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I'm heading to Chicago today. In a splendid turn of events, both characterized by luck AND repeated, diligent attempts spanning the last 25-some-odd years, Stacy won tickets on the radio to see Duran Duran. I make no bones about the fact that Duran Duran was, is, and will always be my favoritebandeverohmygawdtotally, even if Fantasy Simon Le Bon is way better than Reality Simon Le Bon. (Stacy and I watched him in action in a hotel bar last winter in Philadelphia. He's a man-ho. A hot man-ho, but a man-ho just the same.) So I'll be hanging out until Sunday with my sister Jen, her lurve Brian, and Stacy, letting my hair blow in the Windy City. I cannot wait.

What I CAN wait for, however, is the plane ride. I cannot explain it fully quite yet, but in the past few years, I've developed a crippling fear of flying. I've flown hundreds of times and I have a rough idea of how planes work. I know what turbulence is. I know that the pilot wants to get us to our destination safely just as much as we want him to get us to our destination safely. I've read Ask the Pilot on Salon.com to allay my tension. This should not be an issue.

Back when I wasn't lame, I used to get a rush during takeoff. Hell, on my honeymoon alone, I racked up 11 flights (the best way to get around New Zealand is to fly) on all different kinds of planes, in all different varieties of weather, and I barely noticed the takeoff and landing of any of them. And now any time I fly, I need to pop a Xanax, close my eyes during takeoff and landing, and escape in my iPod while imagining the plane soaring over hill and dale with 30,000-foot stilts propping it up. I suck.

It's no coincidence that this inconvenient development transpired around the time I became a crappy passenger in general — a by-product of both getting older and having a sense of loss of control in certain areas of my life. For instance, if I'm not driving, I can't look ahead of me to watch where we're going. I can't allow myself to get a sense of the driver's speed, I can only look out a side window, and whenever possible, I sit behind the driver so my view is as obstructed as possible.

Now none of you want to take me anywhere. I just know it.

One place I did make it to safely? Lisa's apartment, Sunday night. She cooked a delicious dinner of butternut squash ravioli and beet/carrot/cucumber/fun-greens salad, we made ice cream, we had a dance party, we watched "Xanadu." (I pretty much ruined the dance party, though. It was, specifically, Action Dance Party, in which one person calls out an action — say, mowing the lawn — and you dance it out. Then the next person calls out an action — say, putting on lipstick — and so on. When it was my turn, the only thing I could think of was, "You're in labor!" followed by "You need an episiotomy!" Yeah, I'm so much better at Trivial Pursuit.)

But really: Ginger-flavored vanilla ice cream and Gene Kelly on roller skates. Beat that.