bye bye....leavin' on a jetplane!, and I cried in the store...

 Oregon, here we come!  Suzanne and I are going to see Kathryn!  We're going first week of May, and are so excited that we get to see her, and her husband, and little Achilles and sweet little Rhys.  yayyayyay!

Next week, Paul and I are leaving for California, to visit Aaron and Riley.  

I love/hate traveling.  It's always so exciting to go on a trip, then there are the lines to wait in, and the scary TSA screenings...we've gone to Florida twice this year, one time I was going through the pre-check line with Miss Char and Miss Cam, and one of the TSA guys was just standing there yelling.  Just yelling.  He gets paid to yell and threaten.  "Just because this is pre-check, doesn't mean you can get away with water in your water bottle.  You need to empty your pockets, blah blah blah....you can't stand here and argue with us, either..."  okay.  He was yelling at all of us, in general.  whatever.

Getting patted down is one of my big fears, because it has happened.  The one time when I had a dress and leggings, and that mean lady pulled my dress all the way up over my big ,round ,leggings-enclosed tummy, for all the world to see.  Because I DO have a tummy, I choose not to wear clothes that show it off, so what made her think it was okay to yank up my dress like that?  ouch.  She kept asking me if I wanted a PRIVATE SCREENING.  Luckily I kept my smarty pants mouth shut, because I very easily could have gotten myself in trouble.   As one of our old friends once said, "I was sitting down on the outside, but standing up on the inside..."  I complied, but I was STEAMING, then...yeah, I burst into tears.  So humiliating...that lady had HANDS, and they went EVERYWHERE.  dignity doesn't exist at security checkpoints.  

So there's that dreadful part.  Then there's the teeny airplane seats.  At least I can buckle now, before I lost the weight, I could BARELY get it snapped.  I was terrified I wouldn't be able to, and would have to get the dreaded seatbelt extender.    I actually don't mind going to the bathroom on the plane, for the most part.  If you like flying through turbulence, just ask me to get up and go to the bathroom, it never fails:  the plane starts listing and bouncing when I get into that tiny stall.   The captain has turned on the Fasten Your Seatbelts Sign, please return to your seats.

Then there's the missing home part.  It's like the grass is always greener syndrome...I miss my moved-away kids terribly, but when I'm with them, I miss home....not enough that I won't travel, but I do like home.  Obviously we cannot travel with sixteen grown kids, especially because seven of them are married, so I can't be with everyone at the same time for the most part.  Those days are gone.  

Anyway.  This fine afternoon, I wasted gas and went to the small city.  I didn't really want to, but we had some beef, which is like gold these days, to go into the insta-pot, and no potatoes!  I made a list:  apples, bananas, onions, celery, eggs...okay, enough to go to the store.  I got a few bags of rice, some jars of salsa, another box of crackers...stock-up things.  

The prices are creeping and leaping up.  Pretzels went from 89 cents to 1.24, eggs are now $1.89 a dozen.  The end cap with the Easter hams looked like it had been looted, and the prices went up from just the other day.  So I did what anyone would do, I stood there and cried.  I didn't cry for me, I cried for all the people who have been barely scraping by as it is, now they have to buy even less with the same money.  It's sad.  Now to be clear, it wasn't a loud wailing cry, just one of those tears-prickling-heart-aching kind of cries.  

The Fun Aisle had too many fun things in it.  Calico Critter sets!  I LOVE them.  All the tiny little accessories, and the sweet little clothes on the little bunnies and bears and doggies...but I didn't buy any.  I just don't NEED them, and besides, I wanted all of them.   So I was a big girl, still sniffing from my cry, and I walked away.  (If I had any of my kids with me, they would have told me I don't need them...). That's the thing about things you like, you rarely need them.

Thrift store:  I did sneak in for a quick look-around.  I didn't find much, just a book, one shirt for me that caught my eye and was two dollars, and one cute Zara top with the tags still on it.  

Home...ah, home.  Dinner is in the Insta-Pot.  It did flash the BURN signal, but turned back on after a few minutes.  It'll be later than usual, because things always take longer than you think they will...oh yeah, I'll just run to the store for potatoes...ha.   Run.  oh dear.

Oh well...have a really good day!!!  (I say this when the day's almost over...)