Stressy

The Travel Gods must be laughing their arses off.

Life is just a series of lessons, waiting to be learned. There was a situation that was less-than-fantastic this past weekend and I discovered a lot about myself and NC and our dynamic. I never intended this to be a "relationship" blog, Lord knows it's been so long since I've been in a real one. But, I can't even express how well I'm getting to know myself, not as just me, but me WITH someone else. It's like a whole new side of me that I'm not familiar with.

So, we're hanging out at BNA (Nashville Airport) and come to find that our flight has been cancelled due to snow in DC. I get up to the desk at the gate and he gets on the phone - we divide and conquer. I got us seats on the flight out the next morning (which we knew wasn't going to happen since he had to get to work at 6 a.m. the next day) and then I went to the Southwest counter and bought two refundable tickets to get us to Baltimore that night since he was still on the phone and the situation didn't look promising. Finally, he got us rebooked on a flight to DC, but for later that evening and through Philly. Things just weren't looking up at that point. We got to baggage claim, picked up my bag from our original flight and then came decision time. It was a crap shoot and the timings were all wrong. Fortunately, we were on the same page, and decided to just go for the Nashville to Philly to DC flight and worst case scenario we could drive from Philly. Turned out to be the right decision and flew into DC at 2 a.m.

I know that was a lot to weed through, but the situation was pretty stressy. What I noticed first was his calmness, which in turn made me pretty calm too. Those of you who know me, know how stressed I can get when things don't go to the plan. So, there's a lesson learned - be more flexible and roll with the punches. Second thing I noticed was his sense of humor. We laughed through most of this experience since, well, that's about all we could do. When all else fails, just smile. Like his mom said when we called her, "just keep a positive attitude, it will make a difference." She was right. Lastly, I truly enjoy traveling with someone as opposed to traveling alone. It makes the time go faster, so any trip I take now, if not with him, then I'll invite someone to go along with me (if they are up for traveling with the mkp).

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I believe I've found someone who loves me not in spite of my flaws and quirks but BECAUSE of my flaws and quirks. There's a huge difference between the two.

Stir Crazy

I can't sit still to save my life. It's got to be some sort of disorder. I finally move to a place that has everything I ever wanted and still I have to be jet setting. The next 5 months are going to be crazy with travel (Nashville, Miami/FL Keys, Chicago, SF, Vancouver/Whistler, LA) , but I suppose I wouldn't have it any other way. The great thing is that NC can't sit still either, so I have a travel partner now - awesome! On top of this, we have decided not to do birthday presents, rather birthday vacations. I like it. I believe for my birthday, we will go on a snowboarding trip. We went boarding in Western Maryland a couple weekends ago. I am damn good. Well, strike that, but I'm getting a lot better. I spend more time up on the board than I do on my rear, so that's always positive.

Otherwise, not much going on here. Just plugging away. I've been in DC for almost a year now and I still absolutely love it. It's the perfect fit. Now if I could just stay here one weekend and explore...
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Good news - MA got a fatty job in SF, so she's going to be moving to a place where I would actually go visit her (no disrespect to Bloomington, of course). I'm so proud of her.

Middle Ground

This is one of those posts that I've been forming in my head, but haven't gotten down in the blog. What can I say? It's been busy. I had a good time in the big-D with the Konk peeps. Unfortunately, NC wasn't able to make it (stupid cancelled flights!), which was a huge bummer for the both of us since we had been looking forward to it for a while.

I'm wondering who I've become. That's not as bad as it sounds - truthfully, it seems I'm just another person in a relationship. It's a strange feeling, putting someone else before yourself (wow, that sounds self-centered) especially when you've been single for SO freaking long. When I found out that NC couldn't make it, I immediately started investigating how I could get back. While on hold with the airline people, I thought to myself "What the hell am I doing?" Knowing full and well two things a) There was no way I was getting back to DC and b) the people I am closest to minus one were all in the same place, what's so bad about that? Again, it circles back to being in a relationship. US said to me that wanting to go back was understandable - you'll do anything to be with the person you care about. This is true, but RS said, "hey, we're not chopped liver." Both of them were on point. Then, I started thinking about NC's point of view - he wanted me to stay and have fun with my friends, but he wanted to see me and he wanted to be there with the whole crew. That added an entire extra layer of stuff floating around in my head.

There's so much of me that is still trying to figure out how this relationship stuff works. I've never exactly been great at it (as my track record proves). When you're in a situation where you have to choose between friends or boyfriend, what do you do? Can you come up with a compromise? I guess that's what I tried out- I tried to find a middle ground to where everyone was happy. I chilled with the peeps in Dallas until Monday and snuck out around 5 a.m. to get a confirmed standby ticket (and ended up just getting a regular ticket since they had seats available). I got back early and got to spend the evening with NC.

Personally, do I think I could I have handled the entire situation better? Yes, absolutely. It's the first time I've been frazzled in a while. How did I let myself get like that? Here's the issue - I'm a perfectionist and so type A that I function off a precise schedule. In my head, MA and I were supposed to meet in Milwaukee, go to the ticket agent to change our seats, grab a bite to eat, catch our flight, get to Dallas on Friday at 6:30 p.m., pick up rental car, go to Ranjit's, reunite her with US, give hugs and catch up all around, HEY BARBEQUE! and a few hours later, RS and I were going back to DFW to pick up NC. THIS IS HOW I AM, especially when I travel. What actually happened was so amazingly far from what I had in my head that it that it totally had me rattled. Can I get better about this, perhaps get more flexible? One can only hope I can compromise with myself and find MY middle ground.

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A big thanks to RS for hosting and to all of the peeps for putting up with me.