Wrapping up the Hooker Trip

It's almost 11 a.m. on Saturday.  It's my first sleep-in opportunity since October 14, and I REALLY love to sleep in.  But I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and laid in bed stressing out about work for about an hour, and then said uncle, got out of bed, drove to a donut shop and bought 12 donuts for five people, and brewed a pot of coffee that I'm 3/4 of the way through.  My life is fueled by sugar and caffeine and fear.


At first, the kids had Disney in the background, and it was like fingernails on chalkboard with the stupid jokes and canned laughter and lippy teens, but they've switched to "Chopped", so I can write again.  Whew.  That Disney/Nick stuff makes me crazy.  We were the only parents I know who forbid the kids to watch Suite Life of Zach and Cody because those kids were so rotten.  Our children were ashamed.


So...let's wrap up this hooker convention.   I'll show you a few of the hooking projects so you know of what I speak:

An awesome footstool, all hand dyed wool and hooked.

School scene in a very small cut of wool -

each wool strip is about 3/32 of an inch wide.

This was one of my faves - it's small, about 8x10, and the detail is amazing.  There are probably 10 shades of flesh toned wool and another 10-15 shades of red in her hair, all hand dyed and hooked in that little 3/32 of an inch strip width.
Even though these shows are grueling with the lugging around of product and incessant talking and taking of money that has to balance out later and the 10 hours of standing, and for all of my joking about hookers, these people are truly artists and incredibly.  I've made one rug and started three others, and they are not easy.  Or cheap.  Enough about hookers, let's bring it back to me.


My co-worker and I arose at 6 a.m. to get to the airport on time for our second experience of sitting in each other's laps and pedaling the plane to Baltimore.  However, when the taxi pulled up at the Lancaster airport, which is slightly smaller than your average Texas Roadhouse, it was covered in fog.  Damn.  And I had no coffee.  I brought the airport Sunday paper in for them from the front step, so I knew there was no coffee shop in this building.  Our flight was delayed, so I settled in and started reading.

"This is Where We Live" by Janelle Brown.

352 pages of the rest of my life.

After the pilot got on top of the plane and squeegeed all the windows and took the made sure there were fresh batteries in the remote control that operates the plane, we boarded.  I knew when we buckled our seatbelts that we were going to miss our connection in Baltimore.  As we landed, I saw our United flight to Chicago taxi down the runway.  Goodbye Weekend!  No big deal though, right?  We can just get on another plane.  We went to the United counter, and funny, EVERYONE is flying to Moline on Sundays.  Everyone.  Every United flight to Chicago was booked, as was every flight to Moline.  The ticket agent said, "I think you might have to spend the night in...." and looked up to see me starting to come unravelled and tears forming in my eyes, and said, "Um, let me see what Delta has available."  The very nice woman found us two seats on a Delta flight to Atlanta and then to Moline, IL, getting us in at 10 p.m.  Sold.  I gave her the golden chocolate coins the hotel used for turndown service


When we got off the plane in Atlanta four hours later, we knew we still had five hours until our next flight, and then, like a golden oasis in the middle of the desert, we saw this:

The best franchise EVER.  A spa in the airport.

My friend and I each signed up for a 30 minute Stress Relief massage.  Yay!  The day was saved!  I had a moment of panic when my person, Tonya, started.  I have a HUGE problem with eyebrows being rubbed the wrong way.  I can barely type it, and I have that heebie jeebie feeling right now even mentioning it.  I have no idea where this originated, but if Current Husband wants me to leave the room, all he does is start rubbing his eyebrows...ugh.  They grow in one direction.  Those hairs are not meant to move the other way. 


I feel like I've just exposed a great weakness.


So Tonya starts my massage by pinching my eyebrows.  I grab the chair arms tightly and think, "How long can this last?  She HAS to stop, right?  Did I sign up for an Eyebrow Massage?"  After about 10 seconds she stopped, and it was just in time, because I was about to bolt up and run to the nearest mirror to brush those brows back to their German unibrow origins.  AS THEY SHOULD BE.  Once I knew the brows were safe, and I wasn't gassy, I could relax.  And it was lovely.


We got to our next gate, all blissed out, and found out our flight to Moline had been delayed.  It was announced over the loudspeaker that the flight to Montgomery, Alabama came in late because they were deciding whether or not the tires needed to be changed.  The people waiting for the flight looked around and smiled nervously.   DID the tires get changed?  Was one going to blow on landing?  "HA!" I thought.  "Glad I'm not on the Montgomery flight!"  and then they announced, "And the flight to Moline is late because they spent three extra hours in Montreal with mechanical problems."


WTF?!?!  Are you referring to MY plane?


So all of the Moline people quickly texted goodbye messages to their loved ones and got our affairs in order.  NOTE TO THE AIRLINES:  If my flight has bad tires or mechanical issues or the pilot is drunk, and you aren't going to do anything about it, don't tell me.  Ignorance is bliss, and a lot better than sitting in what you've been told COULD BE an airborne potential death trap for the next hour or so.


We finally landed after 11 p.m., and CH arrived with Youngest Daughter to pick me up from the airport, because YD had been waiting for 5 days to see her Mommy and she wasn't going to miss it.  I went home, then to bed and back to work 7 hours later and spent the entire week catching up with paperwork and kid stuff.


And that, my patient and tolerant readers, is why I only blogged once in the past two weeks.  Please forgive me!


On Thursday, I leave for my biennial high school friend reunion, and there is always PLENTY to blog about then.  Here is a refresher course from our last reunion in Scottsdale, AZ.  These are my WOMEN.  If you've ever read The Girls From Ames, we are The Girls From Fremont.  I love them all.

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