Home Again, Home Again

I'm back, did you miss me? What, you barely noticed I was gone? Okay, fair enough. Well, I did go somewhere. Namely, back to New England to visit the madre for her birthday. Highlights of the trip included:

-Drinks in H's garden who when we first got to her house, was on her hands and knees in the back yard fashioning a table cloth from an old piece of fabric.

-Tasty grilled squid and an even tastier chef at a neighborhood hot spot in East Cambridge.

-Visiting the farm we lived on in Westminster West, Vermont when I was first born. Yes, that's right. Hey Pretty lived on a farm as a baby. We got to see the sheep feed.

-Mountains, lots of 'em.

-Discovering a new appreciation for glassblowers, who by our estimation, are even more badass than carpenters, or as my mom said "what, the power tools that carpenters use aren't dangerous enough, they need careers where they handle molten glass all day?" Regardless, if I go missing it's because I've run off to Vermont to shack up with a professional glassblower. You've all been warned.

-Perfect weather. 75 degrees and sunny. Low humidity.

-Not smoking for 4 days. How did I pull this feat off, you wonder?

Well, my last trip home sans nicotine was a nightmare, so in preparation for this one I started weaning myself off a week in advance. I didn't quit altogether but for 7 days I limited myself to between 0 and 4 a day to slowly accustom my body to several days without cancer sticks. Suffice to say, I was an emotional wreck all last week. Before my flight I purchased a bottle of St. John's Wort and an emergency box of nicotine lozenges. If any of you kids out there are contemplating taking up smoking, I have two words to deter you from that endeavor. Nicotine Lozenges. The possibility that you may some day have to use them to wean yourself off cigarettes should be reason enough to never take it up in the first place. Those things are foul. So much so that I only resorted to using them once, and it stayed in my mouth for all of ten seconds. The St. John's Wort, however, was a life saver. I figured that since people use Welbutrin, a common anti-depressant, when quitting smoking, St. John's Wort could work as a viable (albeit weaker) alternative. I popped six pills a day and experienced a fraction of the mood swings of the week before, and generally felt saner than I have in weeks, although that's not saying much. I think St. John's Wort will just become a regular part of my daily routine from now on. Since returning, I have smoked two cigarettes. Not because I craved them that much, but because I missed the ritual. But having experienced such a major part of the withdrawal process, I am seriously considering dramatically curbing/quitting the habit altogether. I love smoking, but I don't love the idea of breathing through a hole in my throat when I am 80. I can't say that I am 100% certain about this, so if you see my smoking this weekend, please don't remind me that I'm quitting. I expect this process to be a gradual one.

What has also helped are the three yoga classes I have attended in the past week. I used to go at least once a week but stopped after the great ankle injury of 2005. Now I remember why people go. Because not only does it give you killer legs, but it makes you less crazy and teaches you how to take a deep breath when faced with an emotionally taxing situation. I think the deep breath is supposed to center you, but it also prevents you from immediately saying the first thing that comes to mind when somebody is being a jerk, or even worse, from punching them in the mouth. In short, yoga is good. Everyone should go.

The final high point of the trip was missing my flight. Have you ever been to the parking garage at Logan International? Well, it sucks. I got to the ticket counter 30 minutes before my flight was due to leave and Patrick, the nice man behind the counter said I couldn't check my bag because it was too late and because I like to over pack, it was too large to go through the X-Ray machine and count as carry on. He didn't offer much of a solution so I batted my eyelashes, and proposed in the most sincere and level-headed tone possible for somebody on the verge of an anxiety attack that he find a later flight for me and my suitcase to travel on. He immediately took me up on the offer. My original flight had me laying over in New York because it was the only way I could book a ticket from Boston to DC that cost less than 500 dollars. Not ideal, but I had accepted it and bought an extra magazine for the layover. Well, my new friend Patrick thought this was absurd so rather than subjecting me to another layover, he put me on a direct one to DC. See? sometimes it pays to be late, or as my mom said, "It always pays to be a pretty girl who can sweet talk an airline worker into bending the rules." Either way, things worked out pretty well.