Lent

I go to church every Wednesday and Sunday, when I'm not at work. I'm in both the choir and the bell choir. I used to be on the Board of Chritian Education, as did every other member of my family at one point or another. My dad used to be the church moderator. My sister used to be the Youth Director. My mom is the bell choir director.

We used to have two youth directors, Neil and Charlie, who took the youth on an MMT every year; that is, a Magical Mystery Tour. Our parents all knew where we were going, and the youth didn't know until we got there. Many good times were had, but those are stories for another day. The point here is that, out of all the youth that passed through my church while Neil and Charlie were there, I was the only one to attend every single MMT I was of an age to.

My family is kind of a big deal at my church, is what I'm saying.

And yet, I don't consider myself an ultra religious person. I dislike our minister, I zone out during the sermon, I don't read the Bible (and I certainly don't think of it as fact), sometimes I even skip out on the rest of the service after (bell) choir has (played) sung its piece. And, like everyone at some time or another, I have my doubts. Perhaps I'm some sort of church-going agnostic? I have faithful apathy?

But every year when Lent rolls around, I like to try to give something up. It's a nice practice of strength and resistance, regardless of the religious significance (which, if you were wondering, has something to do with Jesus wandering in the dessert for forty days/nights resisting the various temptations of the devil).

Last year, I gave up bacon and McDonald's, both of which I have also given up in previous years. One year I gave up (cheese)burgers as a whole. This year, I'm giving up something I've always avoided giving up in the past, something I always thought would be too difficult for me to succeed at: pop.

As a flight attendant, after a beverage service, I often have half-full cans of various beverages left. Not wanting to be wasteful, I generally drink all the ones I like: Coke, various juices, maybe a little Sprite mixed with cran-apple. My biggest fear in giving up pop this year is not the caffeine headache (no worries, I drink coffee now!), but rather that I'll simply forget and polish off my half cans on the plane.

I think it'll be my most challenging Lent yet, and my most hyper Easter.

Charlie.

The summer after I graduated high school, I started working for a woman from church. She worked from home, and she and her husband had just had a baby. She wanted someone to be at the house with him for anywhere from three to seven hours a day, depending on the day, while she got some work done. He was two months old.

I fell in love with him that summer. He'd cry and cry and cry, and I'd read to him and sing to him and walk with him. He'd fall asleep on my chest and sleep for hours while I just read and drank the chai his mom made for me every day. I memorized "The Cat in the Hat" that summer.

Then I went to college. I nannied again the next summer, and babysat whenever I was around. But the next year, I went to England. Slowly but surely I saw my sweet darling boy less and less. When I did see him, I was surprised by things like his ability to run and talk in full sentences. Full sentences! After summers of endless crying and not knowing what he wanted, here was this amazing boy talking to me in sentences!

Then I got engaged. I'm the youngest cousin, on both sides of my family; D had little cousins, including a perfect little flower girl, but the boys were all either too old or terrors, or both. Who better to bear our rings, I thought, than my Charlie?

The first week of July, I spent some time emailing his mom. She was nervous that he'd be too silly, but I assured her that he is too adorable, and no matter what happened, he could not wreck the day. She said she would consult with him and his dad.

Apparently, she asked him if he wanted to be in Cindy's wedding, and without hesitation, he said yes. Then they practiced. His parents took off their rings, put them on a pillow, and Charlie, my sweet little Charlie, walked around the house with them. She told him, now, you have to be serious. You can't be silly, because who's the center of attention that day? "The bride," he told her.

A couple of days later, when she told him that things happen sometimes, and it's okay, but Cindy's not getting married anymore, he sat down and cried.


I didn't have much regular interaction with Charlie for a long time after those first two summers. When I got the invitation to his sixth birthday party, I was blown away. How could he be SIX already?! Impossible. But there he was, eating cake and blowing out candles, loving Star Wars and Legos, and still speaking in full sentences. And the words he used! I babysat sometime around then, and he told me his mom smells good and is very pretty, and his dad is hilarious. Hilarious!

One night at choir a few months ago, his mom announced that she and Charlie's dad were going on a long-overdue vacation, and they would need someone to stay at their house and look after Charlie. Pam and I volunteered immediately.

L and B, you see, hadn't taken a single vacation together since Charlie was born, and they never even went on a honeymoon. So for two weeks, they were going to escape to Italy.

From January 24 through February 5, Pam and I stayed at Charlie's house and acted as moms to him. It was an amazing adventure, and a rather eye-opening experience. Charlie is perhaps one of the most well-behaved six-year-olds in existence. He is sweet and mannerly and smart and very self-aware and introspective and overall awesome. And yet, the two weeks I recently spent with him made me unsure if I ever want kids. See, my favorite thing about babysitting has always been the ability to give the kids back at the end of the night.

I did have a great time with him, though. Pam and I make a pretty great child-rearing team, actually. We took to him to school, bathed him, fed him, helped him make his bed every morning, read him stories every night. We took him and his friend to Chuck E. Cheese. We cleaned up after him, and tried fruitlessly to get him to use his napkin instead of the blanket as he ate his bedtime snack. We kept track of his mittens, which are always in a different place and never together. We smothered him with hugs (which he loved) and kisses (which he always wiped off) and tried to comfort him when he missed his parents. We learned how strange it is to brush someone else's teeth and cut someone else's finger- and toenails.

Regardless of what I decide in the future about having kids of my own, one thing is certain. I still love that little boy.

Reflections.

We celebrate the New Year year after year. And year after year, I forget that the date has changed yet again, and I write the old year on things well into March.

This year, 2009, was the first exception to this lifelong rule.

My resolution in 2008 was to take at least one picture every day. I posted them online, sometimes, and I had a little folder on my computer where I kept the chosen daily photos. Some days I had tons to choose from; other days, I had to work to find something to take a picture of.

I was doing pretty well at it, overall. I only had a couple of days where I fudged and stole pictures from other days. At the end of the year, I wanted to have a cute little photo book: My 2008 in Snapshots. And I was well on my way.

I gave up my resolution on July 9. I didn't even touch my camera for weeks. That was a time I most definitely did not want pictures of.

The year 2008 was supposed to be one of the best ever. It turned out to be... not the worst, necessarily, because a hell of a lot of good ended up coming from it, but certainly the most tumultuous year to date. And it was a year I was glad to be putting behind me, come the end of December.

Not once in 2009 have I written the wrong year.

Quite a few good things have happened this year. It's a year I'm happy to leave behind, because I'm excited to be moving forward, but it's a year I was thrilled to be in.

I have a feeling I might once again have trouble writing the correct year come January, but only because I can't quite wrap my brain around it. 2010? Really?!

Bring it on.

Oh hai December!

Well. I didn't quite reach my goal with my November-blog-a-day challenge, which was to squeeze in 30 entries by the end of the month. I did manage to make it to 20, though, which isn't bad considering I didn't start until November 9th. So that's that. Maybe I'll blog more in general now; maybe I won't. Oh, the suspense!

There was snow on the ground this morning. It put me in a much more Christmas-y mood. Naturally, I'm now watching Love Actually.

Before 9 this morning, I got a free oil change, free car wash, and free gas-station-esque cappuccinos while I waited. A very productive day.

Now I'm sitting around waiting to see if they'll call me in to work today. Yesterday they had me sitting ready reserve, which means I have to be at the airport in full uniform and wait around for them to call me for a last-minute assignment. No call ever came, so I spent nine hours at the airport without stepping foot on a single plane. I read a lot about Sparklepires (more on that later) and went home at 11 with a pounding headache that quickly dissolved into migraine shakiness nausea death pain. Ugh.

I was planning on cleaning my room today and organizing the Christmas presents I've bought already, but so far... well, the most productive part of my day was the part before 9am.

November 30th.

Oh, frick.

November 29th.

I watched the whole Vikings game today. It might be the first time I've sat through an entire football game, not counting SuperBowls (which I barely watch) and the one game I attended once.

November 24th.

I'm off work today, for just one day, and I finished a 4-day yesterday and I start another 4-day tomorrow. But then ends the crazy jam-packed month that is November! The end is finally in sight.

Pam and I are baking pies (which I won't get to eat until after my next trip, sadly). I love pies.

My schedule came out, and I did not get high speeds, which means I'm on reserve. I did, however, get all the days off that I wanted! I have next weekend off, so I can celebrate Eric's birthday; I have bell choir Sunday off; I have big choir concert Sunday off; I have Christmas Eve and Day off; and I have New Year's Eve off!

I am a little nervous about how the month will go, though. Will I get called constantly because it's cold season and Christmas season and people will be calling in left and right? Will I not get called at all because people are afraid to call in sick this time of year and I'm at the top of seniority in reserves so they'll only use the few people at the bottom over and over? Who knows!

The good news is, it's only one month. I know I can once again bid for a normal schedule next month, I know I'm not stuck on reserve indefinitely. There's something comforting about that, something nicer about putting yourself on reserve than being forced into it. Oh, and I guess it's pretty comforting to know that I got all my wanted days off. :)

I was trying not to get excited about Christmas, since I didn't know if I'd have it off, but now that I know that I do, bring on the Christmas music! Despite reserve, I'm suddenly very much looking forward to December.

Oh goodness, I have so much shopping to do!

Tidbits and things.

I get bored at work occasionally, and I fill my time by writing future blog entries, or shopping lists, or to-do lists, or Christmas present lists, or lists of what I would do with the money if I won the Powerball. One of these days I'll take a picture for you of what my papers look like by the end of a trip. Sometimes (like the paper I'm typing from right now), I just have one big sheet; other times I have five different smaller ones covered in messy blue ink. I write upside down and sideways, to distinguish different trains of thought from each other. Many of my blog entries stem from these almost indecipherable handwritten pages.

I actually had an entry written and ready to type up that I could have posted on the 22nd, but I have a pattern going, and I knew which two entries I wanted next. (I don't know if you've noticed my pattern. It was unintentional at first, but once I noticed it, I had to keep it going.) Those two entries were also written up and ready to go, only I'd written them on my last trip and left them at home on my days off. They were quite long, and I liked the way I'd started them, so I just decided to wait instead of posting what I had and interrupting my pattern.

But now my pattern is filled in, and it's time for this random entry, filled of tidbits that I wrote on my last couple of trips. Welcome to the things that happen to me at work...

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You know when you can feel a hair tickling your skin in your cleavage but you're at work and there are passengers sitting right in front of you and you can't reach in and dig around to find it? Yeah, I hate that.

I like to try to sneak peaks of what passengers are reading. A sentence, an author, a chapter title. I don't know why, but I get a strange enjoyment from it.

I don't particularly love wine or beer, but serving them to other people and knowing I can't have any sure makes me want some.

It seems pretty common in the airline business for everyone to have certain airports they get stuck at more often than others. Mine are St. Cloud (which is sadly closing soon), Peoria, and just recently added, White Plains.

Usually flight crews make an effort of avoid airplane lavatories when at all possible. We had an hour delay the other morning, during which we were stuck on the airplane with no heat (just the crew, the passengers were luckily waiting warmly inside, though I'm sure they didn't think themselves lucky). We all had quite a bit of coffee. Despite all three of us having used to lav just before we started boarding, all three of us had to make the walk of shame all the way to the back of the airplane to use the lav during our reasonably short one hour and twelve minute flight. As a bonus, though, that meant I got to be in the flight deck twice during one flight!

Why do people insist on ignoring me? All day long. They pretend they can't see me, standing at the door as they board, or hear me tell them good morning. They stand up AS I'm saying the words, "The captain has turned the seatbelt sign on; please return to or remain in your seats and ensure that you seatbelt is securely fastened." They release their seatbelts as soon as they land, and ignore me asking them to keep them fastened until we're at the gate. (This is a particular pet peeve of mine, actually. Would you take off your seatbelt in your car just because you're in a traffic jam? No, because you're still driving. The aircraft is still active, there are still other vehicles and other planes around, we are not yet parked, so keep your effing seatbelt on. It's not going to help you if you stand up two seconds earlier; the door is still going to open at the same time, the jetbridge is still going to take two minutes to be lined up. So please, just hold your freaking horses.) They lean their seats back as soon as I sit down, despite the fact that I just asked them to please make sure their seat-backs were all the way up for takeoff and we haven't left the gate yet. They ignore the garbage bag that I walk down the aisle with, instead opting to leave their trash stuffed into the seat pocket. They even ignore my smile and wishes for a good day as they exit. Why? Why do people hate me? Why do people think they're so above me? People ignoring me so insistently day after day might be contributing to my dislike of people in general.

Whoever designed the brand-new Wendy's at the airport seems to have neglected the fact that it is not, in fact, a regular restaurant, but rather an airport location. People are in a hurry, cranky, and most importantly, loaded with baggage. But no, the restaurant has no extra room to order, no designated spot in which to wait for your order, not even an inch of extra space between tables in which to stash your multitude of bags. And yet, I cannot resist the siren call of that little ginger hamburger-pusher. I have a weakness for lettuce on my cheeseburger. Even in the morning I can't stay away; who can resist $2 biscuits and gravy?

I swear, people think I have a secret route through the cabin that they can't see. After everyone has stood up and is waiting to exit, someone in the front will ask me, "Can you get my bag for me? It's a couple of bins back." Well, sir, can you get your bag? "No, the aisle is full of people, I can't get through." ... Exactly.

Some guy left me his number on a post-it note on the back of his seat the other day. No name, just a tiny hot pink post-it that said, "Cindy, Call Me 555-555-5555" (except with an actual number). I don't recall anyone on that flight making an effort to flirt or get me to notice them, which means either A - I am oblivious, 2 - he (or she?) sucks at flirting, or C - s/he really didn't make any effort to be memorable. I don't even recall who was sitting in that seat, though my pilots were all for finding out. (Is it weird that, on every single trip, I call the pilots I'm flying with "my pilots"?) I assured them that was unnecessary and would probably upset my boyfriend, which led them down a whole new path of ridicule. For instance, they hypothesized that the mystery-number-leaver was like a secret shopper for boyfriends, hired by Eric to bait me, to see if I'd call, or to see if I'd tell him about getting a number from a stranger, or if I'd hide something like that. My pilots then decided that it didn't matter that I have a boyfriend, and they wanted me to call the guy, and/or to get even more numbers. They even offered, on subsequent flights, to announce that I was looking for phone numbers, and they scolded me for hiding in the galley during a delay, telling me I sure wouldn't be getting any numbers that way.

I would sigh and say, you see? You see the shit I have to put up with? But it was one of the funniest trips I've had in awhile. It's nice when you can actually talk and joke around with your pilots, even if you are the butt of many of the jokes.

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In other news, I have Christmas off! More on that later.

November 1st.

Last year on Halloween, I was on a plane. It was my first ever trip on the Saab, my favorite beastly plane, and I was finishing up my inflight training. I impressed the pants off my instructor, whose last student left much to be desired and made me even more awesome in comparison. My very sweet-yet-weirdly-hardcore instructor showed me how to fill out the catering supply list, and she drew a festive little ghost for the caterers. She was wearing Halloween socks, which she told me were perfectly acceptable, as long as they are mostly black.

I got home in plenty of time to be able to drive to Duluth, where all my friends already were, and I called scheduling feeling hopeful. Note: Never call scheduling feeling hopeful. I told them I was off of OE (Operational Experience, aka inflight training) and wondered whether I would or would not be on reserve the next day. As it turned out, I would. My hopes sufficiently crushed,I went about my day at home, trying not to think of the mischief my friends would no doubt be getting into.

I was actually called for a trip the next morning (probably because I was the lowest person on the list, having just reached official status less than 24 hours previously), and that day I stepped foot onto the CRJ200 for the first time. A good plane, but not what I had in mind for Halloween weekend.


This year, I wanted to be home for Halloween. I wanted to dress up and go out, and I wanted to eat way too much sugar and drink way too much... sugar. *cough*

Jess was planning on a huge bash at her parents' house, with costumes and games and food and sugar and drinking and everything I could want in one convenient location. Schedules came out at the end of September, and lo and behold! I did not have Halloween off in its entirety, but I did get off by 2pm, which really is just as good. I was going to be Ariel, because I've strangely never dressed up as her for Halloween, even though I've loved her since I was five, and I already have the red hair.

Well, the party fell through long ago, as did my plans for Ariel (someday, though. Someday.), but we managed to scrape together a pretty decent time. I was a little nervous because, strangely enough, D was going to be there (that's the thing about having an ex-fiance - you still have a lot of the same friends!) along with, even weirder, his new girlfriend. Awk-ward! It turned out to be kind of awesome, though. There was a large group of us, and we spent most of the night at a gay bar, where some very compromising photos of almost everyone were taken, and where our group ended up somehow commandeering the stage towards the end of the night. It was an interesting night, to be sure, and I don't think I could've hoped for anything better, given the strange circumstances.

And I got my wish: I was home, I was in costume, I had way too much sugar, and I drank way too much.... sugar. Er, jag bombs have sugar, don't they? But I got even more than I'd originally hoped for, because I had a blast with my sister, my amazing bff, a friend who flew in Florida, and my very fantastic boyfriend, who very kindly put up with my obnoxious drunken self.

Plus, I was a lolcat. So that is pretty much awesome.







As a bonus, I discovered while looking through my pictures that my black pants were see-through in the stage lighting. It may or may not be time to invest in some new pants.

November 12th.

There are many important things happening in December. Near the beginning of the month, I think it might be someone's birthday. That same weekend, there's bell choir, in which I play five very important bells (most of the melody line of Ave Maria). There's the big Christmas choir concert, which I've never gotten to sing in before, and the very important rehearsals for said performance. And, of course, there's Christmas Eve and Day and New Year's Eve. Because of all these very important things, and because of my intensely busy November, I decided to take December off.

See, my company has been offering Company Convenience Leaves (CCLs) every month for quite awhile now. It is simply an unpaid month of leave, during which (with a few extra arrangements) you can still travel. I wondered if they'd even offer one for December, and I was thrilled when they did. I applied as soon as I saw the memo, and then had to wait and wait for the awards to come out.

Well, they came out today. Eighteen Detroit flight attendants got a CCL, thirteen in Memphis, and FIVE in Minneapolis. Yeah, I am not one of those five.

I may end up actually bidding to be on reserve in December, in a desperate effort to get as many of my wanted days off as possible. Oh, Lord help me!

[Nov 23: I did, in fact, bid reserve. I want high speeds, and if I don't get them, I'll be on call. I find out tomorrow which doom I face.]