Rapidamente

KEE-rist, it's good to be home! These molto rapido trips to see the old man just wear me clean out. You’ve undoubtedly heard me kvetch about this before – sorry.

I fly down to see him as often as I can which always feels like not enough. I miss being able to dial him up. Back in my hearing days, we’d schmooze on the blower endlessly. We'd listen to each other's woe-tales and then make ourselves laugh and feel better. Those days are 15 years gone now. Yup, another stupid reminder that my ears are crapped out! *grumble, piss, moan*

In any case, this visit was generally good. He tires quickly though so each individual visit needs to be limited to about an hour. I believe what I’ll do next time is this – bring my laptop in and, at the end of each hour, head down to the lovely lobby lounge. I can work, write and/or doodle for an hour and then return for another round of hobnobberie, jibber jabber-dom and general chewing of the fat.

I know I’ve kvetched about rural Western Pennsylvania but, christ almighty, it’s beautiful at this time of year (other times too!.) It’s bountifully bucolic. SO MANY glorious trees!

Now then, I really, truly need everything to run smoothly on these all-too-brief sojourns. I gotta be upbeat, not show my stratospheric anxiety over Poppy’s rapidly declining health AND I wanna bring the humor – be funny, make him laugh or at least smile. Who knows how much time he has left – I wanna make our remaining time fun.

Suppressing my fears, my radical Weltschmerziness and rocking my most charming self (shut up, I am SO charming!) takes a shit-ton of energy. Bullshit like the Dollar debacle AND the fact that I purchased Extra Speed (i.e. TSA Precheck) but didn’t get it (on either flight) throws me off stride.

Did I calmly do/say all the right things in my attempt to get the drones at Dollar to help me. Or was I I a human shaped crazed-outrage machine? Why am I stuck in these obscenely long security lines? Didn’t I splurge on the TSA Precheck option? What did I do wrong?

Rage turns inward.

There are loads of things that piss me off (yeah, I know DUH!). Right up at the tippy top of the anger-making heap is being ripped off. Don’t give me what I paid for, stiff me on a bill, swindle me (or attempt to) and I’m through the rage roof. That fury needs to be worked off – laps of the Y pool, time on the elliptical or a wickedly long walk are good schemes but NOT possible when I’m in the car for a long-ass drive from airport to Pop’s rural burgh.

What can I do for next time (mid July) to create an easier, less stressful path to My Best Me-ness™?  For starters, I’m not holding onto this past trip’s anger inducers. I’ve emailed jetBlue asking for a refund on the unprovided Extra Speed. And I’ve done as much as I can about Dollar’s little scam – learned a lesson AND written about.

Two NICE customer service bits from the weekend:

1. The hotel. The desk clerk was wonderfully warm (AND learning ASL and eager to try it out), there were FREE cuppycakes and coffee in the lobby and, at six AM on Saturday, the pool was blissfully, cannonballing kid-free.
2. We went to lunch at this low-ambience, unposh Italian restaurant downtown. I always go there – the food's good, there's Chianti on tap and the waiter's cute. And, despite only dining there every few months, the dude recognized and acknowledged me. *BEAM*

If I spend all my time fuming and fussing about tits-up shit I'll, in my rage state, miss an awful lot of good stuff.