Bits and Pieces

Today's blog is about a number of things on my mind. The nastiness of flying is first. We just came back from a week's trip to Orlando (not my favorite place in the world but I'll go anywhere with my grandkids) so are fresh from the flying experience. This was almost the worst. We went with Spirit as they are cheap and we thought we'd give them a try. Never again. Row 9 we had, both going and coming back. Well, the seats in row 9 don't recline at all and have about 4" less leg room. My short legs almost hit the seat in front so you can guess how uncomfortable my long-legged spouse was. When the man ahead started to put his seat back my quiet, unassuming husband told him there was no room for that. Luckily the man was nice and acquiesced. I'm not sure why we ended up with this extra short space but we had it coming back, too.

And they didn't serve water even! What a cheap flight. Flying makes you dry. I can hardly believe that it's not mandated to serve a beverage of some kind. Of course the flight attendants were up and down the aisles trying to sell earphones and mixed drinks. Going down my carry-on bag was just fine but coming back we had to pay an extra $30 for it. Make sense? No, but the passenger has no recourse.

Our son told of his friend's parents who flew out of Toronto a few weeks ago. When the elderly man who rarely flies got to security, they immediately took him to an open cubicle where everyone could see what was happening and did a strip search. Now I don't know if they did a cavity search or not but still he must have been mortified. I am appalled that our flying world has become so crass.

In fact, crossing the "longest undefended border in the world" is a pain. A couple of weeks ago my friend and I went to Port Huron for a couple of days shopping. When we got to the border we were excited that there was no lineup. I waited till the car in front was done and pulled ahead. One of the attendants went from his booth over to my person's booth, frantically waving for me to stop. I did. Half way between the original stop and the booth. He left my person's booth, glared at me again and went back to his booth. I sat for a couple of minutes, unsure what to do. Finally I could see the person sitting there waiting for me so I pulled up the remaining ten feet. She jumped up from her chair and screamed at me that I was to wait till I got the signal to approach. Then she went back into her booth and sat on her chair for another two minutes before coming out again. She didn't appear to be doing anything, not even looking at her monitor. Finally she came out and gave me the third degree, yelling that I was not supposed to move ahead till given the signal. Well there is no signal but the stop sign and the green light, both of which I had obeyed. Long story short she was on a power trip. They weren't busy so she could try to frighten me. I answered her questions in monosyllables and gradually she softened up. When I pulled away I was seething. She had no reason to treat me so poorly. Power trip. That's all it was.

Well now that I've got myself reliving the anger I think it's time to get back to being positive and upbeat. Here is a picture of Grandpa teasing Ben in Florida. We had a wonderful time swimming with the little guy and playing lots of games. We babysat three different afternoons so that his parents could go off on their own and we loved it.


Everywhere we went Ben found interesting things. Here he loved using the sandwich board as a little house.

Florida is not our favorite place because of the chance of high humidity. We had five days of it this trip so came to worship the air conditioning. The last two days were cooler with fresh dry air. I was ecstatic. Nevertheless playing with our family in the pools was a highlight we'll always remember. These are the great bits of life.