Vacations - same stuff but different

After recuperating from the recent Minnesota cough epidemic I headed for a vacation on the west coast and then fell victim to their brand of infection.

I was visiting the grandkids and most of the time when I wasn’t slumped on the couch soaking up the heat from their wood pellet stove, I would do the things I don’t get to do back home… like transporting them to their sports activities, music lessons, etc.
This includes figuring out where the right entries are when it’s dark outside at places like the Ceasar Chavez school. I had been circling a military compound and suggested to my grandkids, well, if we don’t find the school we can join the Marines! They chuckled, but with concern it seemed, because they don’t know what their Grandma really will do.
Then I saw two people talking behind a building and asked them for help. They decided it was too difficult to give directions so the fellow on the bicycle said, just follow me. Speed was not my goal here so I was very appreciative.

Another time I had to find the house where my granddaughter takes piano lessons. It was not the directions that caused a problem this time. After I picked her up from school and we were headed to her lesson, her little voice came out of the back seat… “Where are my music books?”
I had no clue. I just follow the orders I’m given, remember? (The Marines idea was sounding better all the time.) So we headed back home and she found them.
Of course we were 15 minutes late for her 30 minute lesson but so was her teacher! She had been caught in a traffic jam. (I was “saved” again.)

But most of the time I spent recuperating from the “west coast plague”, as I thought of it. At the end of our visit I felt pretty good as we packed to return to Minnesota.
Early in the morning I got up and in the dark I grabbed a cup sitting where I always set mine. It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I looked at it and realized it wasn’t my cup! My daughter had put hers there and I hadn’t checked.
You guessed it. She was still very sick. Well, I figured I had at least 24 hours before it would hit me if my immune system wasn’t up to it and by that time I should be home.

The couple of hours spent driving to the airport led to a different problem. I was stationed in the back seat with my little grandson who was watching a video. I got kind of interested in it too. But I should have known better.

A few years ago while in Hawaii I was taking some video from a helicopter bouncing in some hefty gusts of wind. And pretty soon the only scenes on my film were of the floor as I was doing some heavy “gusting” myself!

As I walked into the plane I told the attendants, I’m not contagious… I am just “car sick”, as I glanced down the endless row to the coach seat bathrooms in the back of the plane. They said, just use this bathroom (first class).

Several hours later… it wasn’t a nonstop flight… we were home. Time to recuperate from the “vacation”.

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