How Not to Chill

I have quite possibly the worst air-travel playlist imagineable. I have entitled this playlist "Chill" because it's supposed to, you know, help me chill...so anyways, it's a great playlist for if you're relaxing in a hammock like I was earlier this week, but it's just not so great for a day spent in airplanes.

Let me explain: I arrived at the Muscle Shoals airport (a miniscule airport - I was catching a hopper flight to Nashville, where I'd then fly with Southwest to Cleveland) at 5:00am, with a carry-on and a personal item (milking each for all they were worth) and my oh-so reliable boyfriend who patiently walked me inside and sat with me while I waited for the TSA people to open up shop! You know it's early when the TSA people aren't even ready for you. We watched some informercials on TV, with a few sporadic minutes of news in between. Coincidentally, one of the nice TSA people was one of my sorority sisters' dad, and he noticed I was wearing my Phi Mu letters so I chatted with him for a couple of minutes. I would say what a small world at this point, but the Shoals has such a small-town atmosphere that I'm not surprised. Either way, it was very nice to see a friendly face so early in the morning.

I promise I'll get back on track here. Jeremy decided that it was time for him to go on to work so he left me with a kiss on the forehead and a strong hug. Proceed to security check, because Mr. Fults and the other nice TSA person were ready for me now, and begin to board the plane. So, this plane was unbelieveably small. I hadn't been on a plane that small in about a decade. In fact, there was only room for about 12 people on the plane, including the pilot and co-pilot. And, it was a front propellor plane which freaked me out just a little. The pilots were super nice and accomodating, but the plane was so small and I just got too nervous. And so, logically, I turned on my "chill" playlist to shuffle me through my long day of travelling.

The first song that came on was called "Sedated," by one of my new favorite artists, Hozier. At this point my nerves are speaking to me. They're saying "Yeah, I wouldn't really mind being sedated right now..."

The next song on the line up was "Crash Into Me" by Dave Matthews Band...and my nerves said to me, "lol @ u."

Coming up next was "Such Great Heights" by Iron and Wine. But let's be real, here. The chorus to that song says "they will see s waving from such great heights..." Uhm no, thanks. Not what I wanna hear while the propellor is rattling the entire plane. I said to my nerves, "Can u not?"

Finally, I came to "Sing" by Ed Sheeran, which really did calm my noisy nerves, not because it's a very relaxing song, but because it literally has no implications of being about flying high up in the sky and waving your arms wildly as the smallest commercial plane ever crashes into the ground.

After that, I looked out the window and all I could see were tiny, twinkling gold lights and grey clouds and it was beautiful. My little hopper flight made it to Nashville just fine. In fact, as I drafted this post on my iPhone in the "notes" app, the tiny trusty plane touched down and landed me safely at the Nashville International Airport where I will do this all over again in about 2 hours...maybe on this flight I'll pick a new playlist.