Changes

It's been a while since I've posted...partly due to huge life changes including a significant job change. I've had a post composed for quite a while, but I needed a catalyst to push me to post. That catalyst was Miss De's blog (who is currently visiting) and writing about it.

So, here it is from a few weeks ago...

Adventures in America

I’ve found that my life over the past few years has been a story about moving. Moving myself from place to place and moving my Stuff from place to place, although often not the same place that I move myself. The most recent moving episode is transporting my Stuff from Lexington to Memphis while I remain living in Haiti. The funny part is that eventually my Stuff (taking on it’s own life) will end up in Washington State while I still live in Haiti. So, while I have never lived in Tennessee or Washington, my Stuff will have resided both places. (This is because my Stuff now lives with my brother who moves around with the Navy.)

This week I found myself driving a U-Haul truck for seven hours across Kentucky and Tennessee. The U-Haul people first made me pay nearly an arm and a leg for ME (and a few very faithful friends!) to load, drive and unload my own belongings and then the U-Haul people tried to scare me from inside the cab of the truck with warning signs posted everywhere. “SPEED KILLS!” “Watch out for low overhangs!” “Wear your seatbelt—SPEED KILLS!” I didn’t hit any overhangs and I went slow enough to be passed by just about every vehicle on the road. So, congratulations to me for driving an overpriced U-Haul truck for seven hours to Tennessee, a place I’ll probably never live in, but my stuff will.

This newest adventure was part of my semi-annual-moving-about-the-US vacation. This isn’t intentional it’s just that all my friends and family have conspired against me to live as far apart as possible. Okay, so I’m partly to blame by choosing to live outside the US all together. So far, I’ve hit Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois although the first two and the last were just the airports. By the time I’m done I’ll add Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York to the list.

This morning my brother dropped me off at 6 am at the Memphis airport, I checked my bags curbside and I proceeded to the gate—C13. I walked down the C corridor and came to a split. To the left was C1to C12 to the right C14 to C 22. No C 13! A cruel joke? The newest version of airport hell? Wandering around looking for your gate and never finding it? I re-examined my ticket. Hidden in an obscure corner of the ticket C22 was listed as the gate. So, I hadn’t had my coffee yet….

Once on board, there were tons of seats, so I plopped myself down in an empty seat, which happened to be in the exit row. There are several good things about exit rows. First, you have lots of leg room and…. well, you have lots of leg room. There is a drawback in the fact that you might be held responsible for getting people out of the plane alive, but really, the benefit of extra leg room far outweighs that possibility. I hope. (Just don’t think about it while typing your blog from 25,000 feet while sitting in the exit row.)

I did, however, discover another small issue with sitting in the exit row. It’s called the faulty, oh-so-inadequate window shade. This was especially obvious when the 7 a.m. sun was shining so brightly. Unlike most window shades that pull down, the exit row shade pulls up and then only half way. This renders the shade practically useless unless one is trying to block out views of terra firma (which is generally obscured by clouds anyway) or the plane happens to be flying above the sun (somehow this seems unlikely). Ah, the joys of travel!