Day One -- LA to Boston

I am reminded of the time one or two of you kind folks nominated me for an AOL Journal award for "Travel Journal."  Hadn't really thought of this as a travel journal, but since, for various reasons (mostly dealing with the fact that the things that have been occupying my thoughts since, say, January, have been the sort of thing that I wouldn't want to journal publicly about) ... ANYWAY, since it seems that I tend to bring out the computer whenever I hit the road, maybe you folks know a bit more about my journal than I do.

This morning started at 4:00 a.m.  This means I was taking a plane this morning, as I don't get up before the sun in the absence of a plane ticket or a court order.

I had gone to sleep around 11:30 the night before.  (See, I'd finished packing early, so I thought I'd go get my nails done.  And then, while my nails were drying, I thought maybe I'd catch a movie, and "X-Men" was sold out but if I waited another half hour I could catch "Over the Hedge," and next thing you know it's 10:30 and I haven't fed the cat yet, and ...)  So.  Alarm goes off after four and a half hours of interrupted sleep (cat) and I'm supposed to function well enough to get to the airport.

I have a vague recollection that the last time I did this, I locked my keys in my house.

I leave around 5:00 (very carefully checking my keys before closing the door).  And book on down to LAX.  Holiday Schmoliday -- Nobody is on the roads at five in the morning on a Saturday.  I drop off my car, head to the airport, check my bags, wait in the security line, get to the gate, stand there for a half hour--

-- yes, I stood there for a half hour.  I don't know what's up with the airlines these days, but there were WAY not sufficient chairs in the waiting area.  You'd think maybe they'd stagger flights at the nearby gates so that everyone could sit down, but noooo.  I only got a seat when the flight at the gate next to ours started boarding -- a whole ten minutes before my flight started boarding.

Got on plane, etc.  None of this was particularly remarkable except for how astonishingly tired I was.  I've done the four hours of sleep thing before, and it hasn't been a problem.  Here, it was insanely bad.  Only got through about 4 chapters of The Well of Lost Plots because my mind kept wandering.  I'd had the good sense to bring a couple DVDs, so I watched a movie on the computer, and I had to rewind it every once in awhile, because my mind had started wandering and I'd lost track of the plot.  And this was Jurassic Park, for cryin' out loud, so it isn't like I was trying to make sense of Mulholland Drive or something.

I have a theory for why this was.  Because airlines are, y'know, cheap, they didn't give us breakfast or lunch and instead sold me a food box.  The contents of my food box:  a small breakfast bar, some cheese spread and two crackers, a box of dried fruit (raisins, cherries and apples), and a piece of biscotti.  What's missing from this picture?  PROTEIN.  Breakfast bar had two grams.  That was IT.  So, by the time we land at Logan, I've been awake for 9 hours, after 4 hours of sleep, and I'm operating on 2 freakin' grams of protein.  It's a wonder I was still standing.  (Which I had to do for 40 minutes before they unloaded the bags from the plane.)

I am in the Boston area because a cousin of mine is getting married here tomorrow.  So tonight was the "out of towners" dinner with a whole bunch of relatives.  My cousins and I see each other once a year or so (at big family gatherings) and, whenever we do, we just take over a table and hang out.  I think the very first Cousins' Table was back in 1977, when we were all little.  Gosh -- we're pushing 30 years on the Cousins Table -- and, by now, it's just a given.  I'm sure there was some time when we all wanted to "graduate" to a grown-up table.  But, you wait long enough, and we're all grown-ups.  Hell, the cousin who is getting married tomorrow is my youngest cousin.  She wasn't even born when the Cousins Table started.  I guess I could wax all philosophical about how I've literally seen all these people grow up pretty much one year at a time -- and how the Cousins Table now is often more about reminiscing about prior times together than anything else -- but now I've been up over 18 hours and, hell, even a bra can't hold up that long.