Thursday, October 23, 2014

Not feeling the love . . .

The night before last, my poor little five year old son was sick as a dog. He spent his whole day coughing up a storm and so we put him in our bed with us that night. Well, we sat there and watched him clearly struggling to breathe until we just couldn’t stand it anymore. We debated going to the emergency room for several minutes, and were firmly on the fence about it; unable to decide if it was called for and if it was in his best interests or not. After all, sometimes a night’s sleep is the very best medicine you can get when you are sick and so we were reluctant to wake him up and drag him out to the car.  Eventually we decided that he was having so much trouble breathing that we were both too scared to go to sleep ourselves, and so we got the critter ready to go to the ER. Of course as soon as he was up and about, he seemed to be breathing just fine, and so we sat in the dining room for about five minutes observing him  and then decided not to go after all.  When we got him all settled back into bed, he once again seemed to be laboring pretty hard to breath, and so we pretty much took turns staying up with him. I finally fell asleep at about 4AM, and she was up with him at about 430AM. Not much sleep for either of us, but that is part of the parent package deal. The morning after that, I had to be up at 230AM to make an early morning flight, and so I slept on the couch so that I might actually get some sleep, and so that I wouldn’t wake them up when my alarm went off. As you can probably imagine, I wasn’t exactly bright eyed and bushy tailed when my alarm told me to get the hell outta bed.

The same young lady is usually at the US Airways First Class / Premium passenger counter and so she has come to know me in both male and female modes, and has even begun to loosen up a little bit these days as I am checking in with her. I like this, because I am much more comfortable myself when others are clearly comfortable with me.
“Good morning! Where are you off to today?!” She greeted me brightly.
“Good morning,” I replied. “I’m going to Knoxville TN through Charlotte.”
“And how many bags are you checking?”
“Two big and heavy ones for you. I’m sure y’all just love that sort of thing huh?” I joked with her.
“Oh yeah! I just live for heavy bags – thank you so much!” she said with a laugh.
“Well look at the bright side; now you don’t have to worry about going to the gym because you’ve already had a workout!”
“Oh honey, this isn’t a gym body,” she told me with a laugh while pointing at herself, “This is a restaurant body.”
I thought this was an awesome joke and couldn’t help laughing, which isn’t a real good thing for me as I don’t have much of a feminine laugh.
“I feel your pain!” I finally replied, once I’d stopped laughing. My weight has been climbing steadily over the last year, and I haven’t really made the effort that it takes to get it back under control, so her joke really was close to home for me.
“Oh please; you have a great figure.” She told me, and then she leaned in a little closer before going on in a confidential tone. “I have to tell you a little story. A few weeks ago I was riding the escalator up and was behind you, but I didn’t know it was you. All I could I think of was ‘Wow, she has great legs!’; you know, because you have great calves!”
“Well thanks! I’ll take all of the compliments that I can get!” I told her with a wink.
“OK!” she said in an official tone of voice, thus making it clear that she was getting back to her job. “I see that you are in first class from Charlotte to Knoxville, but not from Austin to Charlotte – I wonder why?”
“I think it’s because y’all don’t love me.” I told her with a smile to make it clear that I was just kidding.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not it.”
“I dunno, I’m telling ya’, I’m just not feeling the love around here lately. Y’all always used to upgrade me!” I told her with an exaggerated pout.
“No no, that’s not true - I like you! Honest!” she told me with a laugh. She played around with her computer for a bit, but I still didn’t get an upgrade. Oh well . . .

Well, I did my job, and there is absolutely nothing interesting or worth sharing about that on this trip, but when it came time to prepare for my flight home I was torn, as I so often am these days. It is such a nerve wracking hassle to clean up and change in the Austin airport of I “fly pretty” on the way home, and it seems that these days I rarely feel that the hassle is worth it to me. In this case I once again decided that it wasn’t, and so I packed all of my makeup and outfits away, and put out a set of boring old dude clothes for the morning. I spent the next morning tossing and turning, and just couldn’t sleep, and so I finally gave up in disgust, and pulled myself outta bed. The thing is, my flight didn’t leave until almost 1PM, and it was only 7AM, so I had a lot of free time on my hands and found myself again reconsidering my outfit for the flight home. I pulled a skirt and top back out of my luggage, got out my makeup, moved my things to my purse, and then took care of the delightful task of shaving close enough to try and fool people into thinking that there wasn’t really a hairy ape under the makeup. Then I stood there looking in the mirror at the wrinkled-up and old bald guy looking back at me with dark bags under his eyes and I just couldn’t go through with it. I threw all of my stuff right back into the suitcase and dragged all of my shit out to the rental car. Sigh . . .

6 comments:

  1. Kimberly, gotcha there, girl! Sometimes the magic just ain't there. .. and if being pretty isn't gonna feed my soul, then it's just clothes. And a lot of work on both ends. So I hear ya... even though you are never an old bald guy to us!

    KC

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  2. Kim -

    I'd have flown pretty anyway. Who knows when the warm feeling would kick in?

    Hope you get to the NYC area again - soon.

    Good luck on your travels.

    M

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  3. Sorry Kim,

    But you're being way too hard on how you look. With my pixi cut, I'm channeling Judy Dench which puts 30 years on me. Sometimes, I think we're the hardest on ourselves. The check-in lady is right, you do have amazing legs. As for the under eye bags, that's what concealer is for.

    Alana

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  4. I drive a long haul truck in pretty mosy of the time but it does get hard at times

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  5. you know you are limited to the number of dark heavy bags in the aircraft cabin.
    love the shoes near matching the dress

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  6. Coooool day! Love your dress and shoes and hair , and and and ;)

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