Don't Build Your World Around Volcanoes Melt You Down

I'm writing this as I sit on hold with American Airlines – so far it's been 3 hours and 11 minutes.

A volcano erupting? Honestly, it's so ludicrous that if it were fiction no one would believe it.

I burst into tears at around the 1 hour 45 minute mark, I think it was. Nothing like a volcanic eruption to make one feel trapped and very, very, very far from home. In my old job

[They picked up! 3 hours, 14 minutes and 42 seconds! Unfortunately, they can't get me to DC in time for my sister's baby shower even if the damn Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) volcano stops erupting. Have had good cry and now have returned my attention to learning to say Eyjafjallajokull six times very fast. Bet that will impress all the boys more than my Charleston. But I'm getting ahead of myself.]

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming: In my old job, I learned that perseverance, a bit of charm, and a refusal to accept defeat can go very, very far when one wants to move mountains. (I spent one New Year's Eve using a mixture of pantomime and pidgin Sinhala to convince a busload of Sri Lankan monks to tow my car through some flash flooding so I could get to the northeast coast of the country for a tsunami story I was reporting.) I threw everything I had at this particular problem, and have taken some tiny comfort that all of the above – even when combined with the very deep pockets of one of the world's most successful magazines (also useful in tough situations) -- wouldn't move this volcano. Airports in Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt are closed, so getting on the Eurostar won't help. Nor will a ferry – Dublin is also closed. It wasn't meant to be, was it?

Suggestions of how to tell my dad – in the nicest possible way – that I will throw my computer across the room if he sends me one of his super-super-chirpy reports (Dad can make even the peppiest of cheerleaders seem lethargic) on the party?

Besides the occasional, erm, eruptions of tears, I'm actually doing OK -- certainly much better than I was six days ago. Yes, it's been six days without a binge, which seems like a minor miracle, especially given last night.

I went to a Roaring Twenties party feeling quite self conscious in my flapper dress – and also not at all in a party mood, thanks to all of the airport problems. I felt sad and sorry for myself and also grumpy (couldn't find other silver T-bar shoe, tired of racing around, among other things) and fat. Not exactly a winning party formula, is it?

Arrived at party to find text messages from two friends I'd raced to meet that both were stuck at work. Not good. Normally I can handle a party on my own (it used to be my job), but last night was a struggle. Finally the friends arrived and I cheered up slightly. At one point started chatting to a guy – all fine for about 15 minutes. Then he cut me off literally in mid-sentence to walk across the room to his friend.
Yikes. I should have laughed at what a total tosser he was, but instead I felt rejected. All I wanted to do was eat – and then go home (and probably eat some more). Instead I stayed at the party for another hour or so, by which point it was 1:30 am and I just wanted to go home -- and eat. And eat way more than the apple and/or dark chocolate square I had promised myself was all I'd eat when, inevitably, I arrived home after the party hungry.

I split a cab with a friend who lives around the corner and the cab dropped us off at Highbury Corner – three open newsagents to pass to get home. Danger. Danger. Danger.

I confess I almost gave in. There was a little voice saying: Oh, just have one chocolate bar. Or one muffin. Oh, what's the big deal if you binge? You can just start again tomorrow.

I drowned out the voice literally by repeating to myself: Just get home. Just get home. Food will not help. One foot in front of the other.

Not exactly a mantra, but it helped.

I got home, ate an apple and a leftover quarter of a cookie (can I get a holla, as a friend says, for my restraint in actually leaving over a quarter of a cookie in the first place?!) and spent an hour on the phone with American Airlines, rebooking myself on a flight that obviously was cancelled today, prompting the three hour on hold saga. Then I went to bed.