Not exactly a sign of the coming Apocalypse but a disturbing portent that the universe is out of balance none the less, Mariah Carey has surpassed Elvis on the Billboard Charts for most #1’s with 18 to her credit. This puts her behind only the Beatles. The song that put her over the top is Touch My Body. A melody sure to go down in pop/rock history. The thing that puts this over the top, for me, is her humility concerning this great feat of hers. “Carey said being in such company was gratifying not only because of her personal success, but what it meant for women and minorities.” And what would that be? Exactly? That songs about sex sung while wearing little but underwear will earn them a place in music history too? I am not going to say that the Beatles wrote only memorable tunes that survived the test of time. They didn’t. Or that Elvis didn’t degenerate into a parody of himself in the Vegas years. He did. But why is that women who write and perform – in any genre – have to be naked or nearly so in order to do what men do (worse a lot of the time) with their clothes on? Not ironically the same article also mentions that Madonna had also recently surpassed Elvis for the most top ten hits with her tune, 4 Minutes. It’s about saving the world, I think. Perhaps I was wrong about the Apocalypse thing.
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Northwest in and out of Cedar Rapids has proven to be the riskiest leg of any trip to Dubuque. Perhaps it sits within a vortex of evil and goat sacrifices are required? More likely it is just a crappy airline. Airlinks to regional hubs are not high on the priority list of any airline. People in the fly over states are well and truly gripped by the balls when it comes to choice and convenience where air travel is concerned and the airlines know this quite well.
Arriving at the airport we felt fairly confident. The boards were reading that our flight was on time. It wasn’t pouring rain as had been threatened, and we had all the check on/carry on sorted and duly packed. At check in counter however we were greeted with the sadly predictable news that our flight was delayed an hour and a half, which put our connecting flight to Edmonton in jeopardy. Even worse, and pathetically less surprising, came the revelation that should we miss the connection, we couldn’t be accommodated on another flight home until 9:30 the following night. Welcome to Hellmouth.
Rob, of course, was unperturbed. Nothing about the indignities and sheer clusterfuckiness of air travel ruffles him in the least. He operates on the premise that since the world is populated mainly by stupid people, we should be more emotionally jolted by those things that do work and are fouled up. Shit happens most and anything else is a really good day. Since flying makes me nervous and, as I have mentioned, I am disturbed on a deep physic level by the TSA and all the other pseudo-fascist state things that masquerade as “protection”, any extra time “in the system” as Rob has dubbed it does not make my day.
We held back from going through security for a bit after the news, and I took Katy to the restroom for the third potty stop before boarding. It’s just easier to empty her out in stages. While we were in there someone several stalls down began moaning, groaning and god-damning the Lord before announcing to, the Lord I presume, that she had “diarrhea god-dammit”. Pretty sure that the Lord needed to hear that bit of information as much as I did. Yeah, I couldn’t get us out of there fast enough. Judging from her old lady from Phoenix attire when I spied her exiting not long after us, I imagine that her gastrointestinal distress was diet related because if she is anything like my folks (and she looked a contemporary except my mom’s attire isn’t as garish) her tummy is a dumping ground for any and all types of carcass, starch and refined sugars. However, on the off chance she was carrying some new variation of bird flu (vortex of evil, remember?), I wanted us washed and away when she emerged to – hopefully – wash her own hands.
By the time we cleared TSA ,where a guard actually gave Katy a dime (I know what you are thinking but clowns look friendly too) and got to the gate, our plane was know 20 minutes less late. We snagged a table near the only restruant/gift shop/newsstand/got you by the short hairs if you need anything shop, which was nice because there aren’t a lot of those (tables) to be found anywhere in most airports and we enjoyed the free wi-fi (vortex of evil, Carol Anne, stay with me and do not go near the light). As the later arrivals to the concourse arrived we received more than a few dirty looks for our comfy table. Mostly from old women. People of the “greatest” generation have a more acute sense of entitlement than any teenager I have ever known.
By the time we hit Minneapolis we were barely late at all. As Rob pointed out, our pilot from Cedar Rapids was “one with the plane” and we made our connection easily. On the flight, Katy slept and Rob and I finished the film Failure to Launch which not so ironic to us anymore, turned out to be a movie about a widower who was having trouble moving on and allowing himself to love again. We don’t even try to find these films. They just come to us. Was the world so loss focused before? We were so clueless then.
Customs in Edmonton was a breeze. One moment of pause when the officer asked Rob if he was Katy’s father. I had to tell him that Katy’s father was dead but fortunately didn’t have to pull out the death certificate to prove it. It’s always nice to not have to prove it.
2AM found Rob and I snuggled up, passed out from exhaustion in our own lovely king-sized bed. Home.
The Immigration people called me on my honeymoon. We had, they said, overpaid a fee and would I like to use the overpayment to now apply for an open work permit or have it refunded? I can’t work right now regardless of status because my daughter is only in school half-days and though there is daycare, I had to put her in d/c when she was 7weeks old because I was the primary breadwinner in my former marriage and I just can’t put her back in it. She had so little of me during her early years mainly because her dad was so sick and I had too many boats to keep afloat. But I decided if they wanted to grant me a permit, why not? Keep your options open, as Rob told me. Today I returned home to a phone message saying that they were sorry but there wasn’t an overpaid fee after all and they would keep the OWP application on file should I want to send them a check to process it in the future. Just an FYI, when Immigration tells you that you can have the OWP this means you have got first approval on your permanent resident application. That was the second part of today’s message – first approval. The third part was that they would be requesting additional details from me/us and that would be detailed in the letter that was being sent this week, which means I will get it next week some time – and you Americans think the Postal Service down there is slow. The letter I am now waiting for is being sent from a town about 45 minutes away from where I live. So what do I do? I jump online, baby, and google to try and figure out what the heck this all means. Turns out that it could mean just about anything. Good. Routine. You’re fucked. It’s like playing Zelda or some other idiot video game where your character wanders from locale to locale searching under and over and between every freakin’ movable object and chatting up anything that looks like it might talk and provide you with a clue as to what/where/how. Rob, my solid Virgian rock, says – don’t get your panties in a twist. Wait for the letter. And isn’t that what I tell people? Don’t panic until you are told? But I am not panicking, I am just weary of non-information. Immigration (and my homeland is a primo example) should not be as mysterious a process as becoming a member of the Skull and Bones. It shouldn’t be grueling, the mental/emotional equivalent of water-boarding. Straight answers should greet simple questions. There seems to be an awful lot of creative interpreting going on by those in the know and those of us out here in the dark could use a little less of that and a lot more information.
