Can somebody write me a use case for getting five people and three vee-hickles to two up-north-type destinations in three days?
Back in the dark ages, aka the late 1980s, every night while I was getting dinner ready, Lizard Breath would sit in this little spot at the end of the kitchen table or counter or whatever you want to call it. She would “read” books or color or draw or, well, here it looks like she’s doing a workbook. If I could do it all over again, I’d prob’ly not buy workbooks for 4-year-olds. Then again, when *I* was a little kid, I liked workbooks, so maybe that’s why I bought them for my kids. Go figger. What you can’t see is our little “kitchen TV”. Every Sunday evening from 6-7 PM, on Channel 50 (I think), Star Trek re-runs were on. I was never a Trekkie but I liked sci-fi books when I was a teenager and Star Trek re-runs became a comfortable sort of background noise for getting dinner ready. I could be anywhere from totally tuning it out to actually watching the show. And then one day I turned on the little kitchen boob tube and to my sheer utter horror, instead of Star Trek re-runs, there was a horrible show called something like Star Search 90. That would be 1990 and there were horrible singers on there who could take one syllable and add enough vowels to make it last about 30 seconds. I Lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ve bacon, for example. Each “o” is a different pitch. Y’know, opera singers do that kind of thing but they are, like, trained? Yaknow? The awful thing about all of this is that for whatever odd reason, Star Search 90 became the *new* background music for getting dinner ready on a Sunday night. But then the 1991 Gulf War happened and Mouse turned the little kitchen TV off and I never quite totally got my groove back about TV. Nowadays, I listen to NPR. [Say that with one o’ those sorta upper-crust “I went to Hahvahd” American accents. But I didn’t and I’m just an old bag trailer trash mom. And the GG calls NPR “National Petroleum Radio” but he does listen to it. So.]
Where was I? Transition days are always interesting. This morning the grown-up version of the kid in the picture arrived back here in the Great Lake State from her home in Callyforny. Her flight was a half hour early! I think I heard her say that the pilot on the first leg of the journey (to Minneapolis-St. Paul) called himself a rock star pilot for getting them there from SFO in 2.5 hours. Huh? (keep me honest here, Lizard). Anyway, I shouldda checked on the flight info well *before* I went to work but I was all doy-doy-doy this morning and didn’t and then, when I got to work and checked, it said they had already landed but weren’t at the gate yet. A half hour early. So, I had to call the nitroglycerin and make sure that she knew to get out there directly. It ended up all good and I met the Lizard for a quick little lunch at Panera on Eisenhower. And to think last night I was nitzing around taking dark walks to calm myself down, etc.
So there you are. 50-something, and the babies that you guarded with your very life are flying across the country alone and picking each other up from the airport and you are still saying, “beeeee careful”. Sigh. I know. It will never really end.
I dunno what else. I guess that is all. Mouse and I walked around and to the Plum Market after work today and there’s chicken pot pie (homemade) in the oven and we’re bringing fancy beer up to the beach and blah blah blah blahg.
Sayonara,
Kayak Woman