There are few things that can pull me off-course from sitting (or standing) at my computer and doing what I can to 'go big'. My children are one of those things. And so having one child in New Zealand since last September, this mother hen is on her way.

I'm flabbergasted (in a good way) at the response to yesterday's picture of me at the airport holding up my passport. Cause it's so EASY. It's not writing and shooting and directing and editing. It's buying a ticket with points from a credit card and going to one of the local airports!

And airports and passports are in my DNA. My only career plan as a teenager was to be an airline hostess. My grandfather, two uncles and my father were all pilots. My father flew for TWA and so we all had passes and flew on TWA for free. Lucky for me because, not being much of a reader or a student, travel was my education.

Our first trip to Europe was to Rome and I still vividly smell the smells, taste the blood orange juice and the curls of unsalted butter on ice, and was speechless at the sight of Roman-era buildings next to ones made all of glass.

One memory which shocks even me was that at college, obsessed with finding the perfect boots (and for a good price), I flew to Lisbon one weekend, Madrid the next, and Rome the third. And on one of the return trips, while over the Atlantic my flight to Boston was diverted to New York due to bad weather. Not accustomed to paying even thirty bucks for the (non-TWA) shuttle from NY to Boston, I opted to take the free TWA flight from NY to Paris and grab the next TWA flight from Paris to Boston. I can't remember if that crazy round trip to Europe made me late for my Monday morning class but I know I never did find those boots.

Since losing my TWA pass at age 26, I haven't flown all that much. Work and then motherhood and then The Louise Log have generally kept me close to home or traveling by car.

So irony of ironies, I'm writing from 30,000+ feet on the way to Sydney, Australia and then on to New Zealand.