of course, traveling with aaron makes things even more interesting. i have on at least one occasion gone to meet him at a restaurant and told the hostess that "i'm here to meet my husband, have you seen him? dark guy, hat, sunglasses, big beard, looks like a terrorist?" he without fail gets chosen for every random search. it gets even better when he leaves his driver's license in someone else's car during a trip to the drive-thru liquor shack and has to get on a plane using his costco card and grainy YMCA ID. FYI they'll let you on, but you better be prepared to spread 'em. at every checkpoint. add a few kids with all their liquids and a stroller that's too big to fit in the x-ray machine and you understand why they sell booze in the airport.
i've flown a lot, so when we had our layover in houston, i paid little attention to the recorded announcement overhead, which i assumed was to remind me to report abandoned luggage and that i had given up any right to privacy in any manner the minute the automatic doors whooshed open and beckoned me down the escalator. no, this was a new one -- now the automaton specifically warns you that you can be arrested for making fun of the TSA.
so, aaron asks: what if you are making positive comments about the TSA? will they still arrest you? and proceeded to spend the rest of our trip through the airport making loud comments about how the TSA is AWESOME!! and BEAUTIFUL!! and EFFICIENT!! tee hee hee.
karma caught up with us on our return trip. which began with us being bussed to our layover city because of a massive delay (which if i wasn't so hungry, would've been perfect because P looooves buses and was beside himself to actually ride on one ... for a few minutes before he passed out). and proceeded with us getting the A-1 special terrorist treatment at charlotte douglas international. i feel like when my curly blonde two-year-old's bright blue foam crocs with various superhero jibbitz have to go through the x-ray machine multiple times, the system is most certainly broken. i'm sure the other patrons enjoyed my MANY loud and animated renditions of the itsy bitsy spider (and the hysterical tired giggles of my children) for the full 40 minutes it took to get a female worker to do the feel-up. i mean pat-down.
i've never had an official pat-down before, and boy is it complicated. lots of technique and using backs and sides of hands and swoopy motions to avoid sensitive areas and make it seem less molester-ish. but it's pretty molester-ish -- and it's tough to top the fact that i just squeezed an entire child out of my hoo-ha a couple months ago. my advice is to decline the invitation to go into the private room, even if you don't have two screaming children to keep an eye on.
throughout all of this, i was very proud of myself for not becoming absolutely furious at aaron, who i assumed brought all of this upon us with a smartass comment about the TSA's efficiency and effectiveness and/or his rakish good-arab looks. supposedly, our massive double stroller was the culprit -- lucky for my husband.
at any rate, we had a great time in the dirty south visiting my family and enjoying the sights. P nicknamed my dad "big papa."
and wormed his way into my sister's kitchen.
mohs found a bald buddy in uncle james (who supposedly is "not good with kids" but inspired P to wake up every morning saying "where did james go?" and then letting me know that he'd "be right back").
aaron and i got to pseudo-sleep-in one time. we all (the boys included) drank too much coffee.
and shared our monkeys with the monkeys at the zoo.
i still hate to fly, but ... sometimes it's worth a little molestation. <3 p="p">
