The Rest of the Story

As promised, I will try to wrap up the tales of my Wisconsin adventure tonight. This will be long too. After this, I will try to go back to normal-sized blogging. The other side of the post I wrote last night is the circus of misadventure that befell the entire family throughout this past week. There was, to begin with, the difficulty of arranging a date and time for the funeral. Several of us were traveling to get there, and it was quite an effort to coordinate with limited flights (for us) and great-grandkids' birthdays and such. Joe and I nearly missed our flight and our connector flight on the way up. The airline actually gave away Joe's seat just before we got to the gate to board the last flight. Then, as I said, a horrendous stomach flu began to tear through the family. It landed my uncle in the emergency room on the morning of the funeral. His wife, who was the Coordinator of the Entire Event, was too sick to make it to the service. Just before the funeral began, the other uncle rounded up his son (my cousin - got it all straight so far?) and deadpanned, "C'mon Brad. We're gonna toss your uncle in the trunk. You're in charge of holding the i.v. over his head." The funny thing is, the sick uncle is small enough to fit in nearly any trunk I've ever seen. He arrived in sweat pants and looked like he belonged next to Grandma.
Like I said, we managed to take some photos of places we used to visit when we were kids. Here's a photo of me and Paul Bunyan. The restaurant is closed in the winter. You can see that my face is extremely swollen from tears. But I managed to look as Paul Bunyan-y as possible for this un-missable photo op. The appearance of this photo in a public venue should demonstrate that I have very little pride left at this stage in life.

The return trip was a nightmare. Little tiny Wausau airport let us know that our flight to Detroit was delayed. We would miss the flight from Detroit to Tampa. They gave Joe and me a hotel room (Jon is on tour and flew back to Portland), a couple of meal vouchers and a shuttle ride to the hotel. The meal vouchers were supposed to be good in the hotel restaurant. The hotel didn't have a restaurant. They had also mistaken me and my brother for a couple. I told them that it didn't matter if it WAS king-sized, I hadn't slept in the same bed with him since he was five. He wet the bed that time. I wasn't about to give him another chance.
Since we had gotten a shuttle ride to the hotel, we had to walk in the ten-degree weather to the nearest restaurant. Needless to say, much beer was consumed.
Did I mention that we found out upon arriving at the hotel that the airport shuttle didn't run at 4 AM? That's when we had to leave for our rescheduled flight. They made special arrangements for us. I think they were just having pity.
We walked into the airport and I told Joe that I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Sure enough, our flight had been cancelled. Fortunately, they had another plane coming that would get us to Minneapolis (our new point of connection) in time to make it on a plane to Tampa.
At this point, we went through security. They thought I was going to hijack the plane with a .25-ounce tin of Burt's Bees lip balm. After searching my purse gruffly, the security lady told me (in a Wisconsin accent as thick as her middle section) that she'd let me have it just this once. Did I mention I'd already thrown away four other cosmetic items that I thought were possibly not okay? I'd made it through Tampa just fine....hmmmm....
The man on the other side of the table yelled at me to make sure I picked up my purse on the public side of the security table. I don't know why he yelled at me. Everybody in security and everybody in line already knew that I didn't have any sharp objects in my purse. They also knew that the flashlight on my key chain was not, in fact, an explosive device. It was tested in full view.
We got to Minneapolis, slid into our seats, got our nice hot beverage (we had gotten first-class tickets for this leg of the flight - thanks Mom!), and were promptly told to de-plane. The airline had mis-assigned the planes. The one we were on was apparently headed to San Juan.
So, we got all the San Juan folks loaded on our plane, and the Tampa folks all got on the right plane, and we sat....for a long time. The baggage loading system had broken down. After an hour of tinkering, they decided to load the luggage manually. At this point, I was pretty sure I was not going to make it home alive.
I could just see Grandma in a heavenly rocking chair, with her arm thrown over the side (clutching a tissue - she would perpetually be folding and smoothing a tissue and always had one in her hand), her head tossed back in raucous laughter. She would have thought this was a great story.
I did, in fact, make it home. When I started to unpack, I found a note that my bag had been inspected. I know this happens at random, but I'm pretty sure the good folks in Wausau called up the Minneapolis crew and told them to check me out.

<3 Christy