the problem with getting off of a plane with a seventeen-hour time change under your belt is that, well... your head is complete mush. you're thinking that you've just stayed up all night and that it's some time after breakfast, but in reality you stayed up all night and it's a few hours before breakfast. but here you are, home in america, and you've just eaten the lousiest breakfast the airline could scrape together from the iced-over contents of the septic hold, and a cop is barking at you through a megaphone while more cops run up and down the corridor with dogs on leashes. must be back in the good old u.s. of a.
you try to sleep but nothing comes. you think, maybe if i eat a huge meal, i will throw myself into a food coma and i will be able to at least nap. but all the meal does is give you the quasi-diabetic rush of energy which you'll need when you burn through the same story eight times as all of your friends start calling, one after the other. they've all gone braindead while you've been away, too. you pick up the phone, they hear your voice, and then they ask that question. are you back yet? you laugh, you are a polite person.
a couple of days later you are bragging about how you've "beaten" jetlag, that you are all caught up on sleep, that you are indestructable, that you want to go out drinking. you wake the next day shaking and sweating. the thermometer shows a fever of 100 point something. you buy stock in advil's parent company and unwillingly admit that you are no longer nineteen years old.
you stay in the house as it rains. the rain is pleasant to watch, and you actually get things done around the house, like laundry and cleaning the kitchen floor. you watch a few sporting events and a particularly interesting episode of Nova. it's about supernovas and how scientists are using them to figure out how quickly the universe is expanding. you can only think of the young alvy singer in the film "annie hall." what has the universe got to do with anything? you're here in brooklyn! brooklyn is not expanding!
Posted by snackfight at November 10, 2003 04:17 PM