The quickies keep us going.

Not those types of quickies, get your mind out of the gutter! Hehe. Quick trips, quick catch ups, quick gym sessions, quick showers. Things need to be quick when you have a child. Well 95% of the things need to be quick and 1 or 2 things you can take your time doing. And now my mind has joined yours in that gutter. I mean technically it’s not our fault. Everyone needs dopamine it’s animal instinct 🤷🏽‍♀️ lots and lots of it too. And that’s enough about that.

Airports. 2 hours sleep. After 4 night shifts in a row. 2 hour drive into Gatwick traffic. Park your car in the overpriced car park, wait for the shuttle bus and cross your fingers it’s not too full which it looks like it is, because boarding starts in 40 mins and you got an update from BA saying that the flight is “very busy”. Aren’t all flights very busy? The slow walkers who travel in packs taking up the entire passageway. The old people who you can’t blame for being slow but you still feel a bit annoyed with anyway. The strollers who stop in the middle of the walkway in duty free to smell perfumes and obviously have nothing else to do if they reached that early for their flight. Or maybe they are just very organised. Those ones really get me. I hope to be them one day though. You rush through the airport cussing every man jack under your breath to find the screen that shows your gate. And somehow they wait until 5 seconds before boarding begins to let you know where the gate actually is so you have to make an informed decision right then and there whether you have time for a coffee and wee or you prioritise one and fly back to the bloody screen which by the time you fly back to… STILL has at least 10 mins to show you the gate. And your bladder starts to burn because you’ve gone and prioritised coffee of course and now you def don’t have time to get to the bathroom before the gate shows up.

Ugh. Just please bladder work with me, don’t spite me I’m sorry next time I’ll pee instead of get coffee (maybe). Because after having a child your bladder has a mind of its own. And I didn’t even push a baby out so imagine the poor ones who did. And it does it’s things at exactly the wrong moments like when you’re on a plane and don’t have any more liners because your carry on was too big so they made you check in your damn bag. Or at the gym when you have to do squats amongst some very good looking people and you should have worn black tights today but instead you wore grey so all you do is worry that you look like you peed yourself. Because maybe you did. You finally speed walk to the gate amongst the stampede, sweating already, slightly smelly, anxious and tired and then you have to stand there and wait until the 100 men in priority have checked in, all of whom forget they have to get their picture taken after scanning their boarding pass and none of whom actually have their boarding passes ready to go in the first place. So you and your bladder wait. Then finally you get onto the plane and it’s so small and rammed out that you can’t get to the bathroom so you sit upright in a very uncomfortable seat inevitably in the middle and of course arriving first. So you have to get up to let the window sitter in. Honestly window sitters should be obliged to get onto the plane first. God forbid they have to pee. And even worse if they are a woman who gave birth vaginally because they will likely have to pee multiple times on that 1 hour flight. But you can sympathise because you’re in the same damn boat. Plane in this case. And you hope for their sake that they have extra liners. And you don’t get annoyed at them. In fact you also go to the bathroom 63 times in that 1 hour flight.

Then the flight begins and you’re on BA so you feel some degree of safety and relief that it’s not Easy Jet but then the pilot sounds like he’s either talking in his sleep, now arising from a very deep power nap or being choked and you lose your faith entirely in any airline. Then the plane sounds like it turns off mid take off and everyone has a sort of confused slash horrified expression as we all look out of the window – don’t really know why because all we can see is down anyway. Unless you are over the wing so that’s all you see and you cross your fingers that a piece of it doesn’t fly off. At least it’s not night time so you don’t have to worry that the light on the end of the wing is actually another plane about to crash into you and have a heart attack until your brother points out what’s actually happening. Has this only happened to me? Anyway over the wing is supposed to be the safest seat right? Wrong. Ain’t no such thing as a safe seat on a plane babygirl.

Then we start going sideways and I wonder if the joystick is broken. They use a joystick right? Like you know when you play Mario Kart and you need to take a small left but somehow end up taking a very hard left and flying off the screen and dying? That’s what was happening I think. He must be a new pilot. Overpushing the joystick. Then we started nosediving I swore it was the end but somehow they got their act together and landed us safely. Again. Gosh it’s just such an emotional cycle, travelling. Hopefully we will always land safely despite what absolute craziness happens in the skies. Well, sky, just one.

Speaking of which, why do the pilots need to constantly update us on how high into the bloody skies we are? All it does is freak people the f out anyway. Does anyone really care that we are 32,000 feet up? I don’t. I feel sick every time they update us about how high we are. The fact is that we are right in the middle of the sky squished up uncomfortably between people who are coughing and sneezing and kicking your seat from behind and it would be really nice to not be bothered with the constant reminder that we are so high up that if anything goes wrong we’re all gonna die. So please pilots can you hold off on the height updates lol. Okay I’m done. Hiiiiii Edinburgh! I’ve missed you. Oh wait it’s over. Siiiiiiigh. (I hate when people type sigh but it was truly how I felt at that moment).

It was amazing being back in Scotland at Vets Now’s head office where we were taught just a few months ago by the cream of the crop to prepare us for this very challenging job. Very, very challenging. But very very very satisfying. So it’s worth it. I love my job and my people! Will miss all of you❤️ time to plan our own reunion. And get back onto another damn flight back home. Sigh (real, true, genuine feeling).

Dear God I’m really sorry that recently, I only pray before flights. I promise that if you get me there safely I will try harder to pray more often and say thanks too. But if the next time you hear from me is just before my next flight, please make it safe again and then re-read this. Thanks in advance. Steffi G- spot. Hahaha kidding I’m a grown up now we don’t say that anymore. Thanks, just Steffi G.

(Spot)