4 - thursday

I am finally home at the end of a very, very long day.  my alarm went off just before 6am and I awoke to the sounds of pouring rain on the balcony and the whoosh of the street sweepers down below.  


to get to the airport we lugged and pushed and elbowed our way through rush-hour metro traffic, onto the commuter rail with our enormous suitcases.  after a quick jaunt through the duty-free shops, we boarded our VERY full flight back to new york.  on our way to paris, we rode on a brand new airbus that was so empty we could lie down across rows of seats.  no such luck today.  we were on a (comparatively speaking) tiny boeing with no air vents that was completely full of families and babies and oversized luggage.  it was not pretty.


anyway.  I snagged a window seat and was glad for it, because I couldn't sleep at all and was so hot that the only relief I could find was pressing my palms against the cold glass as I looked down at the icy north atlantic below us. 

which made me think about t, and all the places in the world he's seen through the same rectangular frame. his job with the air force takes him to places all over the country and the world.  although I'm sure there's some novelty lost to the fact that it's work for him, I imagine how amazing it must still be to see it all from above.  I also got to thinking about this trip and how it stacked up against my last trip to paris, which t was with me for.  I hope for us that we can travel together, not alone from airplane windows or separately because one happens to be deployed halfway around the world. travel is something we both love, and something I look forward to us sharing.


.......and then we landed in new york, after the bumpiest, swerve-iest landing (hey captain, you're driving a big old airplane, can you hold 'er straight on the runway? ok thanks).  frustrating hilarity ensued. it took us an hour to clear baggage and customs.  it took us another half hour to get the shuttle to the private lot where we'd left the car.  and when we got there? another 45 minutes spent jury-rigging the rearview mirror because *somehow* it had become detached from the windshield and *somehow* none of the lot attendants had noticed or knew who or how it happened.  we tried superglue, duct tape, and zip ties to get it to hold in place.  I saved the day with the lace of my trusty mizuno:

  
(if there's any place in the world to get a harsh back-to-reality check, it's queens.  not only is your lovely vacation over, not only is it sleeting here and sunny where you came from, not only is everything taking a hundred years today, but oh, ps, your car is mysteriously broken, so use a shoelace to hold it together while you drive for 3 5 hours in the aforementioned nasty weather.  back to reality indeed.)