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*cross-posted to livejournal*

written for Gayle (the fabulous frequent flyer), Alli (the comet flyer), Amy (the ‘last breath of fresh air’ flyer), Mac (the ‘this is ALL normal, let me sleep’ flyer) and the girls (‘we love turbulence’ flyers)

There’s a science to flying.  There really is.  This bloke Bernoulli decided that air moves and then there’s wings and pressure and stuff like that, so all in all most planes should fly.

It’s relative.  It’s real and workable and happens 200 million times a week, and more people die in automobile accidents that will ever, ever, eva perish in an aeroplane crash.  It’s very safe.  It’s fast and reliable.  It’s proven to be popular with business people, singles, families, holiday-makers, queens, popstars, movie magnets and Doris from down the road.

How many things can we say that about?

Well answer me this — why every time I have to board a plane do I feel as though I would rather be at the dentist, pulling out all my own teeth sans anesthetic (with the dentist supervising) only to then eat some rusty nails and brush my gums with acid?

Hi.  My name is Rosie and I hate flying.

It’s not a recent dislike either.  If anything, having children and watching them love everything to do with flying has made me reevaluate my desperate despising of all things airborne.  (Not all things airborne, simply those off the ground with me inside).

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel over the last couple of decades.  I adore being in a new city, walking through historical sites, or exploring the local hinterlands and bush tracks.  It’s a fantastic and enriching experience.  Imagine missing out on seeing, smelling, tasting and embracing places in Europe, Asia, the Americas merely because one cannot STAND to fly!

But people do.  Sadly.  They miss once-in-a-lifetime opportunities due to fears of being enclosed in a steel capsule, catapulted along a runway at 3 trillion miles an hour, forced off the ground in the said coffin capsule, and left to endure hours of being trapped.

Only then to feel the weight of a mechanical thrust ‘die off’, so that engines slow and the steel coffin descends (via gravity, chance, luck…oh, and science) to thud down upon a concrete tarmac, decelerating 2.9 trillion miles per hour to a SCREECHING halt along the length of a very small driveway.

I could easily be one of the people who misses ‘going places’ because of a hatred of flying.  Interestingly, I don’t mind heights at all.  It’s not a worry about being up in the air and looking down on small objects that relates to a fear of being inside a Boeing 747— I’m at ease on bridges or in tall buildings (in my cape) or on something like a ferris wheel.  So, what is it?  Is the phobia specific or is it a general fear of being ‘closed in’?

I’ve narrowed it down to a few aspects:

Loss of control:  perhaps if I was flying the plane, I wouldn’t be afraid?  Doesn’t matter that I have no idea what to do, but at least I’d be calling the shots ; )

Claustrophobia: Yep, not too keen on being trapped inside with lost of peeps and not much space.  Perhaps if I had the entire jumbo jet to myself . . .?

Imaginitis: I think my mind envisages scenes from The Hindenburg, where there will be fire, screaming, panic, falling, disaster, CATASTROPHE.

Masochistically, I force myself to fly at least every other year.  I don’t want to, but my need to see family, friends and places that have been locked in my mind since I started reading is greater than the 1-24 hours spent in transit.  Usually.  If I could get out of it, I would.  If I could hire a Nimbus 2000/hydrofoil/fast catamaran/personalized wings/ride Edward Cullen’s back, I’d do it.  If I could afford to travel first class with 4 cabin crew to my one nervous flyer, I’d do this instead.  It’s all about increasing comfort and lessening panic.

And I’ve tried it all — meditation, alcohol, sleeping tablets, courses, talk therapy, music blaring to drown out the engines (before I realized my iPod would crash the plane, FFS), alcohol, flying with a friend, flying alone, the Mile High Club (before I realized an orgasm might crash the plane) reading, writing, alcohol (oh, I’ve mentioned that one) .  . .

at my very worst, I suffer nervous anticipation about 4 weeks prior to the flight, listen to each news bulletin for breaking reports on flight disasters (they happen in threes, apparently) prepare my last will and testament (because I’m going to die for sure) say my final goodbyes, stop eating, live on anxious energy, stop sleeping, start being nice to people (so I might have more chance at the Pearly Gates given there will be a lot of other souls with me = competition) and generally get into a STATE.

It’s exhausting.  And this is before I’ve gotten to the airport, queued for tickets, had security tape threaded through my fragile psyche, visited the ladies at least 7 times, heard the clacker of the Arrivals and Departures board and associate that with boarding a plane, watched for people likely to create problems in flight, refused all food and drink lest I be sick . . .

Because REALLY?  THERE MAY BE SCIENCE RELATED TO FLYING AND ALL THAT WHO-HA, BUT IT’S NOT NATURAL TO BE SHAFTED INTO AN AIRCRAFT, PUMMELED AND MOVED AT THE SPEED OF SOUND, PRESSED INTO SEATS RESEMBLING CATTLE BEING TRANSFERRED TO MARKET, MADE TO BREATHE RECYCLED AIR WHILE EATING PLASTIC FOOD AND BEING ROCKETED THROUGH TIMEZONES, ALL WHILE FLYING THROUGH ‘HARMLESS TURBULENCE!’

And yes, I believe when there’s a call put through to the cabin staff in my area, and he/she picks up the phone and looks concerned, THERE MUST BE A FIRE/A TERRORIST/AN ENGINE COLLAPSE/A THREATENING THREAT on our plane.  The Captain is saying to the cabin attendant ‘get the passengers ready to brace, coz we are going down, and all going to die!’

Pfft!  As if a brace position will help for the love of God!  What’s IT suppose to do?  Prevent whiplash in the event of a plane crashing into a snowcapped mountain?  Stop a cut to the forehead while the jumbo jet pitches into the sea at midnight?

Flying is getting a lot easier for this sufferer of Aeroplane Anxiety.  This post might not indicate any healing or positive thinking on my behalf, but at least I walk down the entrance ramp and onto the fuel-smelling aircraft by myself now.  I don’t need a straightjacket or wheelchair to accompany me in!

Have a pleasant flight : D

*A couple of details are fictional in this account.  The author has NEVER dallied in The Mile High Club or worn a straightjacket while doing so.  Perhaps these things might have helped?

A series of posts based on life with elderly people and their increasingly obvious foibles.  These predilections are genetically inclined, so the entries are written with a great deal of love and affection.

Funky and Chicken are The Carpet Whisperers.

After the tremendous stress of laying their new floor feathers, Funky and Chicken decided they needed a break from their scientifically-renowned, pristine nest in Hygiene Heights.  They flew the coop, but not before Chicken had overseen the pre-departure ritual.

There is a reason behind cleaning the entire home before taking a holiday.  I’m sure there is, and like to think it is associated with walking into a respectable environment on return from the getaway.  But that’s only one element.  According to the Sanitization Scrolls of Domestic Godliness, Circa 1932, there are a myriad of reasons for vacuuming, dusting, detoxing the loo and scraping the shower recess prior to leaving for a few days away.

By the time Funky and Chicken arrive at any holiday destination, they are exhausted.

However, imagine the consequences, if one doesn’t clean before taking off on any jaunt!  There could be an influx of white ant (never pluralized to ants, because they come in a tribe), desperate to get to the tiniest morsel of sugar that dares to wisp the kitchen shelves.  What if there is a skerrick of sticky drink refuge lingering ‘pon the tiles in the hallway attracting vermin?

Or, what if a speckle of dust has accumulated on the coffee table, and Funky and Chicken return from hols to find visitors on their doorstep wanting to be let in immediately?  They would barge in after Funky and Chicken open the door with their overnight bags and instantly see said hideous speckle.

It’s highly probable it will happen.  When it does, it will be a calamity!

Chicken also believes that in the event of a robbery, the ‘best kept’ house will be easier to identify as ‘being robbed’.  So, if your home is in domestic disarray and has rooms resembling various pastures of landfill, when a thief (or gang — remember the ‘white ant’)  ransacks the place, it will be more difficult to prove that it’s been burgled.

Secretly, I think Chicken believes if a villain looked through their windows at the splendiferous sight of neat, he/she might think twice about trashing the place, and instead make themselves a cup of pepmint (that’s how it’s pronounced) tea and boggle at the new carpet.

It’s another major reason for leaving Hygiene Heights as an anti-oxidant rich zone while on holidays (ie: impregnating vitamins and minerals into the drapes, hoovering sterilized agents into the fixtures, giving the new carpet an organic carrot/beetroot juice cleanse).

The great news is that Funky and Chicken have returned from their ‘few nights on the river’ to a home that’s as unadulterated as they left it.  Dust mites have been deterred.  Microscopic, repellant-retardant things have been prohibited.  Home-wrecking gnats and gnarls of nature have been nullified.  Thankfully, their Berlin Wall of suburbia has not been breached, as any small Checkpoint Charlie had been blocked with Polyfilla and soldered with impregnable steel.

A relief.

Chicken called a relative an hour after arrival, stating how lovely it is to be back home, even though they’d had a great time away and the weather was superb.  Of course, she’s already unpacked.  A load of washing is on the line, because Funky had got the cuff of his good pants dirty when he’d (unwittingly, horrifyingly) walked through some mud on the way to the club!’

‘Oh, and love,’ she mentions to the relative, who is now thinking about the bits and pieces she still hasn’t unpacked from a weekend away in January.  ’Funky is out washing the car.’

Well, that was a given.  Funky would be washing his car.

‘It’s got bugs all over it.  Ingrained bugs, really, and he doesn’t want them to embed into the duco.  Imagine?’

Imagine.  Hell.  Ingrained bugs in the duco!

The amazing thing is, Funky hadn’t taken his car out of the ruddy garage for the entire few days away.  He and Chicken had been driven by Funky’s brother and sister-in-law ‘up the river’, and his car has laid dormant, under cover for five days!

It just shows that Hygiene Heights isn’t the suburb of sanitation it once was!  *tuts*.  There are bugs under the carport and they have infiltrated the Garaged Automobile of Magnificence.

Funky is recovering.  Slowly.  The bugs are dead.

When I was growing up, my dad didn’t like Little House on the Prairie. He thought it was soppy and that Charles Ingalls was too perfect, too soft as Pa.

I think Dad was secretly jealous.  You see, everyone in our house adored Charles and the way he was with Mary, Laura (Half Pint) and Carrie.  Oh, and with his wife!  Caroline was her name, if memory serves me well.  Charles Ingalls was Uber Dad of the Prairie.

We loved each moment of every episode.   The adventure, the childish mischief, the wilderness, the little actress twins running down the hill (as Carrie) and falling over in the credits.  The amazing buoffant that was Michael Landon’s hair!

It’s been so long since I’ve watched Little House that I can’t even remember exactly what time it was on TV, or even the day of the week.  All I can recall is being excited, anticipating the hour when we could sit down after dinner and watch it as a family. Dad would do so, mocking from his chair in the corner.  (‘that’s not how to build a house, that’s not how to canvass a wagon, there were no such thing as hair like that in those days’).

Tonight, I’m going to sit down with Pip and Pop and watch some Little House on DVD, probably 30 years since I last watched the wagon pull along the green horizon at the start of the credits.  I wonder what it will be like?  Will it be corny and eww, why on earth are we watching this? Will it seem so dated that we will laugh?  Will Charles have a bad hair day due to the three decades of being pressed into DVD format?

Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see whether a warm-hearted, family story of the small screen has survived the eighties, nineties and naughties to provide entertainment for a more ‘advanced’ viewing audience today.   Time will tell.

Have a great weekend!