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My Own Bed, My Own Sweetie, My Own Dog
I am home again, though not without the requisite future-sources-of-anecdotes. In fact, this whole last week will doubtless become a long anecdote: Ah, Yes, I remember the summer when Avocado's summer camp got hit with unplague and I slept on a couch for six nights...
We got up at 6:30 yesterday, finished packing and ate breakfast and cleaned the apartment up and changed the sheets and left at 7:30 for the camp bus, which departs from 122 and Riverside, across the street from Grant's Tomb. All was without incident until (at Avocado's urging, as I had suggested that she navigate) we got on the #3 express uptown to 125th Street. What I had forgotten in the last ::mumble:: years is that the 2 and 3 lines deviate eastward at 110th. Instead of disembarking at 125th and Broadway with a two-blocks-west-two-south walk, we got out at 125th and Malcolm X/Lenox Avenue, dead center in the island of Manhattan and roughly eight long blocks east of where I expected to be. And (as we walked a couple of blocks south as we were traveling) there's Morningside Park to be crossed, which is hilly and involves many stairs. So instead of a five minute walk we had a twenty minute walk, with Avocado increasingly unhappy with the weight of her backpack and the speed at which I was walking. I walk fast, particularly in the city of my birth, and especially particularly when I am determined that my child shall not miss the damned camp bus.
But we got there, at which point the kid dumped her backpack and completely blew me off, going at once to hang with her friends, while the parents congregated to discuss what an interesting summer this had become. And at last the last child (we were not the latest ones!) was on the bus and the bus left, and I went back to Woodside to finish tidying the apartment, clean unused food out of the fridge, and pick up my luggage. Then made the lovely Airtrain trip to JFK, went through security, settled in at my gate a little early...and half an hour later discovered that my flight was being delayed by close to 2 hours.
Sigh. So I went over to Delta's We Solve Problems Desk (where they had their hands full...a flight to Chicago and one to Cinncinnati had been cancelled outright) and in due time was informed that, since I'd miss my connecting flight, they had already rebooked me on the flight that followed. Oh, and the gate has changed. And, perhaps because I was pleasant about the whole thing (I mean, whatever is going on, the people at the Interrupted Flight desk have the power to help, within reason, and no power to do anything else, so snarking at them is not only useless, it's unkind) I was given a lunch voucher. Apparently not everyone was. At the new gate to my Minneapolis-bound flight I made friends with many many people--because half an hour later they announced that the original flight was now on again, and we should all report to Gate 25 for immediate boarding.
Except: No. The plane was in, apparently the skies or whatever had cleared...but there was no captain to actually fly the damned plane. So we Minneapolis-flyers got to watch as flights for Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto boarded and let from our gate while the At Gate/Boarding tag flashed urgently by our flight number. When a pilot showed up, he got a round of applause which (when it was explained to him) he deflated by announcing "I'm not going to Minneapolis" in tones of one who wonders why anyone would. In the end, what with one thing and another, the flight took off at just about the same time that it had been rescheduled for initially (if that sentence makes no sense--well, it was originally a 1:50 flight, rescheduled for 3:30, then returned to 1:50 status, updated to 2:30, and finally...it left at 3:25).
In Minneapolis, after a pleasantly uneventful flight, I more or less ran through the airport to get to my connecting flight (oh, yes. The flight from NY was on a plane small enough that we could not put our carry ons on board, and had to wait on the jetway until they brought our luggage up to us--at which point a cranky esprit de avion had us all identifying bags as they were trundled up to us, and calling out "pink floral rolly-bag--anyone?" "Blue leatherette suit bag!" and passing the luggage on to their owners) and caught it, got on the very crowded plane, and was, not instantly, but with reasonable dispatch, delivered to San Francisco.
And slept, not on the couch, but in my own bed.
Emily, as I write, is conked out on the bed behind me. Home again. Yay.
We got up at 6:30 yesterday, finished packing and ate breakfast and cleaned the apartment up and changed the sheets and left at 7:30 for the camp bus, which departs from 122 and Riverside, across the street from Grant's Tomb. All was without incident until (at Avocado's urging, as I had suggested that she navigate) we got on the #3 express uptown to 125th Street. What I had forgotten in the last ::mumble:: years is that the 2 and 3 lines deviate eastward at 110th. Instead of disembarking at 125th and Broadway with a two-blocks-west-two-south walk, we got out at 125th and Malcolm X/Lenox Avenue, dead center in the island of Manhattan and roughly eight long blocks east of where I expected to be. And (as we walked a couple of blocks south as we were traveling) there's Morningside Park to be crossed, which is hilly and involves many stairs. So instead of a five minute walk we had a twenty minute walk, with Avocado increasingly unhappy with the weight of her backpack and the speed at which I was walking. I walk fast, particularly in the city of my birth, and especially particularly when I am determined that my child shall not miss the damned camp bus.
But we got there, at which point the kid dumped her backpack and completely blew me off, going at once to hang with her friends, while the parents congregated to discuss what an interesting summer this had become. And at last the last child (we were not the latest ones!) was on the bus and the bus left, and I went back to Woodside to finish tidying the apartment, clean unused food out of the fridge, and pick up my luggage. Then made the lovely Airtrain trip to JFK, went through security, settled in at my gate a little early...and half an hour later discovered that my flight was being delayed by close to 2 hours.
Sigh. So I went over to Delta's We Solve Problems Desk (where they had their hands full...a flight to Chicago and one to Cinncinnati had been cancelled outright) and in due time was informed that, since I'd miss my connecting flight, they had already rebooked me on the flight that followed. Oh, and the gate has changed. And, perhaps because I was pleasant about the whole thing (I mean, whatever is going on, the people at the Interrupted Flight desk have the power to help, within reason, and no power to do anything else, so snarking at them is not only useless, it's unkind) I was given a lunch voucher. Apparently not everyone was. At the new gate to my Minneapolis-bound flight I made friends with many many people--because half an hour later they announced that the original flight was now on again, and we should all report to Gate 25 for immediate boarding.
Except: No. The plane was in, apparently the skies or whatever had cleared...but there was no captain to actually fly the damned plane. So we Minneapolis-flyers got to watch as flights for Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto boarded and let from our gate while the At Gate/Boarding tag flashed urgently by our flight number. When a pilot showed up, he got a round of applause which (when it was explained to him) he deflated by announcing "I'm not going to Minneapolis" in tones of one who wonders why anyone would. In the end, what with one thing and another, the flight took off at just about the same time that it had been rescheduled for initially (if that sentence makes no sense--well, it was originally a 1:50 flight, rescheduled for 3:30, then returned to 1:50 status, updated to 2:30, and finally...it left at 3:25).
In Minneapolis, after a pleasantly uneventful flight, I more or less ran through the airport to get to my connecting flight (oh, yes. The flight from NY was on a plane small enough that we could not put our carry ons on board, and had to wait on the jetway until they brought our luggage up to us--at which point a cranky esprit de avion had us all identifying bags as they were trundled up to us, and calling out "pink floral rolly-bag--anyone?" "Blue leatherette suit bag!" and passing the luggage on to their owners) and caught it, got on the very crowded plane, and was, not instantly, but with reasonable dispatch, delivered to San Francisco.
And slept, not on the couch, but in my own bed.
Emily, as I write, is conked out on the bed behind me. Home again. Yay.