Almost there, but not quite.

Soon come, I’ll have my own sweet pillow on my own sweet bed in my own sweet little home with my sweet boy-o. At least that’s my tired fantasy that’s keeping me chugging through the air miles.

Meanwhile, leaving town went smoothly, and then it didn’t. As I was patting myself on the back for getting Dot and myself to the airport with time to spare to catch our respective planes, Dot opened the side pocket of the bag Andy asked her to carry back. In the side pocket, Andy’s passport.

Holy shit.

I had already swapped my UK sim card out of my cheapo cell phone, so we didn’t know that after we left the flat Andy had been calling. Somewhere around the time we realized we had his proverbial travel papers, he had as well.

As I tried to figure out what the right key combo was to use my iPhone while it was internationally roaming, and I was trying to call a Scottish-bought cell phone, Andy’s, we heard the public address system click on and page Dot’s name. So we ran back downstairs away from our departure gates and to the ticket counter.

Only problem was the ticket counter chicks were about to end their shift, and therefore, they didn’t want to hold the passport for Andy to pick up. Dot’s plane was close to boarding (might have already been), and we weren’t through security.

I think a touch panicky or maybe just anxious, she left and I searched out the lost and found essentially, and I hope that turned out to be a secure place to leave behind someone else’s documentation. I made it to my plane with fingers crossed and a quick call to Andy to let him know where to go and with whom to talk.

Here’s what I learned from the adventure.

First, if you ever leave something to be held at Edinburgh Airport, they’ll charge you 5 pounds for the minding. Fuckers.

Second, if you carry a buddy’s bag, don’t cop to it when you find something important in the pocket. Airport personnel sure do get touchy what with that whole “Did you pack your own bags, are you carrying anything for anyone else, do you have a bomb?” line of questioning.

I guess if I never hear from Andy again, he never made it out of bonnie Scotland.

Thank fucking god, all of the goddesses and a fair amount of lesser dieties. I got a straight night of sleep.

There have been a couple of dawn awakenings to listen to a young man’s existential journey. Last night the young man in question, a friend, a comic, a truly sensitive soul, was advised to let me the fuck sleep. Thanks, Chris.

One good thing about leaving home is it reminds you of what home is. I miss M. I miss the regular pace of my day. I don’t miss working. Because, duh, that would be fucking stupid.

I’ve been here a week and only performed four times, and I feel burnt out from the foreigness, the walking, the sheer enormity of choices on what to do, where to go, what to see. There are literally hundreds of venues and thousands of shows. In the crowds and confusion, I was never able to find the woman I know from San Francisco who was doing three shows.

If I feel tired, I can’t even imagine how my comrades who spent a month and performed nightly feel. To say nerves seem frayed would be an understatement.

The highlights of yesterday were twofold for me. First, the Walsh Brothers invited Andy, Dot and me to do sets on stage, and there were actually people in the audience (a rarity in a town hosting such a gigantic amount of competing shows). It was like the olden days.

Second, was the literary pub crawl of a few Edinburgh spots off the tourist main stream. The guide, Allan Foster, was incredible, a natural story teller with the kind of trivial notes and little comments on which I thrive.

We started out at the Royal Oak and heard a rendition of Loch Lomond by Alan Hunter that would have put a wee tear in the eyes of the hardest of men.

I know I’m hear for comedy, but I was it was so great to have a pint and some music.

(Dot scooted out to get a pie from the Piemaker during the song that had me riveted. Sometimes I think I’ll never be quite the comedian others are, because there are too many other things I want to hear.)

Here’s why I know I am no motherfucking Janis Joplin rockstar playa scene queen no more (as if I ever were). Now, I fucking enjoy breakfast after a sober, good night’s sleep as much as a all night carouse.

Janis once said “I don’t sleep. I might miss a party.” I’m on edge thinking I might miss the talk of a healthy or big break-y in the morning.

lAlthough my will, my desire, my absolute resolve to sleep was not meant to be. Two divergent realities kept me from my true quest.

Firstly, there are two forces by which travel will always be focused by me. One is moving my bowels, either too much or too little, I will say no more since too much has been said. The other is my complete inability to just fucking sleep anywhere or any time strange and different. Just can’t do it.

I tend to sleep not at all or not well in unfamiliar surroundings. I admire the restive, peaceful faces when I have had houseguests. (M., I think, is the same way judging by the tosses and turns counted in our first nights of any stay.)

Right about now, I’m one thin sleepless line to the psychotic breach of, say, a tortured visitor to Guatanamo.

The second conspirator against my sleep chances and beyond myself was a troubled friend. The only thing is that I can say decades of shitty, shitty relationship experiences and living through to the other side of a veritable Goldilocks, just right existence, give me a bit of gravitas. Having lived through stupid and lovelorn, I feel qualified a bit to offer advice and a shoulder on stupid and lovelorn.

Another cup of tea might make me right as rain or tick me a few more degrees toward edgy psychosis.

Few days down and a few to go.

I can feel myself missing the fresh produce and my California lifestyle, not least of which involves M. It’s good I wandered out of my comfort zone to remember what comfort is.

Guiltily, I broke from the pack this afternoon. Truth is I am one shit companion in the running with the pack gestalt. I ain’t saying I’m some cool, lone wolf, but I fucking do love the illusion of freedom.

Headphones on and a random shuffling of songs on the iPod were accompianment to a calming stroll through the ancient ramparts of an ancient city.

I”ll have some pictures some day, but with shit wi-fi it might be back when I’m ensconced in Silicon Valley, where wi-fi runs free in the streets or at least works a bit better. (It’s the same crappy connection that’s keeping me from properly editing the previous post.)

It was a guilty pleasure, as I escaped on my own at the expense of Dot, from whom I wasn’t actually looking to de-pack. She kindly got cajoled into helping a guy from Boston with a videotape idea he had, and I completely opted out and went on my merry way.

The thing is the guy isn’t someone from the Boston comedy scene I particularly like, because I don’t particularly trust him. You throw on top of that that I don’t live in the burg no more so don’t have to care one bit about whatever power or cache helping him might remotely have. Nope, completely a formula, for me anyone, to walk.

The other thing is that one little mantra around the M. and D. household is time is currency, too. Don’t give it away unless you really want to and know what the commitment means. I say “no” now in this stage of my life, and I regret less.

Still and all, poor, much kinder Dot, willing to lend a hand, didn’t get her own tourist shit done. For that, and any way I might’ve helped, I have a twinge of regret. (But it’s smaller a twinge compared to the glacier-sized remorse I would have felt for killing a day helping someone who could give a flying shit about me. (The Bostonian in town, that is, not Dot.)

I’ve seen a few shows, which is cool, sticking to my gameplan of keeping on the fringes of the fringe, rather than getting some of the main market, hype, good-reviewed fare. Nope, I dig the crazy underdogs.

I’ve also done the Naked Comedy Showcase. I hope my family and loved ones appreciate that I traveled 8,000 miles away to perform to another country rather than sully my name locally now that it’s a “pofessional” type show rather than a private fundraiser as I had done before.

After this adventure, I am a reformed woman. I shall not venture the nude comedy route any further, unless something so monumental and life-changing was about in the universe, like burkas became an absolute law, internationally and universally. THen, I might protest.

Without that, the thrill is gone. From a transcendent experience that helped me free up some stage fright to an awkward gimmick, I think I”ve run my full course.

Godspeed to those who pick up the baton and keep the torch alive. (Or some other series of quasi-grand sounding mixed metaphors.)

I’m dozing at a decent, well before sunset time so I’ll take that as a sign. The sign could either be that I’m tired and need rest or that my writing is so excruciatingly godawful that I’m snoozing midsentence as the dullness of my prose sedates me.)

I have no fucking idea what day it is, but it I’d not far from dawn. I performed not at all, but could have gone naked. I did see two shows, though. One was great–Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds. (Gotta check the spelling and providea link I the morning.) {Fixed}

I’ve eaten enough fries for three coronary bypasses since I’ve been here. My California weakened body kept in celebration to have had something green and fresh.

Sleep, that’ a why else I be needing.

After sleeping well into the Scottish afternoon, I’m feeling so much less like a zombie.

Been taking photos, and we finally saw a couple of shows. Also got to tag along our way into a couple of private parties for the artists.

I quietly snoozed a bit in my chair for the shows, which is a bit of a shame, since I was digging the performers. It wasn’t numbed boredom, it was totally the old body giving out.

I’ve now seen two women vomiting in real time. There’s also evidence of others having done in the same littering the streets. It’s like a Mardi Gras thang, without out the constant hot tits and including an accent that is tough to handle.

I finally have loaded some photos up, but I haven’t sorted through and deleted the shit. If you want, have a look.

Made it to the U.K. in one piece. OJ-Simpsoned across the concourses of Atlanta’s airport to barely just make my connection because of a flight delay from San Francisco. (That’s OJ Simpson, like the old Hertz car rental ad with the yardage-gaining sports here. I didn’t stab anyone.)

Sadly, while I made it from Terminal A to Terminal T in Atlanta and sweating and out of breath jumped as the last (or possibly second to last) person on the plane, fate decided my luggage needed a soujourn below the Mason-Dixon line. A polite, Scottish accented courier dispatcher says my bag will be here where I sit between now and 12 p.m., maybe 1 p.m.

As a consequence, I spent a jetlagged, smelly bit of dazed and confused yesterday in search of pants. I learned that apparently Scottish babes must embrace the camel toe like nobody’s business. A dozen pair of pants were tried, hundreds examined and for fuck’s sake they all had that hoochie 1- to 2-inch zipper that barely covers a chick’s pudenda.

On top of that, I’m apparently approaching plus sizes on this side of the pond, or I just couldn’t work it the fuck out what size I was. And, a lot of the knees and thighs were tight. Until yesterday I never worried about the relative obesity of my knees.

Moments before taking a straight razor to my jugular in over-tired despair, I found a mildly frumpy, outdoorsy store with plain, normally genetalia covering, black trousers.

For fuck’s sake.

Apart from that adventure, it was an uneventful-ish day of sleep deprivation.

Here’s the basic rundown of the past 24 hours, where I may have slept two hours on the plane max.

9:45 a.m. leave my home (and start missing M.)
11:05 a.m. get all settled into a completely full plane
12:30? p.m. plane finally takes the fuck off an hour or so late
7:50 p.m. finally get off the plane from San Francisco vaulting through hurdles of shitheads who completely and selfishly ignored the request to let people with connections off first (Oh, how I hate watching morons struggle and block the aisles slowly getting their carryon shit together.)
8:05 p.m. after running from about gate A30 down to A1, taking a turn down a long corridor and vaulting down a series of escalators to get on some kind of mono-rail train contraption to be transported to Terminal T (14 letters down the alphabet) got on the goddamn plane
8:06 p.m. mini seat dance when I realized I was alone in my seat block
9:05 a.m. landed in Edinburgh (and watched the luggage carousel gradually empty before filing the inevitable lost luggage report)

From there, which was with the 8-hour time difference already a 16-hour adventure, it all got fuzzy as I met up with my old friends, walked the streets, shopped, drank tea, called home, tagged along to the performance venues, saw their shows, drank some beer, ate some chips with curry and had what they think is a fruit smoothie but was warm juice, threw myself on stage for a short set of tired and rusty (but funny) shit, drank some water and ended in a comically bad haunted walking tour let by a foppish goth boy and highlighted by a woman in the tour group upchucking in an agent vault below the city.

One day, and I’m already exhausted.

I want to write, but worrying incessantly and making my self crazy is much more convenient.

Work has been a fucking bear and a half. Not the kind of bear of which my sweet boy-o has suddenly become enamored. Well, it ain’t bears per se, it’s nature shows on 47 inches of high definition broadcast.

He don’t need to go to Alaska, he can see more details on the television box.

Anyway, work has sucked me dry with worry and the cliched “cat herding.” I bailed for a vacation just in time to miss chapter two of finalizing a strategic plan. I guess the flattering thing to my hand-wringing overwork is three different folks are each covering a part of what I’ve been up to and a whole other chunk is waiting until I get back.

I’m a workhorse, I am. Slow, plodding and a bit dim but steady or something.

I haven’t wanted a vacation quite so much in quite some time. I’m looking forward to the 13 or 14 hours or so it will take me to get to Scottish shores. Mostly, I’m looking forward to the utter anonymity, the aloneness, the journey in which not one single soul will know me or need speak to me for hour after blissful hour.

I’ll have reading, writing and an array of iPod assisted sound, music, podcast, audiobooks and videos to keep me going.

Stop the world, I’ll be freely circling it. Quietly.

‘Course, I’ll miss M. and be sending pictures home to him and looking at his visage courtesy of the iPhone photo gallery.

Looks like the Edinburgh adventure will be thoroughly weblogged. I, as fucking always, will have my trusty MacBook under my arm and Dot apparently got her laptop working over the last day or so.

Stay tuned. Sleep I must now.

And, I must muse about the fact that I never imagined myself in one of them there relationships where I can head out on vaca and come back to a home. Maybe part of the journey is the return.

Or something else so fucking corny I want to stab myself and lap up the treacle released with my life spirit.

Congrats to Jenna Bush. I think marriage is how the Bushes stop drinking. Or maybe it’s marriage and Jesus.

In one week, I’ve heard about two heart attacks (one fatal) less than one degree of separation from either M. or me. At the same time, a family member is collecting for a American Heart Association walkathon. Damn, I best not be eating no pork for the rest of the week.

The grocery-store sitting homeless guy gave me the chuckle of the day. (There’s like a total of three or four dudes in the streets of this part of town, and a couple seem to take turns at the store parking lot.) He cracked on M., teasing him that he sees him running around all the time but didn’t seem to be losing weight.

I don’t know what I love more, a street person fucking with M. or that M. is apparently so charismatic and shit that even the homeless dudes recognize him when they see him.

Looks like we found a flat with a spare room in Edinburgh. Between our friends already there and the spare room, neither Dot nor I will be turning tricks or rolling with the Scottish homeless. That’s cool.

On the downstroke, though, one of the emails we were exchanging with Debbie and Christine referenced a birthday this week for one of them. 23 tender years’ young. As M. would say, ripping off Nancy Grace, “Oh Lord.” Me and young womanhood, ahhh, imagine me shaking a cranky, old-lady finger and tsking.

Man, oh, fucking, man. Tired, that’s what I am.

And, anxious, and guilt-ridden, and all sorts of worrying. Why? Don’t know, other than I’m a maroon.

Yesterday’s angst was cutting edge and teenagery. There was a neighborhood “block party” on the main drag. Live music, some kinds of street fair food and booths for the local merchants. Even better, it was a celebration of the town being “green.” We got a free energy-saving light bulb. Whoopee.

Here’s the thing, we strolled around our well-heeled suburban village. We laughed at our well-heeled suburban village. I took the free Hoodsie-style ice cream from the AAA insurance guy. I enjoyed it.

Then, our officer appeared on his police bicycle.

The local constabulatory came right out to the apartment when my own damn bike was stolen shortly after we moved here. A young man with a name like Officer Jason or Justin or something youthful sounding came on by and took notes and took the sliced bit of cable as evidence.

We’ve run into Officer J. a couple of times since then, and he recognizes us as criminal victims and newcomers to town. He’s quite friendly and lovely and all. And, last night he was on a tricked out mountain bike and even played the siren when I asked if a tricked out cop-carrying mountain bike has a siren.

I only wish his bicycle helmet had a red cherry flasher.

The thing is, though, when the fuck did I become a cheery complacent surburbanite chatting up and palling around with the police. That’s the man, and I know he’s keeping me down, so when did I start being friendly about that.

I have exactly zero anti-establishment edge at this point in my life. I am a squishy, soft, contented bovine-like animal. Or, wait, that might be ovine. Fucking BAAAHHH.

Today as I rocked out to de-stress the stress fest at work, it all came to a crystal clear head of irony. Punk rock on a iPhone.

I’m keeping my ownself down.