Safe and Sound

I have made it home, though to do so, I spent sixteen hours at the airport before my flight was due to taxi down the runway. Mom's plane left at 9-ish from Omaha so we had to leave Giltner at 6-ish and then my flight to Minneapolis took off at 2:30. I finally arrived at 9:45 p.m. and was giddy to see the cats. Nothing of note on any of the flights, except that I sat next to a guy on the ride to Philadelphia who didn't bring anything to read or look at or do. He just stared at his hands. He tried to talk to me, but I'm not very friendly. He said, Did you go home for the holidays? I said, Yes, no. I mean, I went to Omaha but now I'm going home to Philadelphia. He said, Huh. I didn't ask him any questions. I pretended to be suddenly interested in my NY Times crossword puzzle. The woman on the other side of me snoozed most of the way, which was fine. Even though I had a long day, the flights seemed to go quickly--must be faster coming back to Philly, plus we had the wind on our side, guiding us home more quickly. The only thing to do on a flight is to close your eyes and to try to fantasize about kissing one of your crushes (I currently have three). But I am not good at this fantasizing thing, because something always gets in the way. For instance, I was trying to imagine kissing this one guy and trying to be very realistic about how that would happen but still trying to make it interesting, so I imagined him cornering me in the coat closet and saying, We could hop up on here (the counter), but then that made me think of the movie Top Gun and how Maverick tried to seduce Kelly McGillis in the bathroom and then I thought of their love scene and how Tom Cruise is so short that KMcG had to slump against the wall and then there's this one part of the scene where they're kissing and you can see their spit which is completely gross and then I thought about how Tom is probably gay and the whole thing is this big PR initiative to make him seem straight and then I wondered if Katie Holmes was really happy or just brain washed by Scientology and next I thought about going to the Chop Shop to have my hair cut like hers as it appears in the latest issue of In Style. Finally, I realized that I had totally lost the thread of my supposed fantasy, but didn't have the energy to start all over again.

Thank you to all my aunties and uncles and cousins who were so nice to me and mom on our visit. And thank you to Carrie (and Padhraig) for watching the kitties and leaving me three presents under the tree to open for Christmas (one from each cat). And now, off to bed to dream of snowbanks, horses, and horses in snowbanks.