- I am stuck in the Sao Paolo airport because there is nowhere good to go with a giant suitcase (I am not allowed to chek it in until 2 hours before the flight and no, there are no lockers)

- I got two hours sleep last night…yep, two

- On the flight from Montreal the flight attendent kept hitting on me which was really uncomfortable cause there was no way to avoid him - I have been suspicious of friendly men ever since

- The computer I am typing on has a sucky ass keyboard and I can not find the apostrophe (which is why I am avoiding all conjunctions)

- I am hungry but am afraid of the airport food - I will break down and try in in 29 minutes when my hugely expensive internet time is all used up

- I miss my husband, my dog, and my bed…in that order

- I need a virtual hug

Ok, so one of the best things about travelling for business is the glimpses it brings of the world of business class luxury and airport lounges. And so, even though my flight to Brazil includes two stopovers with a total wait time of 15 hours, I figured that it wasn’t going to be too bad since I could bask away the hours in the lounge.

The Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong is an endless parade of food. huge bowls of steaming noodles, six different kinds of dumplings, little hagan dass ice-cream cups. Ahhhh, delicious.

The British Airways lounge in Washington DC also puts on a pretty good spread. Cucmber sanwiches with the crusts cut off, British crisps, shortbread cookies. And of course a tea bar with more than a dozen varieties of tea.

The Air France lounge in Paris is full of pastries, chocolate croissants, fruit tarts, slices of real apple pie. And, of course, a wine bar with a daily selection of half a dozen wines from around France.

Actually Air France isn’t alone in providing alcohol (it just happens to be the best) all of the airline lounges I’ve been to before have been stocked with wine, beer, and hard liquor to pass the time away.

I say ‘before’ because I’ve found the exception. The ‘Admiral Club’ of American Airlines. The Admiral Club sucks. The Admiral Club has no food…except sad little sandwiches available at a cost of $7 each. The Admiral Club has no liquor, in fact, after your ‘one free drink’ coupon has been cashed-in you need to pay $7.50 for anything more than water from a water fountain or luke warm lipton tea.

What sucks the most about the suckiness of the Admiral Club is that I was counting on it’s non suckiness to get me through my hours of sitting around with nothing to do. I only brought a small book as carry on, assuming that I wouldn’t need too many distractions despite the hours of nothingness…I was wrong.

So here I sit, with a salary of about 3.5 cents per day all I have to boost my spirits. Lamenting the cost-saving measures which have left me with a $5000 airline ticket and not a cucumber sanwich in sight.

When my brother was about three years old we were watching a hockey game and the announcer said, ‘the shot from the point hit the goalie in the logo’. My brother broke into hysterical laughter which prompted strange looks from all of us. ‘Daniel,’ I asked, ‘what’s so funny about that?’. “Jaime,” he answered, “you’re a girl, you don’t have a logo so you don’t know how much it hurts when a boy gets hit there.”

Then there’s the story of Bert’s little sister who was in the waiting room at the doctors office when she was about five. Along with a bunch of other kids was an old lady snapping at all the kids who came too close to her giant flowered purse. Justine, with all the innocence of a blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl asked, “Mom, why is that lady mean?…Oh, I know, she’s mean because she’s ugly. Or maybe she’s ugly cause she’s mean.”

And then there was this morning. Bert had just woken up and was a tad on the groggy side. He grabbed a t-shirt and struggled to put it on. With both arms in the sleves but his head still tangled in the shirt Bert shouted in frustration, “Where’s the damn exit? I can’t find the exit!”.

By and large I am one of those people who will try pretty much anything (legal) just for the heck of it but there are a few things that I have never done because the thought of doing it scares the heck out of me. This includes:

Riding on the back of a motorcycle in traffic - my fear of this might be based on my one experience driving a dirt bike…in a wide open field I drove straight into a giant hedge riddled with barbed wire. Other than a few scratches and imbedded thorns I was fine but still, the experience left its mark.

Singing alone in public - when I was in highschool we had the scariest choir teacher ever and he used to make us sing in front of a videocamera so he could grade us. We would have to go into the practice room one-by-one and sing a series of scales, etc. I always thought the whole thing was kinda weird and to this day my voice gets all shaky even at the thought of singing solo for other people.

Eating bugs - the botanical gardens in Montreal once had a bug-based picnic, you know chocolate covered grasshoppers and the like. The whole idea of such a thing freaks me out. I’m not terrified of bugs (except spiders) but when I think about eating them I have visions of spiny wings jamming up my small intestine or something. I know it wouldn’t actually happen but hey, why take the chance?

When I was in grade five our school burried a time capsule under the about to be asphalted basketball court. I remeber that we all had to write predictions about what was going to happen in our own lives. In addition to the usual hover-cars and vacations in space I wrote about my career…as a farmer.

I described in detail how many cows I was going to have (300) and how I was going to make sure that the milk from my cows was extra healthy. I was going to have a horse and a russian wolf hound and I was going to ride through the woods every morning with the dog running beside me. My house was going to be made of stone and was always going to be warm in the winter. I was going to have bright coloured flowers everywhere and I was going to hang my laundry to dry on a line out back.

What I didn’t include in my imagined life was a husband, children, or any vacations of any sorts. I’m not sure what the rationale behind this was. Maybe I was still going through that ‘ewwww boy germs’ phase and maybe I already knew that the thought of sleepless nights and days with no peace and quiet would scare the hell out of me. But the no vacations thing?!?

Bert once said that it would be kinda fun to have a farm, I believe my exact reaction was…”Bert, do you remember how hard it was to find someone to take care of the dog while we went on our honeymoon? Well imagine how much harder it would be to find someone to take care of 300 hundred cows a horse and a dog.” I mean seriously, how do farmers do it?

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I didn’t know what I wanted when I was in grade five, and I’m really glad that time capsule thing wasn’t a binding contract becuase, let’s face it, cows smell.