Keer “Unplugged”

I'm home. I got home a day late, but I'll get to that later.

The flight to Ohio was uneventful. I ended up in a BRIGHT red Pontiac G5 - the zippiest thing I've ever driven, I think! LOL! Once when I was getting into it, a guy even commented on how red it was. It. Was. Red.

The hotel I stayed in was very nice. The kid at the counter (OK, so he was probably 18-20, but that's a "kid" to me now ROFLOL!) was so helpful. When I checked in and gave him my name, he asked, "Your parents are supposed to be here too?" I answered yes, and he told me that my stepdad had said to tell me they were right across the hall. I dunno...I just thought that was nice of the kid to actually tell me that. It's a rather new hotel - everything was fresh and clean. Gotta love clean hotels.

The funeral went well (for a funeral). My grandma didn't look like herself (but do dead people lying in caskets ever look like themselves?). We figured out it's because she had her glasses on and her teeth in, something she hadn't had in a few years. I also think it's because she wasn't smiling. Back when Grandpa passed away, he didn't look like himself either. He was in a suit. Grandpa didn't wear a suit. He wore polyester pants, a white T-shirt, and suspenders. They had trimmed his mustache. And they didn't put a flyswatter in his hand in the casket either. Therefore...he didn't look like Grandpa.

After the funeral and burial, Mom, Stepdad, and I went and visited my other grandparents (my dad's parents). (Yes, yes, Mom was visiting her ex-husband's parents and her current husband was there too. Let's just say our family could EASILY be on Jerry Springer.) Grandpa had just taken some Percoset before we got there, so he was asleep when we arrived. Grandma seemed a little down - got teary-eyed a couple times. After about an hour Grandpa woke up. Stepdad met him at the doorway to the kitchen, but Mom was across the room. Stepdad said hi and such, and Grandpa looked at Grandma and said, "You know who he looks like? He looks like B!" (B is Stepdad.) Stepdad said, "That's because I am B!" Grandpa was thoroughly confused. Stepdad pointed out Mom across the room, but evidently Grandpa couldn't see her. So she came closer, and finally he could see her. When he did and recognized her, HE got all teary-eyed. And then he realized what he had said about Stepdad looking like B and got a big chuckle out of what he had said.

The Percoset was still in effect, and lets just say he was feeling pretty good. He was singing all sorts of children's songs in German, pretending to play his cane like a guitar. A couple of time Grandma commented on how those pain pills must be really working. Stepdad got a video with his camera at one point - I can't wait to see it again.

Somehow we got to talking about this tape they made, singing a duet. I had never heard about it before. Evidently back in the mid-fifties, Grandpa's sister (who was still in Germany...she didn't come to the States as he had in 1951) was getting married. As somewhat of a wedding gift, Grandma and Grandpa went to a little record studio and had a 45 made of them singing a duet a capella. When they sent it over, Grandpa's mother fell down the stairs because she thought Grandma and Grandpa were really there. At some point they had a tape made of this record, and Grandma played it for us. :shock: Oh. My. Word. It was sooooooooooooo cool. Here are my grandparents, now in their very late 70s/early 80s, singing when they were MY age (or thereabouts). I didn't understand a single word (since it was all in German), but that didn't matter. I'd heard about my grandma's singing voice (which is no longer due to smoking like a chimney for years and years and years), but I had no idea my grandpa could sing like that! And their reactions to hearing the tape again...choke choke sob sob! They'd close their eyes and just sing along. It was soooooooo neat. I CANNOT WAIT to get a copy of that tape!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday I had quite a bit of time to kill because my flight wasn't leaving until 6:45 pm. At the cemetery on Monday I'd seen some of our ancestors' graves, so I went back to the cemetery and walked around, looking for others. I knew that a lot of our ancestors had been buried in that cemetery, due to the genealogical research I've done. So I walked and walked and walked and actually found some of them! Took lots of pictures. That was super neat.

I got on my plane in Cleveland and sat. And sat some more. The pilot thought a bird had hit the outside of the jet, and it had created a dent. He thought it would be OK, but he wanted to make sure. So he was having a mechanic come out and look at it. Well United didn't have their own mechanic at that airport, so they had to bring over one from another airline. Then the mechanic had to send measurements of the dent to some engineer dude, to make sure it was OK to fly. Everything FINALLY got cleared, and we took off about an hour after we were supposed to.

Oh, did I mention that I only had an hour to make my connection in Chicago?

The pilot said he was "giving her all she's got," so we should land about 10 minutes early. But when we got to Chicago, they made him go around and land on another runway, which added 10 minutes to the flight. So when I got off the plane and checked the monitors, my flight to Spokane wasn't even listed anymore. OK NO flights to Spokane were listed (which is what I figured - it was about 8:15 pm and Spokane does not have a big airport - it's not like there are tons of flights going in and out there!). So off I went to the customer service desk for United (along with a ton of other people who had missed their connections).

To make a long story short, United put us up in a swanky hotel in Chicago for the night and gave us a small voucher for breakfast the next morning. I didn't have my bag though (it was in some holding area), so I had to borrow a toothbrush and toothpaste from the hotel. And I had to sleep in my clothes. Ack!

The next morning I caught an 8 am flight to Seattle. Unfortunately the gal who had rebooked my tickets didn't see that I had purchased Economy PLUS seating, so I could have extra legroom. She booked me in the back of the plane, in a window seat. She also didn't notice the basketball under my dress because on the flight from Seattle to Spokane she put me in and EXIT ROW! So when I got to the airport I pointed out that I had purchased extra legroom and could I switch seats, and if not, I was gonna raise a stink to get my money back. They were able to switch me on that first flight, but it was still a middle seat.

This proved to be quite miserable since I couldn't move my legs very much (and they were already bothering me from not being able to put them up much the day before). I could feel my ankles swelling, and my left leg especially just ached something terrible. Sadly I had to disturb the man on the aisle once midflight to use the restroom, but at least I was able to move around a bit more - that helped a bit.

FINALLY I got to Seattle, and I was able to put my feet up a bit while I ate lunch. I got moved out of the exit row (honestly they would have HAD to have moved me - I'm not ALLOWED to sit in the exit row as pregnant as I am) - whew! Little did I know that the lady had rebooked me onto a prop plane though - UGH! (One of the many things I like about Priceline - I think all their flights are guaranteed to be jets.) Props are always so loud and jittery. And landing...let's just say that I'm glad it wasn't much hotter on the plane or I would have ended up using my barf bag!

My bag wasn't on my plane with me, BUT IS IT ANY WONDER??? I would have been amazed had it made it. So I filed my claim, and a few hours after I got home, some people delivered it to my house - it had come on a flight from Denver shortly after my plane landed in Spokane.

I spent the rest of the evening on the couch, with my feet UP. This morning my ankles are looking MUCH better - now I just look like I have posts for legs rather than balloons at the bottom of them.

All in all, a decent trip. I've decided that our family simply MUST go on vacation to northern Ohio. Period.