What I think about when I'm not thinking about anything

o I'm lying in bed the other night indulging in my usual far-away fantasy thoughts when Plosh brings up politics. I don't remember what, but it was something particularly gory and nasty and mean. Ruined the mood right there.

I tell him, y'know, I had a pretty good fantasy going until you brought that up.

Naturally, he wanted in. What fantasy?

Sigh.

Well, see, I like to think about having wings. I reviewed a book a while back called The Year of Our War about a guy who was the only one in his world whose wings worked the way G-d intended. Or at least, the way the god in that world intended.

Ever since then, I've been trying to figure out the mechanics of how that would work. I calculate what I'd need in terms of wingspan -- I'm skinny in this fantasy, which helps -- to achieve lift. I also read somewhere that birds spend a lot of time preening to remove bugs and dirt and reposition their long flight feathers.

There are nights when I can't sleep and I lay awake imagining all this useless stuff about flying, until my back develops weird aches from overusing my wing muscles and I feel the need to fluff my feathers.

Unless I also grow tail feathers, I'd have to wear a narrow skirt while flying to catch the wind, which helps both with steering and braking to land. I'd look good flying around in a pencil skirt, maybe a dark maroon to contrast with the earthy browns and beiges of my natural plumage.

I swear I can sometimes feel air currents and eddies under my wings, that I can ride the thermals as the heat rises off the ground at midday, and if I stretch and then contract my flight feathers just so, I can do a belly-roll to impress all you landlubbers.

When I finally drift off to sleep, I have the same dreams as any Mommy; usually about five zillion horrible ways for my children to disappear or die. I wake up panicking until I realize the pounding against my ribs is from two tiny pajama'd feet kicking against me.

And then I wonder what my house would look like from the air.

Comments

[plosh]

I want everyone to know I did go through our medicine cabinet to find out what wonder drug my wife is taking. I'm pretty sure it's NOT the Ipecac.

I'm also pretty sure the air currents my wife is experiencing comes from our leaky windows. The thermals are from our heater.

[Nadine]

You are an artist!
You have wings of imagination that in their majestic sweep produce beauty.
How fortunate is your family.

[Ontario Emperor]

Who was the Greek character who flew too close to the sun, causing his wings to melt?

Until personal flying is improved, I'll have to stick with Google Maps (a 2-D representation, but good enough for me at the moment).

[Anne]

Thanks, Nadine.

OE, I'm shocked you haven't already downloaded Google Earth! Especially after I blogged about it a while back.

You get the satellite images in 3-D and you can do all sorts of neat "flying."

Try typing in Mt. Everest as a destination or the Grand Canyon or the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, for starters.

[Adrian]

Anne, can I ask what the fantasies, from which you were so rudely awoken, were about? Ot is that being too cheeky?

[Ontario Emperor]

Oops! Actually, I meant to say "Google Earth," but mistyped. My comment on the 2-D representation refers to the fact that in the general view, even if you tilt the image, it doesn't show 3-D buildings (unless you turn 3-D on, which I never do because I'm usually Googlecruising a place like Baker that doesn't include the 3-D stuff).

[Ontario Emperor]

More on Google Earth. A programmer named Tim Hibbard, as a demonstration of some technology that can be used to track city vehicles, has set up a website where he tracks himself. In my "Technoblog" post Where's Tim, and why you should care, I talk about his demonstration site Where's Tim. The page shows his location on a Google Map, but you can click a button and fly to his location via Google Earth.

[Anne]

Adrian: The fantasy is just basically of me flying very, very far away from poopy diapers and spit-up. That's pretty much it. And also, I'm much skinnier in my fantasies, without having to diet or exercise.

OE: Very cool, and very over my head. If they can put a locator device on matching socks, I'd be all for it. GoogleSocks, anyone?