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.