Last week, as I was trying to get back home, to get packed and ready to leave for Zion, which, btw, was simply INCREDIBLE, I found myself encountering obstacle after obstacle as I tried to move towards actually getting home. Each minor in nature but the quantity and frequency of them increased their annoyance.
First, trying to get out of the parking garage was insane. As I backed out of my space, a car came speeding through behind me causing me to hit the brakes rather rapidly. Now, out of the space trying to move forward, this same car came around the corner and pulled in front of me, brakes again. That car turned to the left to exit so I turned to the right. As I went down the next aisle over a large van pulled in from the other end and stopped in the middle of the aisle. Even though he clearly saw me trying to get through, he didn’t pull over to the side, he stayed, stopped in the middle of the lane and proceeded to get out and help his 7 passengers exit his vehicle along with their luggage. I took a few deep breaths, reminded myself I had plenty of time and was in no hurry and waited patiently while I tried to find a good radio station.
Finally out of the garage and on my way, traffic, as I’m sure you can imagine, was not great. But, again, there was plenty of time and there was a good radio station plus I couldn’t wait to get home so a few more deep breaths and surprisingly very little to no irritation.
At the airport, the flight was delayed … an hour! This meant there was most likely no way to make the connection in Houston but there was a later flight from Houston getting me to Austin by 11:00, home by 12:00 so more deep breaths. The important thing is I’ll be home tonight and with the extra hour I can get me some red beans and rice which are very tasty at the Baton Rouge airport if you ever have the opportunity.
We get to Houston (my connection) and I begin to race to my next gate but this guy starts to cross right in front of me and then proceeds to continue in front of me but at about half pace. I swerve to the right, he swerves to the right, I swerve to the left, he swerves to the left – ugh! He starts to walk over to the gift shop so I make a hurried bee line to the moving sidewalk and, I kid you not, somehow he has triangulated his trajectory and has ended up right in front of me where he stops abruptly to tie his shoe. If I weren’t in a hurry I would stop to laugh out loud … NOT! I make it my gate and board and headed for home.
As we all exit the plane in Austin, you can tell everyone is very tired. It’s been a long day and my feet, and mood, are dragg’n. As we walk the long way to baggage claim. Little side note here, if you’re the last flight of the night to land at an airport don’t you think they should park you at the gate closest to the baggage claim as opposed to the one farthest away? Anyway I’m walking in almost a trance towards baggage claim, late at night, no one there but our flight, nice shiny, newly polished floors which sort of echo due to the emptiness in the airport. Then, all of a sudden, I half notice something come up from the floor towards my face. My ninja like reflexes kick in. I slam my eyes shut actually trapping the cricket which just jumped from the floor into my eye! As the cricket pushed with it’s legs on my check to extract it’s head from between my eyelids, my rodeo clown like grace kicks in and I start flailing my arms turning in circles, shaking my head and dry spitting. You know? The kind of spitting you do to get something off the end of your tongue? Everyone’s looking at me as if I just had a mental break because no one can tell what just happened. It wasn’t like we ran into a whole swarm of crickets, mine was the only one.
So Debbie, when you ask why I always worry about something getting into my eye, this is why. Because you never know what series of seemingly random acts can arbitrarily line up in such a way resulting in a foreign object, or insect, to end up in your frigg’n eye!
But I’m ok … and so was the cricket ;-)
Sylvia
P.S. Did I already say how great Zion's was? Thanks Barb, Judy, Heather, Susan and Gaynor for making a place we absolutely love even more precious! And Peggy, we missed you - each message was read twice just for you!