday I was riding in the snack bar car in the dead middle of the train. The car struck just a few feet from where I was sitting. The train lurched and wobbled, the sound of something not meant to be there grinding beneath its wheels. I yelled. The guy standing near the door, waiting to get off yelled even louder. "I think we just hit a car," he said. The snack bar attendant opined that it was something smaller. He was wrong.

The sirens were screaming when we stopped. Just outside the door to the train car a piece of smashed metal sprouted from the train like a deformed wing.

No one on the train was hurt. No one informed us about the person or persons in the car. The sheriff came to investigate. Amtrak employees in the blue trousers and white shirts sledgehammered and crowbarred, trying to remove the piece of car that had welded itself to the train. As time passed it became obvious that I'd miss the event at the bookstore where I was supposed to read my piece recently published in a special post-election anthology put out by the Rattling Wall and Pen Center USA. I considered showing up an hour late and maybe catching a few of the fabulous readers, but the whacking of the undercarriage of the train by the determined man with the sledgehammer was not exactly a confidence builder, so I caught the train back home.

I searched the news all day, wondering about the car. There was nothing but this tweet from Amtrak:

Pacific Surfliner ‏16 hours ago

ALERT: Train 784 now released by police following investigation of vehicle incident. Now 1hr 43 mins late.

That seems like good news. No one died.

Here's the link if you'd like buy the anthology. It looks pretty fabulous.

Only Light Can Do That

Crying on Planes

Alaska. I can't quite remember if I cried on this flight. Maybe not. I was with a good friend.

The first time I cried on a plane was also my very first flight. My grandmother had  a heart attack and lay dying in a hospital in Dubuque, Iowa. I had been on a road trip with an aunt and uncle and when we got the news, the aunt I was traveling with, the aunt we were visiting in Baltimore, and I flew back to Iowa while my two uncles drove the camper through the night and met us there. I was 14 and saved, for maybe a a decade, the individual salt and pepper shakers and the stir stick I'd gotten with the Shirley Temple I'd gulped while swallowing my grief. Whenever I ran across these things in a drawer full of keepsakes they made me sad all over again.

The next time I flew was when my grandfather died. He had a heart attack--and died according to my mother's account--before he hit the floor. By this time I was a freshman in college and hurriedly made the 350-mile trip home, not sure how to negotiate the travel arrangements, thereby arriving at the airport completely rattled.  I remember crying openly on this flight, any effort to swallow the tears impossible.

My father died the next year, and I flew home suddenly once again. There had been a few flights to visit a boyfriend in between, but those trips were emotional minefields too since we'd given up our son for adoption just weeks before we started college. Airplane trips and crying were one and the same to me back then.

Things changed when I flew to France my junior year of college for a semester abroad. Flying was for fun and adventure, but I think I remember laughing so hard that I cried. In the ensuing years of marriage and children, there were more flights that fell into the category of mostly fun, but the motherhood years were when the flying anxiety began in ernest. More crying on airplanes.

With my aunt and my mom aging on the east coast, there were even more reasons to cry on planes. The break-up of my marriage was the watershed (pun intended.) I not only cried copiously on every flight I took anywhere--but I cried while telling my seat mate why I was crying. I have cried--or felt like crying-- for one reason or another on almost every flight I've ever taken.

My flying anxiety is somewhat less these days--but today I found myself crying on a plane once again. Traveling to the Twin Cities to meet my friend Carol who has been on a road trip since May 1 in her 45 ft. RV, I wanted to bring her a gift and found the perfect book: My Life On the Road by Gloria Steinem. I thought I might page through it a bit on the flight. The dedication and the epigraph brought tears to my eyes, and I settled in to read the book, crying over something in nearly every chapter. A history of feminism, told through the lens of Steinem's travels, reading it now when we are on the cusp of electing our first woman president during this era of burgeoning hate and prejudice, is an emotional experience. I'm half-way through the book and wonder what it will be like finishing it on the ground.

Crying on planes, it turns out, is a thing.

You can read about it:  ATLANTIC  BUSTLE
And you can listen to THIS AMERICAN LIFE episode.

People cry on planes.

People in Airport Bars and the Chaos of Everything (A note from 30,000 feet)

It might be that there are 2 kinds of people in airport bars.

The bartenders at LAX never take your order without asking if you'd like a double instead of a single  for x dollars more. Everyone answers the question without hesitation. Sure. Or no thanks.

I had a gin and tonic before I boarded the plane. I still worry a bit about a full blown anxiety attack although I haven't had one in a couple of years. I also had a turkey sandwich. I don't eat turkey sandwiches. I planned to save half for my in-flight meal for the more than 5 hour flight to Baltimore. That resolution lasted until I finished the first half. Like I said, there are 2 kinds of people.

The bartender refilled the diet coke for the young woman on the barstool next to me. He mistakenly set it in front of the guy next to her and then caught himself. We all laughed. I don't think he wants to drink out of my glass, the woman said. The guy looked at her. She looked at him. I think he would have loved to drink out of her glass. Getting to know you, airport bar style, I said. We all laughed again and talked about Baltimore. When I got up, they were still talking.

At the gate I bumped my roller bag into the work-booted foot of a guy standing in the middle of things. I apologized. You didn't hurt me...yet, he said. Kinda creepy. A minute later he was chatting up a young woman who mentioned to him that she was on stand-by waiting for a seat. You can sit on my lap, he said. Definitely creepy. I circled around to get a better look at her, wondering if she was an adult or a teenager. They kept talking. She seemed okay with it. I kept out of it, but kept an ear open, listening. There were no stand-bys called to board the plane.

I created a certain amount of chaos for myself in the time between Alaska and getting on the plane to pick up my mom. I started projects that were too big to finish. Left a stack of mail unopened mail on my desk for both me and my mom. I wonder if I'm losing my organizational edge. If I just don't care anymore. Or if the cumulative strain of being the CEO of Pillville is wearing on me. (Of course it is.) Nowadays it always feels like I will let something slide off the edge. Somehow though I got my mom back onto hospice with a simple phone call. The hospital bed and the oxygen were delivered promptly within the one-hour window I requested. Maybe things are going to get easier, I tell myself. Sure. Maybe next time I'll save the other half of the sandwich, and just tell the bartender no thanks.

Booooo. Boooooo.

Essential zip-lock of toiletries

I hate Hallowe'en.
I hate to fly.
So here I am, combining both my phobias in some weird through-the-looking-glass like-cures-like move. Waiting to board a spooktacular (Ugh) flight to the east coast, it  turns out that LAX is pretty much Hallowe'en neutral. Unlike, say, Hollywood Boulevard (my most terrifying Hallowe'en night ever) or any shopping mall or pretty much anywhere. There's one friendly ghost half-inflated inflatable at one of the Southwest gates, and one gate attendant sporting an indeterminate set of animal ears. (Bear? Mouse? Anybody's guess.) There's no one here dressed like death, no one streaming fake blood, no fake weapons. Hurray. Now pass the spiked apple cider and the day will be pretty much perfect. There is a guy next to me in corduroy trousers with mallards embroidered on them, but I just heard him say it's his weekend casual outfit. I'll take that over a zombie covered in goo any day.

I did spend one fairly decent Hallowe'en on my front porch. C and I dressed in basic black and witches hats with a great playlist on the laptop. Neighborhood children approached but were not terrified. We gave out good candy. (One year when my kids were small I gave out glow-in-the-dark toothbrushes. Sorry.)

Okay. So go dress up. Scare people. I'm already scared, so you can skip me. But maybe read THIS first.

Migraines and Anxiety

I was anxiety's bitch on Thursday. I had a stomach full of bumble bees, a headache, and a flat out inability to draw a deep breath. How would I ever manage my new and larger budget after the purchase of my new house when I'll be the last to know if The Someone ever decides to drag me back to court with some reason to reduce my alimony. How will I be the point person for all of my mom's health issues when I have so much to learn about what she needs. How will I see the man who loves me only once a week. What if the move is a mistake. What if I find the ocean air too cold, too salty....wait....somewhere around here I almost got a grip. I'm moving within a short walk of the ocean!!! But my brain kept circling, moving in for the kill. Should I forget my therapist's advice about being in charge of my cognitive powers while on the plane to visit my mom, or maybe I should cram a half-dozen little bottles of gin into my zip-lock in lieu of toiletries. I thought walking to the train for my regular shift at the DWC would set me right, but cars were trying to run me down, and I would surely die before the move, before getting to visit my mom, before dinner probably. Holy crap, right? Tutoring my first literacy student at the DWC finally brought the craziness to a halt. But by dinnertime I had a migraine that I packed up and brought to Baltimore the next day. Now I'm a lazy houseguest lying on the couch with a bottle of gatorade while my 87-yr-old mother keeps offering me a cool cloth for my forehead.
But hey, guess what, I really wasn't anxious on the plane at all. I was just focusing on surviving the migraine.

At My Window With a Broken Wing

There's a Canada goose with a broken wing at the pond in the mobile home park where my brother lives. Some asshole came through in a pick-up truck and tried to hit a flock of them that were blocking the road. They do that, the geese, just take their good ol'time slap-slapping their flat goose feet in the middle of the street. So this guy, Mr. Asshole, missed on his first try, so the story goes as told by the person who saw it happen, and he backed up and made a second run at them and got one. Now there is a goose with a wing that drags on the ground. I saw him when I went out for my walk the other day. He looked happy enough, hanging with the other geese on the side of the pond. There is some discussion as to whether the wounded goose should be sent to a rescue place or just hang out in his usual spot. This flock does not migrate anyway. They have a good thing going at the pond where some domesticated Embden geese live for the enjoyment of the park residents. A couple of Mallards joined the flock some years ago, and last year or the year before, two Chinese geese showed up--perhaps dumped by someone. This morning there was a blue heron literally sticking out of the crowd with its long legs and long neck. Kind of a waterfowl convention.

It must be weird not to be able to fly if you're a goose. Maybe that goose is uncomfortable with the prospect of that, just like I'm uncomfortable right now bouncing through turbulence in a Southwest Airlines jet telling myself that the rough air is bound to smooth out soon. I cope much better when there's wi-fi on the plane. I feel connected to people I know and love when I can read blogs and post to my own blog, and email. Facebook helps too. There they are the faces of my family and friends. I can get pretty tense without that little link to my fellow humans.

There was the gin time not so long ago when I just drank myself unconscious. But the anxiety just rose up to meet the gin, so now I don't drink at all or have just one half-way through. Wi-fi is the best solution I've found so far. If I were that goose with the broken wing, I would want to stay with the geese I know in the pond where I've been.

Title of this post is from a Bob Dylan song. Thanks, Elizabeth, for making the connection.

Fear of Flying: the update

Home again.
And thrilled with the seeming miracle of almost fearless flying.
I find that, these days, what I fear most is that my fear of flying will return. But I have been following the advice from a most wonderful therapist who convinced me not to drink on airplanes (Dear Delta and Southwest, so sorry about that massive loss of revenue) because, she said, what drinking does is disable my cognitive abilities for disarming my fears. And sure enough, what I thought about this time when I felt those nasty birds of prey fluttering in my stomach was THIS. Thinking is good. Being able to remain conscious and remember things is good.

The world is full of fearful fliers. I know at least two other people. One refuses to fly at all. On an airplane, I can easily spot my kinfolk. The ones who pop pills to put themselves out. The drinkers. The armrest-gripping pale faced pray-ers. So here, dear airlines, is an idea. You could sell this along with pillows and blankets and snacks and gin 'n tonics: The virtual walk. Now, I'm assuming that if there are amusement park rides that can convince me I am bouncing through a jungle in a jeep or rocketing off into a distant galaxy, that I can also be coaxed to feel like my feet are on the ground when I am really at 34,000 feet and at risk of plummeting to earth like a meteor.

Put a walkers' "menu" in the inflight magazine. Today's Walks: Eastbound flights--Central Park (includes zoo and feeding times for the sea lions.) Westbound flights--The Grand Canyon (choose either the Bright Angel trail or the South Kaibab trail.) This is what I want when I'm flying. Feet on the ground. Feet touching earth or pavement, or at least tile or wood or carpet.

Or maybe a game to take my mind off my petty fears. The Carbon Footprint Game. My inspiration came from this EXCELLENT POST from a blog I like to read. Now that you've bought a ticket on a voracious flying vehicle, you have to figure out ways to offset your sasquatch-sized carbon footprint once you reach your destination--or for the rest of the month or the year or whatever. If you submit proof to the airline of substantially shrinking your print, you get a free flight. I love free things. Getting a free flight would take my mind off flying.

Or at the very least, a scratch and sniff card in the inflight magazine. I drink tonic water without gin when I fly now for the placebo effect. It's pretty fabulous. Read about placebos HERE on another swell blog. Click on the New York Review of Books link after the post. But, seriously, a scratch n' sniff Beefeaters bottle might be just the trick.

I always fly alone. That's part of the problem. I want my people who are down on earth with me. "Have someone fly with you," the fabulous therapist said. "You could afford it, right?" I couldn't actually, with the sky's-the-limit attorney bills. But maybe soon I can after that last bill comes and does its predictable job of canceling out what I've gotten in the division of joint assets. Then maybe. Or maybe I'll start an air anxiety escort business. "Confident congenial traveler with fully loaded iPad ready to escort anxious flyers for the price of a roundtrip ticket. Preferred destinations: Southwest France, Greece, Italy, Hawaii, New York, Nebraska, Baltimore, Twin Cities."

Don't be afraid. Call me.

If This Were an Anti-Anxiety Potion, I'd Be Fine

I'm a better flyer these days. It helped immensely to have my therapist point out to me that it didn't seem that I suffered from a true phobia of flying. Repressed anger and grief,she told me, and I saw how much better I felt after I screamed and cried and told Mr.Ex everything I had to tell him in her company. I killed him a couple of times, too. "It doesn't mean you are actually going to do it for real, but do it here," she'd say, "or all of those bottled up emotions will hurt you."

So I try now to think of healthy things I can do for myself while I fly. Communicating is the best thing. When there's Internet, I don't feel alone. I can email and blog and hang out on Facebook. Without the Internet, it's harder. I try to concentrate on a book or a podcast,but if I'm a little nervous, it's hard to focus.

I'm in the air right now and I'm doing well despite the choppy air, because I feel connected to those of you who read this blog. So, thanks for being there.

The man who loves me always asks how it went for me up in the air. When I told him about the first flight I took without a sip of gin, and that it felt okay, that I was able to use my cognitive powers to soothe myself like my therapist said I would, he told me he liked knowing that there was this new version of me that Mr. Ex would never know.
I like that too.

It wasn't a phobia of flying at all

After my November debacle when 7 or 8 (or was it 9?) gin and tonics could not quell my terror on a flight back from the east coast, I went to see a therapist. I wouldn't be able to fly anymore, I feared, if I did not get help. I would never again see my mother, be forced to drive thousands of miles to M.'s graduation, to C.'s wedding, never visit Greece or France or anywhere across an ocean ever again. The anxiety was spilling over into driving. Freeway overpasses were difficult. Going anywhere after dark troubled me. A fellow writer and friend recommended someone.

Seven (or was it eight?) sessions later Terror stands in a corner empty handed, shrugging.

It didn't seem like a true phobia, the therapist said. General Anxiety Disorder, she said. Unresolved grief and anger, she said. Mr. Ex sounded like a classic Narcissist, she said.

So I flew to see my mother last week and went on to the AWP Conference in Washington D.C. Without the gin bath. Without a cranky silent husband next to me drugged to sleep before take-off. But I thought of The Narcissist and the trips we took, how he threw his things in the suitcase an hour before we left the house because he was never sure he could get away from the office. Oh the suspense...would he make it?
But I was always ready. I had the breasts full of milk to feed the baby. I had the diapers, the wet wipes, the juice and the snacks and the toys. I had the baby sling and the umbrella stroller. I had the dolls and the sketchbooks, the homework, the sweaters and the rain boots and the rain coats, the hats, mittens, scarves, and Christmas presents. I had the jump ropes and the story books. I had the theatre tickets, the dinner reservations, the excursions planned, the guidebooks and phrase books. I had the horseback riding reservations, float trip reservations, dinner cruise and fish fry reservations. I had the train and ferry schedules, the days which museums were closed and what to see where, and when we were getting together with which relatives or whom we were taking with us on this or that trip to Europe or New York.

I had it all.
Almost.

The Bad, Bad Nanny

I'm obsessed with dreams right now. My dreams to be more specific. Why I'm having them and remembering them when for years I awoke feeling that I had dropped into a cavern in the center of the earth when I slept--or that I hadn't really slept at all--just lain there all night almost asleep, but not quite.

I tried to dream a dream for my friend Elizabeth last night. A dream of something light and healing for her and her daughter Sophie. All I managed was a setting that would be perfect for them--a fabulous beach house on a rocky cliff that dropped to the sea. Elizabeth sometimes says Sophie is like a mermaid or a selkie because she always seems better by the ocean. There were tide pools in my dream. A path. A wooden platform at the bottom for sunbathing and a ladder bolted to the rocks for climbing out.

I was a nanny in this house. One of two nannies because I needed time off to attend something that was very much like the MFA program in creative writing that I graduated from last year. Sometimes though the other nanny and I were both in the house together tending to a little girl and a little boy. And both of us were having  affairs with their father. The physical attraction I felt for this man was intense. We couldn't pass one another in the hallway without groping. If we both ended up at the refrigerator at the same moment, we'd stand there with the door open, the cool air and the light bathing us while we kissed with one hand on the carton of milk. He was tall and trim and movie star handsome. Straight sandy-colored hair with a craggy complexion. Not someone from my real life.

When I went off to write, I spent a lot of time walking around with a friend. A short skinny man with glasses and hair that fell across his eyes. We walked with our arms around one another, talking and  adoring each other platonically, and there was something we were worried about, but I'm not sure what. I have no idea who this man is either.

When I returned to the house, I came back with a poet I know named J. V.  J. V. was wearing a dark business suit and a tie. He went crazy with happiness when he saw the house. We walked along the cliffs, the wind blowing his black hair so it stood straight up from his forehead. He laughed and laughed because the beauty of the place made him happy. So happy he  ran down the steep slope to the water and jumped in business suit and all. I went down to the water by a more gradual route and slipped in too. We paddled around in the waves and climbed back to the house drenched.

One thing I know about J.V. in real life is that he's terrified of flying--like me. Once I gave him my instructions:  Hit the bar as soon as you get to the airport. Also bring your own little bottles of booze--the 3 oz. size that you can fit in your one-quart zip-lock bag. After you go through security, buy your mixer. Then you can fix your drinks on the plane without having to wait for the cart.

Three different men in this dream. An affair. Children. A house by an ocean. A refrigerator. A carton of milk. A ladder. A platform. A job.

I suffer from anxiety.  I like my feet on the ground.  Flying requires gin.
During my trip to Greece riding on mountain roads without guardrails generated one moderate anxiety attack--that thanks to the understanding of friends was averted just minutes after it began. T. taught me how to wrap my thumb and index fingers. Fellow writers put their hands on my shoulders when the road got dicey. T. offered to let me out of the van when turning around on a narrow road was required.
I am terrified of falling. Out of the sky. Off the edge.
When I flew with Mr. Ex, he would take a Tylenol p.m. & and fall asleep before the plane took off. No touching. No talking.
Once I had a bad anxiety attack on a plane with M. She talked me through it. "You can do this," she said. And then she just talked while I cried and sweated. There was no gin because the flight attendants had to be belted in during a storm.
I'm in the air right now. It's kind of turbulent. The pilot told us he's trying to find the "soft spot" through the weather.
That's what I crave. The soft spot. Human hands. Kind words.

Photo content courtesy of L. Y.'s notebook with info provided by T.

Stressing: Here's Why

The joint assets remain undivided.

My mother is in pain and I can actually kind of feel it in my body.

I haven't filed taxes yet for '08 because my accountant wanted to wait until there was a final financial settlement on the divorce. The extension deadline approaches.

My dear Aunt Mille is in pain and I might be feeling that, too.

My health insurance application is in some bureaucratic limbo and my coverage through Mr. Ex's law firm runs out Sept. 1.

My thesis is due in November.

My flying anxiety came back on my last flight and I have to fly again Sunday.

Mr. Ex has met the magic number we set way back when & now I have to pay my own attorney fees.

I really don't like being in L.A. but the man I love lives here.

I just don't understand why Mr. Ex is seeking all this bitterness.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm Sorry But

due to the turbulence, there won't be any beverage service."  These are words I hate to hear when I fly.  I'm a reformed nervous flier and the thought of not being able to have a drink when I think a drink might be just what I need inches me a tiny bit closer to the old self I'd like to stay rid of.  I found myself on edge today flying back from Portland as soon as I neared the end of the "A" gates. Outside the rain splattered windows were small airplanes with propellers and the sky was as thick and gray as a week's worth of dryer lint.  Noooooooo, the anxious me said to the me who was trying to be calm and I thought about rushing back to ticketing to see if I could get on a different flight which probably would have been a simple matter, but I'd checked my bag.  So instead, I sat and looked at the people around me.  High school athletes with trophies, business people, families with babies. They looked calm and happy so I got on the plane (which didn't have propellers) and felt passable until the announcement about the beverages.  I pulled out a lollipop and started sucking, stuck my ipod in my ears and listened to poetry podcasts, reminded myself to keep my eyes open and look out the window. I did ok. Not stellar, but fine.  

It's odd that I keep traveling. Since the divorce, I've flown more than I ever could have imagined.  Back when I was married, flying terrified me.  Maybe because I was trying so hard to keep that jumbo jet of a marriage up in the air and knew it was going down.