(Transcribed from my notebook, in which I wrote this while waiting to board a plane.)

I’m sitting here in a busy airport, waiting. Of everything I hate about flying, I hate the waiting the most. Waiting in line, waiting in security, waiting to board. All of which leads to the hardest waiting of all: waiting to land safely. Normally, I take the edge off of the waiting with Xanax or wine or possibly both, a balance of drugs and alcohol to keep the hyperventilation away. But this flight is only two hours long and I have to drive once I get there. Even the most careful mix doesn’t seem prudent.

So, I just wait. P. watched supportively as I shuffled through the security line. Every time I looked, wanting to turn back, he was there. (Probably ready to block me from fleeing.) And even once I got through the metal detectors and wands, and walked around the corner and down the hall, I looked out through the glass and he was still there. He smiled. It would be OK.

I’ve always had this fear of flying. I fly anyway, usually. Sometimes I’m OK; sometimes I cry the entire way, grasping the armrests as though holding on will make a difference, willing the plane to stay in the air with every bump.

My latest goal is to be more courageous. I don’t know how to do that other than by just doing it. Although sometimes I feel more fear than courage. I’m doing what I can about this flying fear.

P. and I went to the Museum of Flight not too long ago. I touched the planes. I sat in a cockpit. I flew a flight simulator. Well, mostly I let P. fly and begged him not to roll it. And I watched the planes take off and land while listening to air traffic control and watching the radar. It was comforting, and yet in some ways… not.

Same with the tour of the Boeing factory. Yes, they are very good as assembling planes, but when finished, the planes weight several thousand tons and are made of millions of parts. We talked to an old man who was signing copies of his book. He worked for Boeing for 45 years. I told him I was afraid to fly. He told me about how years ago, they spent a lot of time looking at parts from crashes, trying to learn from their mistakes. Now, they’ve got it down. Only weather or people can cause problems now. It didn’t really make me feel any better.

(And then I had to board the plane, and all writing ceased, replaced by utter terror for approximately two hours. Now I’m writing in real time.)

I can’t write on a plane. Too much of my brain is busy being terrified and cataloging each bump and imagining the plane falling out of the sky and looking around, wondering why no one else has realized the plane is about to crash in a fiery explosion. There’s no time for writing. The Xanax keeps the utter panic away, and I had no such protection this time.

As soon as the plane landed, the relief overwhelmed me. The night before the flight, I had a dream that I was flying and the plane crashed on landing: it hit the ground and rolled, wing over wing. As this plane was landing, the dream flashed through my head. I held my breath, expecting to feel the roll.

It’s crazy, isn’t it? I walked off the plane to a car and ended up on a California freeway. If you’re not familar with California freeways, you may not know that the only way to navigate them is to drive as fast as you possibly can, and at the same time try to stay out of the way of the other cars that pass you as though you are standing still. And yet, that wasn’t scary at all.

The Boeing engineer signed my book from one aviation enthusiast to another!

I hope one day I can make that be true.

I apparently have costochondritis again, and the other night, P. and I were on the futon watching TV (again) and I was whining about my chest pain (yes, again) and P. wondered if maybe the futon was making it worse.

“Yes, I think it is. When we move, we should get a really big comfortable couch.”

P. didn’t look convinced. He countered, “maybe we should just get a bed for the living room.”

And then we looked at each other, both on the edge of epiphany–

“The bed with the remote!”

“The old people! The adjustable one!”

P. looked a little worried. (You would think from my suggestion that we get adjustable old people, but no.)

“Maybe we shouldn’t live together. We encourage each other’s laziness. We might never leave the house again.”

Which is to say that if you never hear from me again, P. and I were so comfortable in our adjustable bed in front of the wide screen HDTV that we were unable to get up and forage for food and we couldn’t convince anyone to bring us anything and in our folly (er, laziness), we perished.

P. thinks we should get a monkey butler. But I’m not cool with the monkeys. They give me the wig. Ever since I was little. So, we’re waiting for robot technology to advance. We don’t want it to advance quite so much that the robots get smarter than us and take over our spaceships and kill us in the dark void or grow us in pods and trick us into living in a dream world or start violating the three laws of robotics or anything. We just want the robots to bring us beer and snacks.

Maybe we should get a clapper too. I’m not sure if the robots would be tall enough to operate the light switch.

It’s been a hectic and stressful week, but one thing has remained clear: coffee, above all else, is the necessary component of life. I’m addicted and yet I can’t bring myself to be sufficiently alarmed to do anything about it. Sure, I enjoy drinking coffee, love it even when it’s made just right, but that’s not why I seek it out. I drink it because I have to, because I crave it, because I cannot function without it.

Earlier in the week, I found myself in Northern California. It was 9:00am, I had been up since about 4:30 and I not yet had any coffee. I could feel the crankiness edging in. My head started to hurt. I was agitated and antsy. The Starbucks I passed in the airport was still closed for some reason that I’m sure is entirely against nature and all that is good and lovely in the world. I got into my rental car and started scanning the exits. I was looking for Starbucks.

Not that I’m a great lover of Starbucks coffee, you understand. In fact, when rating coffee establishments, Starbucks ranks far lower than many. But while I might not love the coffee, I do love the company. They have made coffee available. I even drink a lot of Starbucks when I’m home in Seattle, even though I could easily rattle off several places I would rather get my coffee. Because sometimes, I just need my fix. And Starbucks is everywhere. There are two Starbucks within walking distance of my office. And one I can walk to from my apartment. Starbucks are like gas stations. They’re on both sides of the street so you don’t have to worry about crossing traffic.

But as I was driving along Hwy 101 that morning, I was not hopeful. If you live in the Bay Area, you might think Starbucks is ubiquitous, but I have been down this path before. Every time I have been in dire need of coffee while in California, Starbucks has forsaken me. I remember one time P. and I were driving from Orange County to San Diego and we were twenty miles down the road before we found a Starbucks. Was he happy to see it. He knew that any minute I would go into withdrawal-induced craziness.

I kept driving, searching, hoping, praying, but coffee was not to be found. I finally got to my destination and asked the parking guard if he could point me to a Starbucks. He looked at me like I was a crazy person, which quite honestly, I probably was by that point. He didn’t know of any nearby Starbucks, but there was a McDonald’s down the road. Not ideal, but they had coffee. Terrible coffee that had been sitting on a burner for three hours, but if a back alley fix was what it took, I was in no condition to be choosy. I drove towards McDonald’s. As I pulled in, I saw a bakery nearby and swerved towards it at the last moment.

They were brewing Seattle’s Best Coffee (drip only), which as been pointed out elsewhere, is not really Seattle’s best. But whatever, it would do fine. It was in a carafe that had undoubtedly been sitting out for quite a while, but still better than a burner, right? I haven’t fallen that far, have I? I felt better just having the cup in my hand.

I cupped it lovingly, inhaled the bitter, wonderful coffee aroma. I took that first hot, intoxicating, life-affirming sip. I would be OK after all.