Did you miss me?

I just got back from a short trip to Los Angeles. The trip was much less "traumatic" than last time. Maybe that's because I was in such a state for the three weeks prior.

Just so you know, let me repeat that it's not the flying that bothers me. It's the airplanes and the airports. They aren't all that concerned about making things easy for me.

I'll give you an example: at the Dallas Airport I had to change planes. My incoming flight landing on one side of the airport and my outgoing flight took off from the other side, catty-cornered so it was as far away as possible. I was suppose to have a 40 minute window to make the second flight, but the incoming plane landed on one side of the field and had to taxi to the other side. By the time I deplaned from the first plane, the other plane was already loading and I almost missed it. THEN on the way back I had a 2 hour layover in Phoenix - I arrived and departed at the same gate.

I took a short nap on the plane but I woke myself up when I snorted. I think it was me, but I blamed it on the old lady next to me who was also napping. She was on her way to see an old boyfriend. They were both widowed and he got to thinking about her and had looked her up and, to make a short story even shorter, after 2 weeks she was thinking of moving in with him. I'm not sure if that was romantic or just stupid, but (1) he had his own place, (2) she met his family, and (3) she had that teen-age-"I've got a new boyfriend"-look on her face so I'm going for romantic. May she always have that love light in her eyes.

At the 2-hr layover, I talked with a woman who was on her way "back home" to help her father. He had recently put his wife/her mother in a nursing home because he couldn't care for her at home any longer. She had early onset Alzheimer's that had progressed rapidly. The woman left a new grandbaby in Arizona. The baby was born with heart problems and she couldn't attend to her parents until she knew that her daughter and grandchild were doing well.

And so goes the circle of life.

Remember when I came back from a trip in June and I met a woman at the airport who couldn't remember what parking lot she'd left her car in? Would you believe that this time while I was waiting for the shuttle, the woman next to me asked which shuttle took you to the parking area. I said it would depend on which lot you're in. She had no idea where she'd parked over a month ago except it cost $6 a day. She said she'd ask the driver of one of the shuttles the name of the lot where she parked. ... Ohhh kaaay, I'm sure he'll remember.