Losing time…

One step forward, three steps back — but in reverse.

Sunday — through the gift of ending Daylight Savings — I got an extra hour by falling backward. But Monday I lost three by flying forward — 2,500 miles from Washington (Pacific Time) to Florida (Eastern Standard Time). I tried to blog, thinking I’d have plenty of time for it, but I found it wasn’t easy with the repeated hurry up and wait cycles traveling inflicts.

Monday morning, I hurried to pack and leave our accommodations in order, waited for a taxi, hurried to check in, check baggage at the airport, then waited in line for security clearance. Cleared, I hurried to my gate, waited for boarding, hurried to stash my carry-on suitcase and get out of the way of fellow boarders, waited for take-off, and then made an attempt at creating a blog post while off-line on a booked flight making a beeline for Atlanta.

As seems to be my lot in life (while flying with my husband, anyway), I landed the middle seat. Even though my laptop was as wide as my airplane seat, I planned to write a blog post using Word and then upload it to WordPress and Blogher in the airport on my layover. I was trying to write a succinct nostalgic piece on my father related to my experience of being held hostage in a McDonald’s. (See my previous post.) But blogging on a laptop in an airplane is harder than I thought. Because the person in front of me had reclined his seat, my laptop could open only so far — which might have been sufficient had my eyes been at stomach level…  (Of course, I also feared that the two people beside did have eyes at stomach level and, thus, were able to see my typed musings that should be oh-so-secret, until I published them on my blog, of course.) I tried scrunching down to get a better view but when I also had to tuck my elbows into my stomach to type without encroaching on the travelers’ space on either side of me, I gave up.

I still had a brief layover to write and post.

Too brief. We arrived in Atlanta in time to make a mad dash toward our connecting flight with only a brief stop at the bathroom and a quick rummage through my carry-on bag for some Kind almond bars for nutrition before boarding. (The airport sushi roll we had shared in Seattle for breakfast was but a distant memory.) I sent a text to my son to alert him to our on-time arrival — and to please purchase subs for our very late dinner — and then grabbed a notepad and pen to jot down the makings of this blog post. (Which still didn’t get posted in time for yesterday’s NaBloPoMo entry. Sigh.)

I had envisioned using my wait times wisely; actually, I had envisioned the airport wait times to be longer and the airplane seats to be more conducive to tapping on a keyboard. I was wrong on both counts. Had I been writing on a subject pertinent to flying I might have had better success. As it was, I wasn’t — until I grabbed the notepad and pen and frustratingly recounted my hurry up and wait episodes and considered the loss of three hours. I still thought — though we arrived close to 10 p.m. — that my body would remain on Seattle time long enough for me to post on the third day of NaBloPoMo. My body, however, thought differently.

But it is good to be home again — even at a loss of three hours. I prefer to think of them as three hours forward.