GETTING HOME IS THE FUN - NOT
Well, we have been back in Philo for about two weeks. This newsletter has taken a while to get prepared because we have been consumed by appointments with the medical profession - ten appointments in less than those two weeks, including another endoscopy for Mrs.T. And that is just round one. Follow ups are coming with cardiology, pulmonology, orthopedics, etc. To our Canadian friends: Don't complain.
Time for an editorial. As Rebecca partially describes below, airports are just short of torture in the US. We have traveled a bit, but still not as much as many folks we know. But we can say with high confidence that other countries do a better job at the airports. Even the relatively small airport at Puerto Vallarta has better systems in place to move passengers through the terminals. Maybe it works because it is small. But we think it is more a matter of organization and attitude. We often go through DFW because it is about halfway between Columbus and PV. Going south generally has not been a problem. But returning ?*&^%#@
Immigration has about thirty stations but generally only about ten are in actual use. The line of entrants snakes out and down the hall towards the concourse at times. We are sure the agency has difficulty finding people. But we find it reprehensible that when the shift is over some of the officers just leave no matter how many hundreds are in line. Probably some overtime rules. WE DON'T CARE. Something should be revised to expeditiously process entrants. It is not a surprise that some folks miss their connecting flights. We wish Secretary Buttigieg could come through incognito and see how bad it is.
On to Mrs.T's commentary:
I wandered lonely as a cloud - and I was pretty chilly too - gazing at my daffodils. It is good to be back in Ohio. I saw an enormous bunny tearing around the corner of our house. I waited to see a bobcat or a coyote or at least a dog chasing after it, but nothing occurred. (A coyote has since come by. -dt) I don't know what that was all about. I saw some silly squirrels digging around in the dirt trying to recall where they buried some nuts last fall. "I know I put them here somewhere, Mildred!" Dan and I watched some big black birds. I thought they might be baby buzzards just learning to fly - they weren't very good at it - but they flapped clumsily away. (Buzzards - turkey vultures - are great soarers but do not flap well. -dt) And at night I see more stars and a huge moon peeking over the top of the hills. A pink moon they call it, I forget why. When it is warm we hear the spring peepers. But tonight it is cold and they are snuggled up in their long johns. We watched a pair of wood ducks sizing up our little pond. Alas it did not meet their needs. (Possibly because the net is still over the pond. -dt) They have such beautiful colors. The last I heard they are rare but not endangered. Those naughty deer have eaten the first five feet of some of their favorite evergreens. They were some of my favorites too, alas! The remainders look like popsicles, just the trunk and then a pathetic lump of branches at the top.
The Lenten roses are blooming like crazy as well they should, it being Lent. Many of the spring ephemerals, the violets, the trilliums, the blood root, the cut leaf toothwort, the lungwort, and so on are blooming everywhere I look. I have a yellow flower I haven't identified yet. (Since identified as a yellow dogtooth violet -dt) Dan's big leaf magnolia which bloomed last year for the first time left us with two seed pods which I intend to plant in pots. (She put out a dozen pots. -dt) Quite a few violets are blooming in my labyrinth but I have not yet gotten around to cleaning it up. And I have a lot of lilies in my lily bed. The flowering quinces are flowering enthusiastically.. We again have phoebies in the nest on our front porch and I do not have the heart to evict them although they make a dreadful mess. It is spring in Ohio.
Getting home was quite an ordeal. Of course we had the nose stick thingy to get on the plane. The seats seem to get closer together every time we fly. (Perhaps we are getting wider. -dt) I don"t think the seats reclined at all, you just sort of climbed over each other. The real problems started when you tried to change planes. Dan and I get wheelchairs. There is no possible way we could get through the international terminal at Dallas / Fort Worth. They never have enough 'pushers'. (Our name for the folks that push the wheelchairs. -dt) We shared a pusher with four other wheelchairs. Unfortunately we were the last in the group of six. So the guy would push forward two chairs then push another two chairs and then us. Then he would go back and push the front two again. This worked fairly well until we got to immigration. The holdup at immigration was such that by the time we were processed the first four chairs were very far behind. The pusher hustled them forward. "I'll be back for you", he shouted over his shoulder and was never seen again. We waited and waited. I had to use the bathroom in the worst way. No one came and then we waited some more. I finally begged and pleaded and the immigration lady let me use their bathroom. (We hope she did not get in trouble. -dt) They said someone was coming for us. No one came. We waited and waited, FINALLY someone came. (Fortunately the travel agent leaves a lot of time between flights. -dt)
At the baggage claim one of our suitcases was off to one side because it waited for us too long. We got all of our stuff checked back in and settled down at our gate to wait. I was very thirsty and went to get a drink. I knew that Dan would complain bitterly about the cost - and he would be right - but I did not care. At a little food stand I found a bottle of lemonade. Just what I needed. I opened my purse to pull out lots of money. "We do not take cash!" the man said, "only credit cards." Oh Dear! Dan had reorganized my purse and put all the credit cards where he thought they should go. I could not find anything. (Mrs.T put them where she thought she could find them. -dt) I sighed and prepared to return the lemonade to the shelf. The man gave me a sweet little smile and said, "This one is on me." He handed me back the bottle. "Would you like a cookie to go with it?" Well I was tempted. "How about a brownie?" he suggested. He was gone only a minute and I was tottering away clutching my lemonade and brownie after having thanked him a lot. "How much did all this cost us?" Dan asked. "Not a thing", I replied, "A nice man gave it to me." After we sat down and shared the nice man's generosity, and Dan admonished me for not knowing where he had stashed my cards, we relaxed a bit at our FIRST gate.
A while later Dan got a text message saying they had changed our gate. We looked around. There were no wheelchair pushers. There were no gate agents. There was no little golf cart. Dan said he was sure we could do it; it was only two gates away. Yes, it was only two numbers but that didn't count a whole lot of restaurants and stores. I took the portable oxygen in one hand, the backpack on the other shoulder, hung my purse around my neck and wandered grumpily away. I made Dan take the pills and stuff which was the heaviest bag. Huffing and puffing we finally arrived. I should mention here Dan says there is something wrong with my lungs. Well, can you blame me? I might also mention that Dan urges me to learn to use text but you will notice that no one sent me any bad news. Score one for the Luddites! We waited for an hour or more at our SECOND gate. Then Dan got another text message telling us they had changed our plane to another gate. The THIRD gate was not near enough for us to walk to. Dan set off to find us help. Dan can be quite assertive. I was sure he would find somebody.
I waited a long time. I drank the last of the lemonade. I wondered if Dan had gotten arrested for shouting at someone. I did not see anybody to ask. I waited some more. Finally Dan arrived triumphantly on a little cart. We got our belongings on board and set off. We had not gotten very far when two ladies rushed up. "Are you going to Gate 33? We were looking for you. We are going to help you", they announced. Well better late than never I thought.
The ladies jumped on the front of the cart. "You drive, we will clear the way", they shouted to the startled driver. "Make way for the cart! Move to the right!' they screamed." People in front of us scuttled to one side and we were off. The little cart careened forward. "Make way for the cart, cart coming through!" the ladies screamed. "MOVE TO YOUR RIGHT!" I didn't think they could actually scream louder. A lady in front of us jumped out of our way. "Cart coming through!" they hollered. We sped through an open space and the ladies got their breath. "Cart coming through!" the ladies bellowed as we snaked around, between two groups of people. I was beginning to get into the mood of the thing, and so was the driver. I looked at Dan, his usually serene face looked rather fierce. His black eyes were glowing. "Move to your right." I was beginning to resent all of those people holding us up. "Cart coming through" I had not had this much fun since taking the kids on the water slide at Disney World. "Make way" the ladies shouted one last time as we slid to a halt in front of gate 33.
"There you see the plane for Tulsa isn't even boarding yet" one lady shouted. "But we aren't going to Tulsa," I said. We all looked at the board. There was a flight to Tulsa boarding in a few minutes and then our flight to Columbus. "Well we gotta find them", one lady said to the other and they rushed off. Dan graciously told the gate agent how much we had appreciated the ride to our new gate. Well we aim to please she replied a trifle sarcastically.
Well, such was our adventure to finally get to the flight for Columbus eventually. There was a two-hour weather delay for some very fierce storms. And the flight was so bumpy we did not even receive the meager rations they pass out these days.
Given all the appointments mentioned above, it is a credit to Rebecca managed to put together this newsletter. Events in Philo are more or less normal, awaiting the second round of follow ups with the medicoes. A busy summer is ahead with an art conference / workshop on each coast and another one closer to home for good measure. By Labor Day we should have some nice work to share.
Only a single photo: httphttps://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzNtXws://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzNtXw
Hope you are staying dry.
Dan and Rebecca
www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com
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