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.

Identity crisis

So, the other day I imagined myself at a dinner party months from now and someone asks me what I do for a living.

For more than six years, I’ve been able to say I am a professional newspaper reporter. Sometimes I add that I am also a waitress. I want to emphasize that I am not dissing my role as a waitress in this post. I love waiting tables and will probably do it long after I quit calling myself a journalist.

But being a journalist has become such a deeply-rooted part of my identity. I started a newspaper in the fifth grade (though it only printed two and a half times) and went on to edit both my high school and college papers. I’ve been a journalist a lot longer than I’ve been a waitress, a lot longer than I’ve been anything – including a “woman.”

Even in school, my role at the newspaper often trumped my role as student or even my role as a teenager or young adult. In high school, my newspaper friends and I trolled the empty building until after midnight when the paper was getting ready for press. In college, I frequently dropped the prints off or sent the final pages by e-mail at 6 a.m. before going to my 8 a.m. Buddhism class, where I reached a new level enlightenment by learning to sleep with my eyes open and pen moving.

Journalism is something that gets under your skin and infects you forever. Many of my closest friends from college worked with me at the newspaper. Even though they no longer work in journalism, their e-mails still adhere to AP style.

I know there are a lot of journalists our there right now trying to figure out who they are without their jobs. It’s going to be hard for me and I planned it this way. I can’t imagine how hard it is for those who were surprised by that loss of identity.

I saw a friend this weekend who gave up her life, including a job as a counselor, to start something new in a new place. She’s waitressing while she looks for other work. It’s tough. It’s super tough in this economy. It took her a long time to find the waitressing gig. I went to drinks tonight with another friend who gave up her teaching career to pursue her passions in the restaurant industry and build something with the man she loves. Then I came home to an e-mail from another friend who just landed a new job she’s excited about after months of looking. But she left her journalism career and is struggling with the idea that she might not ever be a writer again.

I am leaving for an adventure, which makes me feel amazing and I’ll be proud to tell people what I’m doing. But I admit that I am nervous about what I will be when I come back. What will I tell the stranger who asks me what I do for a living? I can’t say, “I’m a waitress ... but I used to be a journalist.” It’s as lame as saying “I’m an accountant ... but I used to be the quarterback on my high school football team.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with being an accountant).

My worry isn’t that I will have to tell people I am a waitress. It’s that I won’t be able to tell them I am a reporter.

I guess I will say to myself what I said to my friend who e-mailed. Once a writer, always a writer.