Travel Journal
The following was handwritten during my trip from San Diego to Greenville-Spartanburg.
May 8, 2017, 10:40 PM PDT
I'm on the plane, bound for Greenville. It's hard to believe I've come full circle, and even harder to believe that I'm so happy to be returning to the South. The Mother Unit brought me to the airport. We did a one-armed hug to say goodbye. Kind of sad, really, but I really didn't expect much more, if anything.
She and Matt are still in the process of packing, so they probably won't leave until Wednesday. Losing Pinky took a physical toll on them, so they did very little in the moving department today. I would have been the same way, had it been Toby or Smidgen lost to the wild. I feel terrible that Pinky got outside. Matt feels he did not surve the night, considering it was cooler than normal and rained cats and dogs all night. Sorry luck, regarding the weather. I can't help but think some karma was at work here, although I'm not at all happy with a little life being lost in the process. It would have been better if Mama Bird had been the one to get out, since she might possess some rudimentary memory of her time in the wild. Even if she weren't able to survive, she would still be better off dead, considering her ungodly time in captivity, along with fact that she lost her mate not long ago.
May 9, 2017, 7:40 AM EDT
Toby, Smidgen, and I just boarded the flight going from Charlotte to Greenville. I transported the dynamic duo from the San Diego plane to the transfer flight in a wheelchair. They're getting better treatment than I am on this journey!
The sun was just rising when we landed in Charlotte. It was an incredibly cathartic experience to see a blanket of green bathed in sunlight, muted by buttermilk clouds. I haven't seen buttermilk clouds in years. Contrails? Absolutely. But no buttermilk. I could even see the mountains - MY MOUNTAINS - from the sky.
We're about to take off, scheduled to land in approximately an hour, maybe less. Cameron is meeting me at GSP, and is taking me by Wal-Mart on the way to Janice's. I have reserved a hotel room at the Quality Inn for the next couple of days in order to give Janice more time to accommodate my hopefully brief stay with her and Uncle Michael. I need to find more permanent arrangements as soon as humanly possible, but I've got to take at least a day to recuperate from the chaos of the past week; otherwise, I'm going to shut down and get nothing done at all.
I need to buy another pair of pants, some panties, and a couple of shirts. Why? Because my dumb ass packed all the clothes I have, including the ones I'd set aside to bring with me, save for the ones I'm currently wearing, and the movers won't have my stuff to me for about a week. The last thing I needed was to have to spend more money I wouldn't otherwise need to.
I rode all the way across the country with my arms tucked underneath my tee shirt. It was cold as all Sith Hell on that airplane! The woman who shared the row with me was flying out to attend a funeral and had to bring her dog with her, a Jack Russell Terrier named Sia, who she feared would go ballistic if she saw Smidgen and, especially, Toby. Thankfully, they didn't spy one another, having their vision limited tucked under the plane seats, so it was a very quiet flight. I left the seat between us empty, and told her to feel free to use it and the tray table, if she needed. We ended up using the middle tray for our beverages, which allowed for more room for our appendages. If I could afford it, I would always buy two seats, pets or no, simply for the convenience just that little bit of space provides. Alas, it would probably be cheaper just to fly First Class, if one had the money to throw around like that.
One of the last things the Mother Unit said to me before we parted ways was to point out that I would be amazed at how large the seats would seem, since I hadn't flown since my panniculectomy. She was right. I was able to sit sideways for a while, as I watched You Tube vides on the computer. Of course, I'm still not over the fact that I'm sitting here in a large women's tee shirt and size 6 jeans. What I want to know is where the rest of me ended up because, according to the laws of physics, there are 210 pounds of me floating around the observable universe in some form or another.
I can't believe that I'm almost finished with this journal. It's a fortunate thing that I thought ahead and got an extra when I could afford it, so there would be no interruptions in my handwritten journaling once this one is full. The only thing I need to do to make it ready to be written in, is to finish inking the owl cover, like I did with this journal. The colours will be different, obviously, but the finished product should be just as pretty, if not more so.
Well, this was a short flight. We are already about to land after only approximately thirty minutes in the air. It seems we spent more time on the tarmac than we did actually flying! I can't wait to see Cameron and all my Tribe and family. I just hope Cameron finds me okay, 'cos my phone is dead and I currently have no internet connection. Ye gods.
We just landed at 8:25 AM. I'm home.
One more thing before I conclude this entry. You know you're at an airport in the South, when about half the seats made available for travelers are rocking chairs. The end.
