Second Thoughts

This week marks the one year anniversary of Jason’s acceptance into the Foreign Service; and for the first time in a year, I am having second thoughts on our decision to join this life of travel.  Turns out, I am a terrible traveler.

My husband is a much better traveler than I am.  He gets all giddy over the intricacies of travel.  He loves researching luggage.  He once attended a Tommy Bihn rally in Washington D.C. and one of his most prized possessions is his Red Oxx carry-on. (I’m not sure he’s going to be very pleased with me publishing this fact, since, for an otherwise manly man, it’s kind of a girly hobby.)   He also insists on practice-packing a week before a trip.  Seriously, he practice-packs! And the only thing worse than having a husband that practice-packs is having a husband who expects me to do the same.  Here’s the thing, I don’t want to practice-pack because I don’t want to practice-unpack.  And I especially don’t want to live out of a suitcase, in my own house, for a week.  But, he gets way into it and I guess that everyone needs a hobby, so I live with it.  I’ll take it over hobbies like gambling or snake husbandry.

Here’s the other thing: I hate flying.  I hate it so much that the mere thought of having to endure a long flight makes me want stick needles in my eyes.  One of the worst experiences of my life was a flight I took a couple of years ago from Paris to Houston.  The flight was something like ten hours long.  I sat next to a gigantic, smelly Ukrainian man who had no sense of personal space.  He spent the entire flight digging his elbow into my ribcage.  Longest ten hours of my life!

I actually don’t mind short flights, anything less than four hours.  But I hate long international flights because unless I’m in first class, I can’t sleep on an airplane.  That makes international flights really long.  I’ve had people tell me to try taking sleeping pills.  But when I’m flying with children, especially when I’m flying without my husband, I have a fear of someone kidnapping one of my children while I’m passed out in a Tylenol PM-induced coma.  I’m not sure where a kidnapper would hide my kids on the plane until it landed, but that’s beside the point.

Finally, since I don’t sleep on planes, I end up with terrible jet-lag.  When we flew to Taiwan in December, I had such horrible jet-lag that I was worthless for a week.  And as I type, although it has been over five days since we landed in the U.S., it is 4:07 a.m. and I have been trying to fall asleep since 11:00 p.m.  Yes, I am a wreck.

I thought that getting all this out of my system and onto the computer would make me at least a tiny bit drowsy.  Turns out I was wrong.  Will someone please just shoot me?!  Anyone?  Anyone?