Let me clear my throat!

---

2 weeks! It's been 2 weeks since I left to come to California. Ok, so it is more like a week and a half, but in this time I have realized that I didn't mention, on this TRAVEL blog, that I would taking a trip. Now I am here, relocated for an extended stay in California. Come to think of it, maybe I did mention that I would be comming here, but I pay so little attention to what I write that I am either declaring it for the first time or the 3rd.

I left on a Wednesday morning, an early flight. I try to take early flights so that I get into the location of choice with time to mosey around, and because I never sleep before a flight, so I need the flight so that I can rest. I am a procrastinator in every single way. It doesn't matter if I am moving, vacationing, picking out a present for the person I love...I wait until 5 hours before the event until I hop to it. I used to think that I worked better under pressure, but the truth is that I don't. I don't work any better when I am under the wire, I forget things, I stress out, sometimes I even panic. But I continue this behavior every single time, and toy with the idea of starting a project just one hour early, just for some extra time to actually do it right. But I never do. Anyway, I stayed up all night Tuesday. I didn't start packing until midnight. When 5 am came around I was just finishing up, not because I have so much stuff, but because I always get side tracked. My mom took me to the airport and we sat there for about a half hour chatting. I have been living with her for almost a year by now, and of course the day that I leave is the day she becomes vocal about not wanting me to go. That's a lie. She wants me to go, if I want to go, but she will miss me. I think it hit her all then. I think it hit me all then too.

I haven't said that I moved here, to CA. I am treating it as an extended stay. Maybe in 6th months I will deem it as a successful move, but right now it is still just a stay, not a vacation, but a semi perminent relocation. Meaning I will be paying rent and getting a job.

My flight left Syracuse and flew a quick hour and a half to Philly. As soon as a sat down in my window seat, (I prefer window seats so that I can rest my head against the window and block the rest of my rowmate's view) I was out cold. Except I wasn't cold. I was comfortable, not too hot not too cold, just right. In Philly I sleepily made my way to the gate where I would board the plane to LA. Another window seat for me on the crowded plane, and strangely enough no neighbor. The middle seat was empty which is always nice, some extra room to stretch out. The aisle seat was taken so I wasn't completely alone, but as soon as I got settled in I wished that I was. I wished that either the man sitting in the aisle seat was not, or that if he was there, someone sitting inbetween us, to buffer the gutterally snotty snorting noise that he exuted every 5 seconds. Literally, I counted.

Let me say that I think I am a pretty tolerant person when it comes to bothersome things. I won't pretend that I don't have pet peeves, but I try not to let them get under my skin. Unless of course I am sitting one seat away from a person making this noise, let me try and describe the way it sounded, every 5 seconds for as long as it took to get from Philidelphia to Los Angeles, which is about 6 hours or so. The noise is that of a man clearing his throat, but with 5 pounds of phlem caught inbetween his sinus cavity and vocal chords, while taking a deep sniff at the back of his nose, and hawking a loogie, the loogie comming up all the way from his toes. Every 5 seconds, for 6 hours, I counted.

I felt bad for this guy because it was obvious that he was sick, and that I was cranky. I could see in the way that he covered his mouth when he made this horrible noise that he was embarrased. I knew he was getting worked up and wanted to calm down by the way he ordered gin, twice, on the flight, and didn't mix it with anything. I knew these things, that sometimes people don't have the best days, but I was tired, really tired, and desperately wanted to sleep. But I couldn't. That noise! That noise was enough to make me contimplate asking the fligth attendent to move me to the emergency exit row so that I could hurl myself out of the plane. No parachute necessary. I think the sound of someone chewing Ritz crackers in my ear would have sounded like a lulliby, that is how badly this guy's throat clearing swamp frog call sounded.

Somehow I didn't throw myself from the plane, nor him. In fact I didn't even say anything to him, or to anyone else, because really, what could he do? What could anyone do? I did stare at him and try to will him to stop, and I did try to shoot lazer beams from my eyes, but that didn't work either. I had to rely solely on my patience, my nearly non existant patience, and my aptitude for empathy toward others. Somehow I walked off of that plane and managed to forget about that noise after only one day of ranting. Until now. Now I rant about it again, but this is the last time, I swear.

As I rethink and write this situation I can't help but wonder if the noise that this man was making would have bothered me less if had had a full night's sleep. I was more cranky than usual because I hadn't slept. I was counting on that flight, so that I could sleep. I went through with my usual procrastinating ways, and did it back fire? I mean sure I forgot some things, but I expected that. I didn't expect the guy on the flight. I was in no mood to handle that. Would I have been better equipt if I had packed earlier and gotten to sleep? Reconsidering the noise that this guy made, my conclusion is no. No it wouldn't have mattered if I had slept 40 years, this noise was equivalent to nails on a chalk board, silverware scraping plates, and someone with an excess amount of spit eating sloppy joes and telling a story with their mouth open, all at the same time.

So after just about 2 weeks this is all I am saying about California. I could tell you about living by the beach, or hiking in the mountains. I could tell you about riding bikes and dancing salsa, but I'll hold off for now. I have plenty of time on this extended stay to write about California, because I'm not going anywhere on a plane for a while...

---