AngloAm’s Weblog

We’re leaving tomorrow morning bright and early, flying from BWI to Atlanta, then Atlanta to San José. There, we’ll rent a car, drive through San Francisco, over the Golden Gate, and to Sacramento (I know, it’s a round about way). We’ll tie our knot in Sacramento and then on to Sonoma County for a few days’ relaxation, wine and olive oil tasting, to dip my feet into the Pacific Ocean, see a Russian colonial fort, possibly a periodic geyser, and generally feel marvellous. (Or crowded, October is high season in the wine country.)

Monday we will “do” San Francisco properly and Tuesday morning we wing and jet our way back the way we came.

I have to admit to being a bit concerned about two things…

AngloAm’s Concerns

Concern 1:  The flight. Intellectually, I know that flying is very very safe indeed. You are sixty-five times more likely to be killed driving on rural Interstate highways (the safest kinds of roads in the country) than flying the same distance. There are so few airplane accidents that the NTSB no longer studies domestic mishaps only, but has to also study successful flights to fine tune them. Pilots have families too and would never do the job if it were really terribly dangerous. Yesterday there were just under 30,000 flights in the US and all landed successfully.

But. I still imagine how it would be to know that you were plummetting to your death. That one, two, four, ten minutes knowing that you and all your flightmates will be crashing, and being utterly unable to do anything about it. What would that be like? I close my eyes and sort of approach imagining it but I can’t – my mind recoils in horror and fear.

That’s the lottery nobody wants to win, and that’s what I’m most terrified as in gut-wrenching, butterflies-in-the-tummy scared. I feel this overwhelming desire to flee. Yet I know I won’t. I can recognize this anticipatory anxiety for what it is, yet I still feel it. And once again, I’m relying on C for strength. Sometimes I feel such a burden.

Concern 2:  Being too fat to get down the aisle boarding. Being too fat to fit in the seat (at least I have that in common with nearly everyone since seat widths haven’t kept pace with people’s posteriors’ widths!). Being too fat to fit in the bathroom (a big concern when we fly to Australia – I can ‘keep it in’ for five hours, but not for fourteen!). The plane tilting to one side because of my weight (stupid; all the passengers, their luggage, and cargo only accounts for 20% of a plane’s weight). We’ve bought three tickets (one for me, one for my fat ass, and one for C) but I don’t know if we can afford that for Aus (or the UK) and I would hate for my blubber to be the reason C can’t go home and see his family. 

Good week? Not so much.

I’ve been pretty bad this past week with exercise and eating. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? Neal the ex-personal trainer man wants me to write him a reference. I will, but I’ve forgotten to/put it off until now. If I have time tonight I will. If not he’ll have to wait until we get back. I’ve just lost my earring with my birth stone on it. And, because of another engagement last night, I never got to watch Chuck. I hope our VCR (yes, so retro!) taped it.

…sorry

I keep being nervous about the flight. Perhaps looking at Adam Baldwin, here in a promo picture and screen cap (thank you, Adam Baldwin Archives) from the next movie with His Adamness I’ll get from Netflix, DC Cab, will calm me down.

(Did it get you calm too?)