Which I'll certainly need, because I won't be eating anything on the plane. I simply can't use plane bathrooms. I'm too fat. Heck, I could probably lose a hundred pounds and still be too fat for airplane bathrooms. It's one of the things I dread about airplane travel. I wind up scheduling an entire day around when I can and can't expect to be able to use the toilet. And this one's a doozy - six hours straight on the plane. I need to remember to eat a big dinner tonight.
To be honest, plane travel always makes me a little nervous anyway. It's not a full-blown fear; I've never hesitated to get on a plane or schedule a plane trip. But always, about a day before the flight, I start getting a little queasy (aside: remember to pick up some Dramamine before you leave town) and about the time we're actually boarding the plane, my palms start to sweat. How long it lasts depends on the length of the flight and how smooth it is. I can only really sustain my nervousness for about half an hour after we're off the ground. Though the first time Matt and I flew back from Chicago, we came home through mild but unending turbulence, and my hands shook until after we'd collected our baggage.
Six hours. I'm glad we're going to Chicago and not straight back home after my brother's wedding. The trips from Great Falls to Chicago and from Chicago back to D.C. are both in two stages, and shorter even including the layovers.
I can't believe my little brother's getting married.
Well, okay, the young man I made friends with while I was a graduate student who still doesn't write me except to forward e-mail anecdotes... Yeah, I can believe he's getting married. He's attractive and intelligent and romantic and fun to be with. He's got some weird hangups, but don't we all? I wouldn't want to marry him, because if we're together for more than a few days or one of us is particularly tired, we start fighting. But yeah, I can see any number of women falling for that guy.
But my little brother... The one who used to sit at the top of the playground slide because he was afraid to slide down. The one who kicked over my sandbox castles just as I was finishing them. The one who threw bugs on me when I was in the pool. The one who always got the cool toys when my grandparents went on a trip, while I just got an addition to my de facto doll collection. The one who let his friends sneak into my bedroom when I wasn't home to look at my bras and underwear. To me, he was a fat slobby crybaby, and I'm sure to him, I was a prissy snobbish know-it-all tattletale.
He was Han Solo when the neighborhood kids converged on my dad's pickup truck as the Death Star. He faired poorly in school, being a kid who hated reading, coming only a few years behind a sister who would rather cut off her legs than be separated from books. Teachers always tried to judge him by my standard. Even when I hated him, I could see that wasn't fair. Why couldn't they? He turned to art when I'd become interested in music and theater, I think just so he'd be able to do something I couldn't.
We sat together through dozens of family functions at which we were endlessly greeted by older relatives we were certain we'd never met before. We had picnics in the front yard when we were small. When we were older, we found the shortcut through the woods to the candy store together. He was always in trouble, but never ratted when he wound up taking the rap for my mischief. (Don't look at me like that. It didn't happen that often.)
And now he's in Montana, which is a hell of a long way away. (Six hours on a one-stop flight from Washington, D.C.) And he's getting married in three days. My husband and I will be standing attendant to him and his bride, and I don't think I'll believe it until I actually see it. (Note to self: Remember to pack a handkerchief and to make sure I'm wearing waterproof mascara.)
Word of the Day: persiflage - frivolous bantering talk
Hey, considering the amount of it we do, how come my friends and I have never come up with this word before? Of course, we don't usually talk about our banter. We just do it. It's sortof strange, actually - if I step back from it and pretend I'm a stranger, it's like listening to another language altogether. The shortcuts, the punchlines unattached from their jokes, the silly quotes and slang... Our persiflage is finely crafted for our group.
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