Irregular

I am going to South America. I know I’ve already told you that. But now I have proof – a confirmation e-mail from Delta Airlines.

Since I’m sort of long on time and short on money, I opted to save $250 by purchasing a ticket that forces a 14-hour layover in Atlanta. I will arrive there at 6 a.m. and depart for Buenos Aires at 7:45 p.m. Rather than dreading a long boring wait in an airport, I’ve decided to welcome this as an extra leg of my adventure. I’ve never been to Atlanta before.

I’d love advice from those of you who know the town. For those of you who don’t, did you know that Atlanta is home to the world’s biggest puppetry museum? A quick visit to Atlanta’s Web site has given me 50 fun ideas for a day in the phoenix city. If I can squeeze it all in, I’m thinking I’ll do a Segway tour of the city, visit CNN and, of course, the puppetry museum. A Segway tour, that’s right. I know you’re jealous.

I do need to be careful not to spend the $250 I saved by getting the cheaper ticket. So I’d still love some help planning my big day in Atlanta.

I waited quite a while to buy the ticket for a few reasons – I wanted to make it possible for a friend to join me when she gets out of school in June. I wanted to give my knee a little extra time to heal and the medical bills time to arrive. I also wanted to spend some good quality time with my family, friends and that boyfriend I mentioned before. I’ve also frivolously planned a couple domestic vacations.

Delaying my departure has had a few side effects. Because I’m leaving later, I’m still in this country. This country is significantly more expensive than the ones in South America. That means the savings I built up to sustain me during four months in South America was at risk of dwindling rapidly.

So I have this job to keep the whittling to a minimum. I’m not waiting tables, but there are a lot of similarities between waitressing and getting people to sign up for Frontier Airlines Master Cards at the Denver Airport.

As in waitressing, there are good sections and bad sections and everyone wants the good section. There are also those people you work with who always make more money than you. It’s inexplicable. When you’re waiting tables with them, you wonder if they just turn their tables faster, talk sweeter, flirt more or trick their customers. You wonder what magic potion they’re taking. And how you can get your hands on it. The same is true in the credit card biz. There are those stand-out people who get twice as many people to sign up as I do and I don’t know why or how they’re doing it. I’m charming. I would sign up with me.

The airport, like a restaurant, is full of interesting people who are a delight to talk with. There are also a few rude folks. At least in the airport, the rude ones just walk past in a flurry instead of sitting in your section and complaining endlessly before stiffing you.

The feeling of working at the airport is also similar to that of working in a restaurant. I start the night worrying that I won’t make any money at all, that I’m wasting my time. I get to a certain point and know that I’m Ok, but still worry I won’t make enough to really make it worth it. Then I reach that magic number and start to wonder if I could leave at the end of my shift with a fortune, but usually end up falling a little short .

The biggest difference is that people go to restaurants because they want food. They don’t go to the airport looking for a credit card. That makes it a bit of a tough sell. Good thing I can handle rejection. Thousands of people walk past me shaking their heads every day. Only a few say yes. It makes me LOVE those people who say yes.

Another side effect of my late departure is that I’m homeless a lot longer. One of the most confusing questions people ask me right now is, “where do you live?” Nowhere, everywhere. In my car, maybe. At least when you’re traveling in a foreign country no one asks you such complicated questions. I spend a few nights on an air mattress in my friend’s house in Denver, another with a friend in Littleton, a few with Joe in Colorado Springs and some days with my parents. It’s exhausting.

I’m almost never alone except when I’m driving or taking a shower. And I know that when I’m traveling it won’t be much different. I will be in a different bed every few nights and on the road every few days, constantly moving. Though I will likely never be alone, I’m sure my chances of getting lonely will be a lot higher as I’ll be among strangers most of the time.

By the time I come back and try to settle down, I will have been without a regular life, without regular work or a regular place to live for eight months. Eight months. That’s a long time.

I’m not complaining though. Even though it’s exhausting, I’m loving this irregularity.

My boyfriend

Joe and I climbed into the back of the American automotive manufacturers’ biggest and fanciest creations the day after Christmas. My parents were in the front seats, my dad behind the steering wheel and my mom in shotgun.

We were driving this luxury behemoth of a vehicle to my dad’s sister’s ex-husband – uncle Gerry – on the east side of Illinois before going to visit my mom’s family on the west side of the state. It was just another typical Miller family road trip... but for one thing. My boyfriend was with us.

The weirdest part of this whole scene is not so much that my parents invited my boyfriend along on this trip or that Joe and I were allowed to rent our own hotel room with a king size bed while traveling with them or that my mom told my aunt Cathy it was OK for us to sleep together in the same room or that we had adjoining rooms at the hotel in Galesburg. The weirdest part is that I have a “boyfriend.”

One friend who met Joe on a fun weekend excursion to Chicago at the end of our Illinois adventure said he’d never known me to be much of a relationship person and asked how I liked it. I like it. It’s a lot of fun and not so different from being single except for the sleeping arrangements, which I rather enjoy, and always having someone to go on adventures with and share stories with. It’s nice and not that hard to adjust to in practice.

But in theory, it’s a little more challenging. The hardest part is getting used to being a couple in public. It’s that word, “boyfriend,” and all of the social implications that go along with it that are taking a little getting used to.

That word is such a foreign one in my vocabulary that I feel a little shy using it. When I introduce Joe as my boyfriend or tell strangers about my “boyfriend,” I feel a bit like a little girl admitting that she secretly shaves the fine blond hairs on her legs. It’s like I’m too young, not yet mature enough to handle something so serious as a “boyfriend.” The commitment invoked by the word is parallel to that conjured by the words “mortgage” or “career.”

Of course, I know this is ludicrous. I will be 29 years old on Wednesday. What 29-year-old woman hasn’t had a boyfriend? Most have had dozens of them. But I can’t help it, I still blush when I say it. I feel awkward trying to tell people about him. Maybe it’s because I somehow missed the practice many of my girlfriends had. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never really dated and I didn’t have my first “boyfriend” until two years ago.

I’m pretty sure most of my relatives had decided I was a lesbian. So it was pretty interesting introducing “my boyfriend” in the flesh to all of my aunts and uncles and cousins and even my grandmother. She raised her eyebrows and smirked at me when I told her who Joe was at the nursing home.

I suppose when a guy travels across the country with your parents to meet your aunts and uncles and visit your grandmother in a nursing home, he’s officially earned the title of “boyfriend.” I don’t know what else I could call him.

Pinball

I walked down the A Concourse last night, hungry and with aching legs, to Quiznos. I noticed another of my co-workers in a yellow button-down chewing on a toasted sub and asked to join him.

We chatted for a bit about various things. He lives in Aurora, just about as close as you can get to the airport. He proudly reported that it takes a mere 45 minutes to get from his home to our station in the airport. That’s as good as it gets.

I’ve railed against long commutes my whole working life and now I’m making the most ridiculous one there is. As a bonus, I am commuting from a different place almost every day. I cart this green rolling bag with a broken zipper everywhere I go. I went almost a month without doing my laundry and recently had to buy new underwear.

I confessed to my new co-worker over peppercini -stuffed subs that I have spent one single solitary night alone in a real live bed in the last five weeks. Otherwise I have danced from one bed to another with several air mattresses in between, never staying more than two days in any one place.

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then I noticed he wasn’t really breathing as he tried to decide how to respond.

“Oh, god,” I said. “It’s not like I’m sleeping around with a bunch of guys.”

This has been a fabulous domestic adventure. I’ve seen so many of my good friends and family and I’ve been able to spend some quality time with the people I’ve been missing, the people I try to talk to on the phone every now and then and visit once ore twice a year. It’s nice being able to come and go from my parents’ house without feeling guilty about leaving them. I’m “home” for a long enough period that we know we’ll see each other and won’t have to wait months for my next vacation.

But it’s also exhausting. I have watched four episodes of Glee and two of a British comedy called Fawlty Towers on the computer with Joe and otherwise haven’t watched so much 30 minutes of another TV show or movie. I have had zero passive entertainment in the last five weeks. The only times I’ve been alone have been in the bathroom, shower and during my long commutes.

“It sounds like you need a nap,” my co-worker said.

Indeed.

So I’m not waitressing, but I am on to another totally random job, getting people to sign up for Frontier Master Cards at the Denver Airport. I do believe in what I’m selling. I got one myself about six months ago. And even though it’s a pain in the butt to get there, I like working at the airport. It’s interesting people watching and I feel like I’m standing in the center of the portal to the Universe.

If you come through, please come find me and sign up. It’s a cutthroat commission gig, where I can make $300 a night or $20. Somehow, $20 seems more egregious when I have to go out to the airport to make it than when I had to drive down the street from my parent’s place to wait tables at Applebees.

I’m not yet finished ricocheting around the country. I’m heading to Aspen for another knee surgery next week and to Illinois to visit my grandmother, see family and catch up with friends in Chicago the week after Christmas. I don’t expect that I’ll get many nights alone until I leave for South America in February or time in front of the TV until I come back in the summer and decide what to do with myself.

Who knew not working could be so much work?

Three weeks ago today was my last day on the job at the News & Guide. But I've been going non-stop ever since. I apologize for my long silence but Internet access and time to myself have both been hard to come by.

I have feverishly visited friends and family across the country. I spent the first week seeing scenic Kansas, visiting the OZ museum and getting a lecture on how to be funny from my professor friend. The next two weeks, I spent quality time with family and met relatives who existed between 4.5 years and 45 years without me ever laying eyes on them in the flesh. And then I went to Disney World.

I went to Disney World the only way anyone should ever really go to Disney World -- for free. My friend works there and served as my personal tour guide, optimizing my time there and making sure I rode all the best rides and saw all the best sights. Her husband works for Sea World, so we stopped there to check out the marine life and feed the dolphins with his co-workers before I flew off to Colorado.

I already had a funny little gig set up for this weekend before I got on the plane. Today I paced up and down two short isles of women's clothing in Costco for six hours. It was probably the most boring job I've ever done and I'm going back for more tomorrow and Sunday. But at least the free samples are yummy and the people who man the stations are happy to give you seconds, thirds and even sixths.

I'm still twisting around, trying to catch up with everyone and leaving little time to catch my breath. Starting next week, I will be trying to get people to sign up for Frontier Airlines cards at the Denver International Airport. So if you're ever flying through, give me a call. I might be there.

Sorry I don't have anything insightful or thoughtful to say this time around. I just wanted to let everyone know where I am and that I haven't abandoned the blog.

Hasta Luego.