Monthly Archives: August 2012

More from Vermont

GirlKit and I had obnoxious delays and a truly horrible meal in the Atlanta airport on our way back from Vermont, prompting her to declare that the only good option is to become rich enough to have her own jet.

I hope she’ll let me travel on it.

In the meantime, Vermont gave us a little of everything: a couple of chilly mornings, some rainy days, some sun, and enough heat to be able to use my cousins’ pool. We had a big group in the house for the weekend and dinner plans most nights. GirlKit and Sissa went to Zumba with my cousins. I skipped out on that one because I was fighting a tummy bug. Dumb!

We got to see my gorgeous heart-cousin and her great family, and she told me all about the book she’s writing. My other cousin has sheep to train her sheepdogs, so we watched them for a good long while. My other other cousin, the artist, brought us a pile of veg and flowers from a farm share.

She asked us to take pictures of the flowers in case she wants to use them in a painting.

Here’s another angle:

I spent a lot of time sitting on the front stoop watching the bees. I sure do love a nice fat bumble.

Bumble butt!

We went to lunch at Friendly’s and saw an alarming menu item.

Sissa and I went on a wild cleaning binge and threw away such items as the old miniature coffeemaker that sparks when you plug it in. (I believe that its the same coffeemaker that I took to college with me in the fall of 1987.) We reorganized like crazy people.

That doesn’t make much of a difference, though. It’s a vacation house, visited at irregular intervals by all sorts of people, so nothing EVER stays organized ever.

We bought a fireproof safe and put some of the old photo albums in it.

Mostly, it was just really good to spend a week at home.

Retournee

My more astrologically minded friends tell me that Mercury, planet of travel and communication, went retrograde on 27 July.

Wicked Stepchild ‘2, aka GirlKit, and I got up at 5 am on 27 July and went to Bush Intercontinental Airport for a 7 am flight to Atlanta. We went in and had our bags checked and got in the bag dropoff line at 5:34 am.

At 7 am we were still in the bag dropoff line, along with at least 6 other people from our flight. Cue Mass Unhappiness (also retrograde regret that I did not march outside and shove our bags at the skycaps). We were, through extensive use of “ma’am,” “thank you,” and “please,” immediately rebooked (unlike the yelling folks) onto flights that put us through Detroit, leaving Houston at 1:00 pm and getting us into Manchester at 7:30 pm (3 hours later than originally scheduled).

We called Mr. Dingo Jones, who retrieved us from the airport and brought us home. GirlKit went to bed. I had several cups of tea, a long grouse, and a knit.

Back to the airport. Bags checked, through security in 10 minutes. Flight slightly delayed. The woman who rebooked us put us in “economy comfort,” which meant we were in a row alone together with a bit of leg room.

Our 1 hour layover in Detroit actually lasted 4. Our gate changed 3 times. Number of announcements about gate changes: 0. Feelings about Delta Airlines: negative. GirlKit, who had purchased a Boy Magazine filled with stickers, took revenge for Travel Horrors by covering my phone in stickers that say things like “Future Mrs. Bieber.” I felt so bad that I agreed to keep said stickers on my phone for the duration of our trip. We played many games of hangman (no one won any of them).

We finally goddamn got on the goddamn plane, sat around on the goddamn runway for a goddamn while, and eventually goddamn took off. The flight was bumpy. We landed in Manchester, NH, at 11:00 pm, got our rental car, and were on our way around 11:45.

Oh planet Mercury. How could you?

I know how to get from the Manchester airport to the house. But there is a new toll road, and it was many hours past my bedtime, so somehow I got not on I-89 but I-91. Eventually I started seeing signs for towns I know, but none of them were signs for our exit.

When I got to the exit for Thetford, I knew I was too far north. So I got off at that exit, thinking that we would find the advertised gas station and get advice.

No.

Also, please remember: cell service in rural Vermont is sketchy at best.

After some nervous-making driving around in the dark, I saw signs for highway 132, which I know very well. 132 was the road near our house that was washed out in tropical storm Irene. I KNEW I was close. I even knew that somewhere along the line I needed to turn left, but the left turns I kept taking were dead ends.

GirlKit was understandably freaked out, but handled it admirably.

At 1:45 am, having turned around several times and with NO idea where I was, we came to a place where the bridge was washed out. I saw that I had ONE bar on my cell phone and called the house. Unbelievably the call went through, and my aunt answered. Thank heaven she knows the back roads around there like the back of her hand and told us where to go, up a vertical dirt road that would take us over the mountain past the washed-out bridge to the mine road, where the house lives.

She stayed on the line with me until the signal faded. About 10 minutes later we saw a car with NY plates screech past us, then slam on its brakes.

“That was so weird!” GirlKit said.

“It’s probably my aunt, but I’m going on ahead!” I shouted.

We got to the house at 2 am, and my aunt returned about 5 minutes later. The whole house was awake and waiting for us, bless them.

GirlKit expressed an understandable skepticism about cross-country travel.