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missing half a flight
Thursday, July 28 2022
location: in the air over the Western United States
I think Gretchen was trying to deal with my drool when I suddenly awoke somewhere over Minnesota. (I've never been on the ground in that state.) About half the flight was over, and I hadn't experienced any of it due to ambien. I'd dropped my phone on the floor, but miraculously I hadn't spilled my orange juice cocktail. I think I managed to fall asleep for a second time and when I awoke from that, the plane was crossing over the southern tip of Lake Huron (these were all things I learned by using the GPS feature on my phone). JetBlue nickels and dimes I hadn't even imagined, but they still offer free WiFi, so I was able to dawdle away the rest of the flight as I would had I been on the ground. I never even needed to get up to piss.
The experience of getting through JFK to the AirTrain and finding our car went without incident, though driving from the airport was occasionally something of a nailbiter, what with all the insane drivers making lane tight lane changes that they couldn't be certain would avoid collision. Complicating matters, Gretchen was very sleepy and occasionally smacked her own face to stay awake. So I took over driving once we made it to the New York State rest area on the Palisades Parkway.
Minutes after getting home and delighting the dogs that their fears that we were "never coming back" were unfounded, we climbed into bed and slept for hours.
There had been another tornado (or perhaps a storm not quite as bad as that) while we were in Oregon and when Powerful eventually got out of the hospital, he'd returned to a house with no power. But it had apparently come on before the food in our refrigerator could spoil.
Later after I woke up and puttered around for awhile, I took a bath. As I lay there in the tub, I could hear the first katydids of the year. They'd probably started up while we were in Oregon. As I've said before, to me that sound is ominous, because throughout my life it's always heralded the end of summer, and I am no fan of fall. I don't know if it's the fading of the light (which always happens in the fall) or the end of freedom (which only happened back when I went to school) which gave the end of summer so much torque, but in any case the torque remains.
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