When discussing options for a family vacation, Son (nineteen) requested a trip to Austin, Texas. He’s a huge fan of Rooster Teeth (“Comedy. Gaming. Community.”) and wanted to attend their RTX event (don’t ask), July 7 and 8. Hubby and I looked at each other. Why not? We’d take the week. Austin in July couldn’t be as hot as Austin in August. We were wrong.

Austin is so hot, it’s cool.  As the lady behind the counter of South Congress (gently used) Books said, “Austin is very progressive— for Texas.” It’s a melting pot. My shrinky heart swelled to the city’s anthem: Keep Austin weird! Yeah, baby. Bring it on.

For the past week, I’ve reveled in the simple pleasures of being home: eating fresh food, sleeping in my own bed, fearing for my life from Hurricane Irene. As dawn dissipates night, my state of usual mental health returns.  Which highlights how cognitively scrambled I was for the two weeks we traveled in the UK. How emotionally unstrung. How demented. From jet lag.

The discombobulation wasn’t as bad— but almost— as that on-call-night-from-hell when I was an intern. The first two years of residency training, I was on-call every third or fourth day, depending on the clinical rotation. Which meant a thirty-six hour shift, usually with no sleep, every three or four days.  

I had just finished admitting a patient to the floor from the E.R. It was 4:30 a.m. At 6:00, the regular workday started, leaving an hour-and-a-half to catch some zzz’s if, pleasepleaseplease, the pager didn’t go off.  I bolted from the desk to go to the call room and the pager went off. A sick feeling impossible to describe came over me. 

When the E.R. nurse told me the patient was 86 years old, a nursing home resident, febrile and delirious, I knew: urinary tract infection, blood culture, IV. I put my head down on the desk and sobbed, completely undone. Why? I had to calculate the osmolality of the IV fluid and could not call up the equation. It was gone. 

Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed this...

Today is the last day of our two-week trip in the U.K.  And it’s the first that I don’t feel like I was left in a pocket and run through the wash cycle. Jet lag. A wee problem, that. Son kept me company in this misery. Hubby wakened daily raring to go. Good he was nobbled by incipient arthritis of his hips, or we’d have killed him. 

Befogged from flying across the Atlantic instead of sleeping, we no sooner stepped off the plane than the problem solving that IS travel began. How to get from the airport to London (train). From the train station to the hotel (tube, or underground). In the tube, which line, and then which platform. All this while buffeted by surging and eddying crowds. 

My jangling ganglions stuck out at least a foot from my body. Hubby, bright eyed and bushy tailed, laughed at me. Shamed, I let him lead us onto the wrong train. 

For maximum joy and cheer, fly between December 24 and January 1. The strip search and pat down by security kicks off the festivities.

Each seat in the plane has been sold to two people. Snickers and knowing looks go round the waiting area with the free ticket offer (good for one year) in exchange for taking a later flight. All the later flights will also be double booked.  Music wafts by…. I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams….