The news that’s fit to print

Leaving—on a jet plane. DO know when I’ll be back again. The very next day!

I’ve begun planning for my whirlwind trip by picking out, washing, drying, and hanging up the five wardrobe changes for my television debut. Hanging the clothes up is a fool’s errand since they’ll be shoved, er, placed nicely, in a suitcase soon enough, but I can at least give them a fighting chance, right?

My schedule is to leave Sunday morning, spend all day on planes and in airports after getting the customary pregnant-woman-who-refuses-to-use-the-body-scanner pat-down (Happy Mother’s Day to me!), arrive at night, film the next day from 9a.m.-4:30p.m., fly away that evening, doing the whole pat-down, airports, flights thing in reverse, and arriving home around midnight local time.

If this is what’s considered “living the life” of a writer, it might be overrated. And did I mention the flights I’ve been booked are on United? Heaven help me.

So I’m planning six outfits for being on-site less than 24 hours. The sixth outfit being my travel clothes, which I’ll essentially wear two days in a row.

Y’all, this is nuts!

Last night I lay in bed considering the pat-down situation. I didn’t think I’d have to deal with this again. I’d been invited to speak to a large youth group in Chicago, probably as a result of someone  seeing my How to Marry an Idiot article, but didn’t mind too much when that fell through. I mean, who wants to go through the humiliation of pat downs again?

Then this came up. Five television interviews? How could I refuse?

So in bed I was already imagining my strategy. Maybe if I say nothing but just go stand in front of the metal detector, at this point quite obviously pregnant, someone on the other side will see me and motion me through. Last time I ASKED permission to use the metal detector and was denied. Maybe I’ll have better luck if the TSA are female.

“Just give me my papers, yo!” This could be me. I have that hair. Just give this woman a significant paunch… and maybe a face… and we’re there!

Imagining that not working, because it probably won’t, I pictured the pat-down lady making me face the masses like I had to in D.C. I went through my argument against this in my head. It didn’t go well. It ended in me titling my next blog post, “Screw you, TSA!”

The other fun fact is that a week or so ago I somehow pulled a muscle in what I’ll call my “lower back.” How or even when exactly this happened, I don’t know. I just eventually realized that it was painful to walk normally. Rather than getting better with time, in hopes I’d be healed by the trip this weekend, it’s only gotten worse. So now I am hobbling about looking like, well, a pregnant woman waddling. For the record, I have never had the pregnant lady waddle. And yet, for TELEVISION, I will be waddling.

Perfect.

[Pics from Pixabay.]