Mile high clubs and Moldova (assorted travel notes).

1. I prefer not to wake up at 3.30 am for early flights. On the other hand, 3.30 is better than 3.15. On the other hand, 3.30 is worse than 3.45. Life is relative.

2. My brother Jonny. Flew in from Toronto to hang out while I’m shooting in NYC. Have loved every minute we’ve been able to share together. Including the minute where I took pictures of him sleeping and possibly drooling. Because that’s what good brothers do sometimes.

3. Dunkin Donuts coffee is surprisingly good.

4. Nothing makes me have to pee again than standing in line to board. Except for getting a window seat with two sweaty bearded sleeping gentlemen in the two rows blocking my access to the aisle.

5. Married couples from Moldova who have returned from a month-long family visit are nice people, as a general rule.

6. There’s that wink-wink phrase: “the mile high club.” Honestly - and I suddenly feel like an unamorous, unadventurous, unskilled, unlimber person, all of which (I feel) are antonyms for who I actually am - but I spent a few minutes time examining the architecture of my aeroplane bathroom, and I still marvel at the apparent flexibility and acceptance of discomfort that must arise (phrasing deliberate) in choosing to be part of this club as a two-person tango. It’s a thing, right? But also, how do people not seem to ever deal with lines, or other people waiting? Is that not a thing? Because it seems like there’s always a line. I don’t know. It just seems like one of those things that people casually reference, and again, in a rare moment of honesty, I have to admit that it’s not an experience I can check off from my life experience to date.

7. It is sometimes not easy to navigate a tiny airplane aisle if you are a tiny person, and it may be even less easy to do so if you are a not-tiny person, and if you have an aisle seat and a have just fallen asleep with your head in your hands leaning forward on your tray and a not-tiny person bumps you as they’re working their way down the aisle to the bathroom…then it is a good opportunity to practice the Golden Rule (aka empathy) and recognize they’re probably already self-conscious and adding to their embarrassment or awkward navigation by piling on another annoyed look, sigh, or gesture is probably not going to help them. Or you. At all. So be kind. I wrote this to remind myself.

8. It was so good to see Becca and my kids again. I was excited to see all of them. Becca was excited to see me. The kids noticed that I was back, I think.

9. We went to a coffee shop and got coffee. Kids did homework and read books and we watched a giant SUV with a giant Trump sticker on the back and marveled at the mind gymnastics required to still support such a human. Also part of the automobile decorations: a flag (of the American variety), a second bumper sticker remind drivers that “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Democrat,” and a third that read in all caps “STOP GLOBAL COOLING.” I don’t get it. I try to understand. I do. But how? But how can the meanness, the petty cruelty, the casual, ever-shifting relationship with facts and truth, be of such allure to so many?

10. The state of our family’s culinary consumption is such that Costco is a necessary outing on a regular basis. Of course it’s a delight to run into friends and family, which we did as well; Becca’s cousin and her husband and son helped form a little semi-circle around the samples area, carts rising high with peanut butter, grapes, bananas, and children.

11. Our daughter gave a dangerous ride in the shopping cart to her younger brothers. Somehow they survived intact, and we headed home with food. Food for a week. Or a few days. Onward. Good to be home, in my own bed, and with my own non-airline bathroom. Maybe not 5200 feet high, but 900 ain’t bad. Again, good to be home.