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And now I'm back from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I hope to nail my feet to the floor and stick around a while. Hell, I still haven't finished unpacking from Alaska, and we drove my daughter back to college in between this jet-setting.
You may or may not know that I am a member of the small but nonzero group of HP writers with an 80-year-old mother. She is frail, demanding, and generally high-maintenance in that first-born-of-seven-children, world-revolves-around-me-and-always-has kind of way. Her 78-year-old sister planned a reunion for all seven sibs and their spouses and what kids they could muster up, and I agreed to arrange the details to get us both there and back from different cities. All went well, the weekend was lovely, until everything went south abruptly because Mom's flight home was on fucking Northwest fucking Airlines, whose mechanics went on strike on Saturday. Oh, sad to say, your flight was cancelled, but fear not, we've rebooked you for the next flight. Oh, gee, sorry, that flight is now delayed two more hours. I barely made my own flight, but not after corralling a ticket agent and saying, "Listen. My Mom is in your hands. She's 80, she's wheelchair-bound, we know absolutely no one in Baltimore, she handles change incredibly poorly, and at the moment she is having a rather major meltdown in your concourse. You will have to do for her what I now cannot in spite of my carefully laid plans." My last glimpse of Mom was watching her cry helplessly as I nearly missed my own flight home.
Next news I get, arriving home, is that Mom is in the Baltimore Holiday Inn. I can imagine all the small crises that got her there. But the ticket agent, bless her cotton socks, saw that she was escorted everywhere. She ended up home the next day.
I'm sad to report that the humiliating stories are true about getting through airport security in a PC way (TSA, gotta love 'em...oh, wait, no, I don't). I watched as my mother (and the airport wheelchair) was subjected to a five-minute body search - they felt up nearly every inch of skin. I was busy carving a hole in my tongue as we all pretended that this had some vague connection to common sense and reality. Believe me, TSA in Baltimore are a joyless bunch. The sense of disconnect was such that I would not have been surprised if they'd moved on to a prostate exam - sex, age, and condition of the subject notwithstanding. The final straw was fetching my own suitcase after the end of this miserable day and discovering that TSA had searched my bag, leaving every zipper of every pocket completely unzipped and scattering whatever possessions were there to the four winds. True pride of a job well done.
Meanwhile, I'm on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ravurian's shit list for being gone and failing him on his birthday. I cannot even think how to make amends. I'll start with abject apologies and go on from there. Or perhaps I'll pretend I'm huffy that he's still so young and virile, and that I intended to ignore him all along.
rosesanguina, I know, will be quicker to forgive me. Hope you had a great day.
Okay, I'm done ranting. You know you have to let me do this, because I don't do it often.
For fun stuff: Last night I metisiscolo on her trip to my neck of the woods and was introduced to slytherincess and z_rayne. We wined and dined ourselves and talked until midnight. What is this sleep of which you speak?
You may or may not know that I am a member of the small but nonzero group of HP writers with an 80-year-old mother. She is frail, demanding, and generally high-maintenance in that first-born-of-seven-children, world-revolves-around-me-and-always-has kind of way. Her 78-year-old sister planned a reunion for all seven sibs and their spouses and what kids they could muster up, and I agreed to arrange the details to get us both there and back from different cities. All went well, the weekend was lovely, until everything went south abruptly because Mom's flight home was on fucking Northwest fucking Airlines, whose mechanics went on strike on Saturday. Oh, sad to say, your flight was cancelled, but fear not, we've rebooked you for the next flight. Oh, gee, sorry, that flight is now delayed two more hours. I barely made my own flight, but not after corralling a ticket agent and saying, "Listen. My Mom is in your hands. She's 80, she's wheelchair-bound, we know absolutely no one in Baltimore, she handles change incredibly poorly, and at the moment she is having a rather major meltdown in your concourse. You will have to do for her what I now cannot in spite of my carefully laid plans." My last glimpse of Mom was watching her cry helplessly as I nearly missed my own flight home.
Next news I get, arriving home, is that Mom is in the Baltimore Holiday Inn. I can imagine all the small crises that got her there. But the ticket agent, bless her cotton socks, saw that she was escorted everywhere. She ended up home the next day.
I'm sad to report that the humiliating stories are true about getting through airport security in a PC way (TSA, gotta love 'em...oh, wait, no, I don't). I watched as my mother (and the airport wheelchair) was subjected to a five-minute body search - they felt up nearly every inch of skin. I was busy carving a hole in my tongue as we all pretended that this had some vague connection to common sense and reality. Believe me, TSA in Baltimore are a joyless bunch. The sense of disconnect was such that I would not have been surprised if they'd moved on to a prostate exam - sex, age, and condition of the subject notwithstanding. The final straw was fetching my own suitcase after the end of this miserable day and discovering that TSA had searched my bag, leaving every zipper of every pocket completely unzipped and scattering whatever possessions were there to the four winds. True pride of a job well done.
Meanwhile, I'm on
ravurian's shit list for being gone and failing him on his birthday. I cannot even think how to make amends. I'll start with abject apologies and go on from there. Or perhaps I'll pretend I'm huffy that he's still so young and virile, and that I intended to ignore him all along.rosesanguina, I know, will be quicker to forgive me. Hope you had a great day.Okay, I'm done ranting. You know you have to let me do this, because I don't do it often.
For fun stuff: Last night I met
isiscolo on her trip to my neck of the woods and was introduced to slytherincess and z_rayne. We wined and dined ourselves and talked until midnight. What is this sleep of which you speak?
