Still in Albuquerque...

Yesterday became a squeaker when my 5:40 pm flight out of JFK only started boarding at 5:40 and then experienced the slings and arrows of outrageous air traffic control. The plane was wheels-up finally at 7:15 pm and was not allowed to exploit its capabilities for speed while in the air (according to the captain), which landed us into Cincinnati at 8:50 pm.

Of course, the whole plane had connections to make, but mine still had a few minutes to go before the gate doors closed. I finally got out of the plane and saw that my flight's gate had been reported as closed, but the young fellow greeting us told me that if I hurried, I'd probably make the plane.

Only problem was, he told me the wrong gate!

As I said, it was a squeaker, but eventually I made the plane. Three cheers for Delta for holding the plane for me (resulting in a 5-minute late departure)!

I was so worked up about whether I was getting to Cincinnati on time, I got no sleep during the first leg of the trip and except for about 20 min near the end, remained sleepless from Ohio to New Mexico. By the time I got my rental and got on the road, it was nearly 11:30 pm, so I decided to spend the night in a motel, planning to rise at 5 am and head on home.

I overslept.

So now I need to get a move on.

Cheers...

Halloween Scrooge...

That's me.

I've never liked Halloween, not even as a kid. While costumes have their place, I could never see the fun in running around and ringing the doorbells of strangers. And what I particularly dislike about the season (which the radio informed me, during my drive home, is second in commercial value only to Christmas) is the fact that what little of interest there might be for me on the tube is shouldered aside for hours and hours of horror movies.

As you might guess, I'm no fan of horror movies. The House on Haunted Hill gave me nightmares when I was a child, and I don't think I've ever seen more than 10 minutes of The Excorcist, or The Amityville Horror, or any of that genre (at least, not if I could help it). Even the comedy romps with Abbot and Costello made me nervous as a kid.

While my dad and I were visiting my mom Sunday, her roommate - an ancient black woman who is wheeled out several times a day to smoke - had her television set to something featuring Winona Rider and a lot of screaming. That audio background, combined with the visual impact of the hospital beds and other medical paraphernalia, created a hollow feeling in my soul, and the word "bedlam" popped into my mind, followed a moment later by the etymology of that word.

One more night of this Halloween stuff, and it'll be over until next year.

* * *My last glimpse of my mom yesterday was reminiscent of her hospital stay during my previous trip. She was in bed, staring at the ceiling, not saying anything but giving out with a coughing fit from time to time. The nurses said she showed a slight fever the night before, which had gone down during the night after the introduction of fluids, and that they were keeping her in bed to let her rest. I don't know; lying in her bed like that, she looked feeble and frail to me, and her eyes - open but unseeing - got to me.

The difference between my mom sitting in her wheelchair and lying in bed like that made me think of the old vaudevillians who entertained audiences by spinning plates atop of flexible rods. Part of the act was to let the plates lose so much energy that they seemed sure to fall off the rod and crash to the stage. In her wheelchair, she seems to me like a plate spinning with moderate wobble; in bed, it seems as though she's a plate that's oh, so close to falling.

I don't know what it is about that nursing home, but the atmosphere sure makes my mind wander.

My dad and I didn't stay long, as he wanted to make sure we didn't miss the train. (Not only did we not miss it, we had time to leave the station for coffee and return, and still waited almost 30 min before I gathered my things to actually get on the train.)

* * *The trip north from Albuquerque went off well, though if I had known that our supplier's merchandise had not been shipped, I might've stayed to pick up some necessities. Then again, I would not have been able to file the store's quarterly unemployment insurance tax, which I just did online (Hooray, Colorado!). The rental car is a Ford Escape, and the rental rate is so attractive, I might just keep the car for a couple of days extra, so as to spread out the $50 drop-off fee.

Cheers...

NaNoWriMo eve...

I have little to no idea what to write about, but - in the words of one of the Pinkertons who routinely lightened my wallet playing "357" during our last stint together in Kazakhstan - "I ain't skeered."

I just hope that the 1667 words I'll have to average to make the month's 50K target is a drop in the bucket compared to the non-fiction writing I (hopefully) will be doing for translation clients.

Cheers...