Jet Lag

When I had jet lag in Paris, I slept on Tina's couch for an entire day. But now I don't have that luxury of being on vacation any longer, and so I spent half my day today trying to stay awake, thinking about how many truly strange and wonderful things happened when I was away, so here's my top 5 weird and wonderful things I noticed while on vacation:

1. You can develop crushes on all sorts of people.

Endearing love for my RRBF aside, I met a crazy British ex-pat journalist for about five minutes in Paris on my birthday and developed a total crush on him. He's not all that tall, not particularly attractive, and covered in a serious amount of attitude, but it restored my faith in the fact that if, and it's a big if, something ever happened with my RRBF, I could still find real people attractive. The "real" is an important distinction because my crushes on Ethan Hawke and Jeremy Piven so don't count.

2. Life goes on after the hub cab falls off.

Tina and I hit the curb so many times in our Irish rent-a-car trying to maneuver the car on the other side of the road that when it finally fell off, we laughed and then freaked out, instead of the other way around. And then a completely nice man at a Toyota dealership in Limerick gave us a free cap, and then never noticed when we took the car back that one of the caps was certainly not like the others. In fact, the fellow that looked at the tires inspected every single one except the one we replaced. HA!

3. Live theatre is both thrilling and boring at the same time.

Honestly, I think it's the fact that the lights make the theatre so hot. Both plays I saw were equally good in different ways, but I yawned during both, and not because I was bored or tired, just because it's a hot stuffy place where old men with hairy ears sit down beside you and fall asleep. Honestly, just that kind of old man sat beside me in the theatre in London, and that's what happens when you go places and do things by yourself: old men sit down beside you and fall asleep.

4. Carrying your own sh*t is hard.

Life as an independent lady travelling around is way, way different than life as an old married lady travelling around. People talk to you differently when you are two women, they hit on you differently, they treat you differently, and they certainly don't help you with your mega-knapsack when you've bought two books and are carrying three others. Ah, life as an old married lady still has some benefits. And it makes me appreciate the sheer, brute strength of my RRBF. Sigh.

Oh, and feel free to treat the above as completely metaphorical as well.

5. Strange cities are always fun.

Simply because you don't have to get up, cook yourself some breakfast, find your way to work, sit all day long, and then get up and do it again the next day. Therein lies the true beauty of a European vacation.

I'm sure I could come up with 5 more, but I'm sort of tired from watching 7.5 hours of Coronation Street, 3 hours of Six Feet Under and four almost-straight episodes of Entourage. Ah, to be back to the grind.