I sat up and looked at the alarm clock. 9:15 a.m. "Dammit! Why didn't she wake me up? She said we had to leave by 9:30!" I woke up groggy, excited, yet extremely rushed as I scrambled to get dressed, throw clothes into a suitcase and try to convince my mother that Patch won't appreciate packages of brown sugar instant oatmeal and Clementine Oranges. Which begged the question, why are you trying to hoard off oatmeal and oranges? "Nobody else wants them, they're going to waste"
"Yeah, well there's a reason for that, you know."
Current events seemed to be on my mother's mind as she drove me to the airport. Namely the recent tragedy involving Dick Ebersol and his two sons.
With an emphasis on the plane crashing part.
On the way to taking me to the airport.
Mid-story I look at her blankly. "Mom, you do realize that you're driving me to the airport. Timing, much?"
"Doh, sorry about that."
Except she didn't say "doh".. she's not cool enough for that. It was more of a Mom-saying like "Oh poop", or "crap-poodle"...or something similiar.
Anyway, she dropped me off at Dulles and sat in her car as I went to the outdoor check-in. I kept on looking back at her as she sat there smiling at me waiting for me to go inside. I tried to wave her off mouthing, "I'm fine, go already! For heavens sakes I'm 25 I can go on a plane by myself!" She finally drove away when I walked inside, smiling and waving. I love my mom, she's such a trip.
I passed the security inspection test with flying colors. Whatever that means. That's such a weird expression, isn't it? The only flying colors I know of are rainbows. And I'm not sure how rainbows are associated with passing tests...I'll have to look into that one. Anyway I finally arrived at my gate 20 minutes early. I took out my Dave Sedaris book and pretended to read. I looked around the gate for possible cute guys. Ah ha! 10 o-clock major hottie. He looks at me a few times. Probably because I keep looking at him. Is he on my flight? Will be sitting next to each other? My mind flashes back to the car when my mother brought up the statistic of girls expecting to meet their future husbands while flying. I began to see her point. Finally it was boarding time and I was first in line. After finding my seat, I scanned the on-coming passengers. There he is! He's sitting two rows behind me. Maybe he'll come talk to me and ask if he can have the rest of my pretzels. Or comment on my cool hat. Or maybe the plane will crash and we'll be forced to reproduce to populate earth. ...Because we somehow assume that the rest of the world has died... I mean it's a possibility! Who knows what goes through your mind after you're in a horrible, horrible plane crash that we, alone, miraculously survive? These thoughts ran through my head during lift-off and ended shortly after I heard him ask the girl next to him for her left-over peanuts. Figures.

Once we reached 'altitude' our spaz flight attendent passed around drinks, snacks and offered 'hot towels'. My eyes lit up, "hot towels? Cool!" I reached up to grab the 'hot towel' from her tiny-tweezers-tongs. Wait a minute, this isn't a 'hot towel', this is a friggin microwaved baby-wipe. I faked a thank you and pretended to pat my hands with the nuked wet-nap mumbling, 'hot towel my ass'.

An hour later, still single and smelling of a clean baby's butt, I called Patch to let him know that I arrived safely. He said he was on the 'T' and would be there shortly. Ahhh yes, the T''. T is for Train! They call their cabs, 'C' and their planes, 'P', apparently. Anyway, the 'T' is a lot like the metro here in D.C. except they have concession stands in some of their stops, which is pretty cool. It was on the T that I got to hear my first authentic Boston accent. "Aye Bud, we gahta ga to the bah and get some behs latah."
"Wicked pissah yeah".

Ok well, they weren't that stereotypical, but it was cool. I mentioned to Patch that I wished we had some sort of cool accent like that. I mean I guess to other countries we do have an accent. But ours sucks. Especially our family because we have lived in so many different areas, we often get confused with our accents. A little mid-west there, a little Texas, some California valley girl, and some D.C. gangsta courtesy of my sister. (Shoot!)

Tomorrow I will detail the actual weekend in BeanTown with PatchiePoo.