Monday, July 23, 2007

Alone Time

I am actually and finally alone in my house. It's blissful. The kid is gone, my pilot is gone, I can eat ice cream for dinner. I promise to thoroughly enjoy myself.

The day got off to a rough start last thursday with trying to get the kid to the other coast for his month with bio-dad. A butterfly flapped it's wings twice in the Amazon, which set off a chain reaction causing a flight to be delayed into ERW. Which led to a the flight here being canceled. Which then caused the last flight to IAH to be canceled b/c there was no equipment. Which meant that A and Kidzilla missed their am flight to IAH due to all the reshuffling of people. Which added on a 6 hour layover for them in IAH and added 12 hours to A's final arrival time home from the trip. But they made it.

One of the flights was so full that Kidzilla had to sit by himself a few rows up from A. I was a little nervous when I heard that, but A said that he behaved himself and his row companions said he was a champion seatmate. Thank god! A chose not to follow my standard method of getting a seat next to the kid. If we have to sit separated, I get the kid settled in and then bat my eyes (if I think it will work) and say to his seatmates "it looks like there is no room for me to sit with my son today, but if you would like to change seats with me, I'd be more than happy to. I sure would hate for him to disrupt your flight by spilling a drink on you, falling asleep on you, or having to get up 3 times an hour to use the restroom." If they say no, then hey, I tried and if they are miserable sitting next to him, it's their own fault.

A shared an airline secret with me the other day. The reason the coffee tastes better on planes is that they make it with bottled water. So now I know.

A is away on a trip so tonight I'm going to wallow around on the bed reading books and occasionally eating non-dinner foods. Heavenly!

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Smooth sailing and turbulence

Seems like it's been forever since I updated. But really there's not much to update on.

A is slated to finish up his IOE today. I hope it goes well for him. He's gotten down to Mexico twice, once for a quick turn and once for an overnight. I guess the overnight was not as glamourous as he had hoped. And many, many small towns in between. After this, we'll have to wait and see when he has to report out to his base in CA. He comes home wed. and is slated to fly Kidzilla out to CA on thursday and then fly home again on fri. So hopefully he'll have a few days break. All he wants to do when he comes home is sleep and yet he says it's not restful b/c all he dreams about is flying planes. Everytime I bump him at night, the arms go flying up and the checklist muttering begins. It's funny now, but I hope it doesn't go on for the next 25 years.

We have our ups and downs when A comes home. It's funny b/c back when we were dating and he lived 2 hours away, I didn't see him more than a few days a week and we never had any trouble turning it off and on. But now, when he's gone, I miss him yet when he's home I feel like he's invading my space. It's bugging me that it seems so different when he's gone now. Why? Is it because before it was my space and he was a guest and now it's our space and he's a family member? I can't say it's because now we are married or because now he is gone more. Even when he was learning/instructing his schedule was irregular and there were days we didn't see him. Neither of those reasons strike me as something I would react to. As long as we are able to work things out each time he's home, we'll make it over this hump.

This is only our second month and I am already so over commuting. Having to leave a day early and arrive a day after for trips just seems so wasteful to me. That is so much family time that he is missing out on. Plus it's such a hassle with flights being full/canceled. It's probably compounded by the fact that we live in a place we aren't emotionally vested in. It's not like we live near family and that's keeping us here. I've heard time and again not to chase metal and move to live in base. But I think for us that that is what would make us happiest. Yes, we run the risk of his being transfered, but his airline isn't one that's known for that. So we are starting to look at moving to TX. There are a lot of pro's, but also some con's. ( aside from it just plain being TX). New bid doesn't take effect until January so we have some time to think about it. We are still hoping for a new southeast base, which would help with time, but not necessarily financially. We had only planned to stay here for a year anyway and it's already 6 months past that. So we'll keep talking and asking advice and eventually make a decision.

Good things are going on in life too. He loves flying. I get lots of cool mini shampoos and soaps. Kidzilla has mastered the basics of swimming. FL is like living in a sauna, but a.c. makes it tolerable. Work is not terrible. I've been cancer free for 11 months now. A year from now I'll look back at this and think about how much I've grown.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Recap

Good- Finding out your last turn is canceled and you can go home early.

Bad- Finding out all flights home are also canceled.

A made it home from his IOE yesterday. He echoed what his friend had told him a month or so ago; that when you first get in the actual plane you will wonder "WTF am I doing here? I am in no way qualified to be doing this". But it gets better and more routine with each flight. Soon it will be so routine that he'll forget how hard he ever thought it was. His second IOE trip is scheduled for fri/sat. After that? We don't know yet, but assuming he gets through this second trip, he'll be released from IOE and headed out to the west coast.

This is my 11th month of keeping this blog. I can't believe I've managed to stick with it for so long. And this is my 76th post, which I think, for this site, puts me into the prolific catagory (there's a lot of blogs with 2-5 posts and then nothing). So for those of you who haven't been with me long and/or don't have the time to read from the beginning, here's a little recap of where we've been:
We met in 12/04 in CA, both of us divorced after having been previously been in relationships for 13 years (me) and 11 years (him) years. I have a son from the previous relationship. After 9 months of hearing about how he wanted to fly but not seeing him take any action, I told him "S*&T or get off the pot already". 4 months later we moved to FL so he could attend flight school. A year after we decided that we would go for it, he was instructing in FL. We married on our 2 year anniversary in 12/06. He got hired with a regional in 3/07 and is now flying trips.

This is an aviation related web site, so I mainly write about the parts of my life that are effected by aviation. And I tend to write more when I am upset or aggrevated. Kind of like how we only notice when kids are misbehaving but not so much when they are good. I don't expect people to always agree with what I post- after all, they aren't me, aren't privy to the details of my relationships, and I only post one side of the story. But if I gave you something to think about then I am happy.

So here's to another sucessful year!