Sunday at Chicago O’Hare

It’s three in the afternoon and I’m sitting at the Chicago airport again, now waiting for my flight to Seattle.  I’ve got a couple more hours before we board and I’ve eaten a bacon cheese hamburger and drunk a diet coke in hopes of trying to calm my stomach.  Maybe oatmeal would have been better.  I ordered oatmeal this morning from room service but was too busy, too tired and a little too stressed to actually make myself sit down and eat it.  So coffee it was until now.

Speaking’s getting harder. 

I’m finding it takes more energy and more courage and more everything to pull off what I once did rather easily.  I think I’m tired.  No, I know I’m tired.  Maybe that’s what made Bozeman so fun.  I didn’t have to give a speech.  Instead I hung out with Kari and her friends and family and just relaxed.   But then it was easy to relax when Kari and her husband Collin, and Kari’s friend Lori Dawkins (and her husband Dale) did all the work.  It was nice to be spoiled like that.  Usually the only time I get spoiled is when my surfer guy’s around so being pampered in Bozeman was a treat.

Newport, RI was also a treat, though, just in a different way.  It’s such an amazing place to visit and I couldn’t get enough of the history, the water, the boats, the mansions.  My only wish is that I’d had more time there.  Well that and the company of Ty Gurney.  I would have loved to have gone on one of the ghost tours with him.  It would have been cold at night (I was freezing during the day!) but fun and romantic because I would have clung to him like mad.

The only real negative to crisp cold Newport is the fact that I looked 100.   I’d forgotten how wrinkled I get in cold weather. 

Then this morning I spoke, and you know, despite having notes and things to say, I was really really nervous.  I had butterflies the size of pigeons beating around my insides.  I don’t know why, either.  Maybe I’m getting too serious in my talks.  Maybe I’m sharing too much about my life.  Maybe I’m just not entertaining anymore. 

Clearly it’s time to stay home and write. 

Or time to stay home and sleep.

Or time to get on a plane and go to Hawaii.

Oh yeah.  I’m doing that Thursday this week.