Tuesday, August 28

Going to Nashville, Tennessee via Houston, Texas Red Eye

In early July mom asked me how much vacation time I had and that we should go somewhere at the end of August.  I told her that I would get back to her since I had just started a new job.  She threw around a few places such as southern Florida, New Orleans, Chicago and Tennessee.  I looked into all of them and after I got the okay from my boss to take a few days off from work, mom and I decided on Tennessee.


We would fly into Nashville, sight see there, then drive to Chattanooga, see stuff there and then visit Knoxville and the surrounding area until heading back to Nashville to come home.  At that time Grammie was doing pretty good but of course time would tell.  I didn't really want to book this trip and have something happen then we would have to eat the money or get ridiculed by family members and I didn't want either of them to happen.  I was hoping she would get better.  Sadly, that was not the case and my life changed drastically.  Grief has been hands down the hardest emotion I have ever had to deal with.

Since Erika moved back in mom asked her if she wanted to go with us and she bought her tickets.  It would make our trip cheaper splitting it three ways now.  I spent time researching what to see in those three locations.

I got up early and went to work.  Yesterday, I wrote everyone an email telling them what had happened over the weekend and I was not ready to talk about it.  I was left alone with my thoughts as I went through my work list.  A few people wrote me back telling me they understood and they were sorry for my loss.  I had a lot to do before the trip so I asked my boss if I could leave early and she said yes.  We also talked about my bereavement leave for Grammie's funeral on September 5.  She said take all the time you need and we will see you when you get back.  My first day back was going to be September 6.  I was going to be gone from work for six days with a long weekend.  I really needed to get away.

I finished up my data collections, spinals and imaging, did my emails and finished my time sheet.  They told me to have a good time.  I left at 9.  I headed to west side Olympia to pay the chiropractic office the rest of the money I owed them.  Earlier that year I had a subtle change in my insurance that didn't cover my care anymore and now I owed like $350.  I was super upset because it happened during all of the other stupid inconvenient things that were happening at the time.

I headed home and got Ben to mow the lawn.  I ate some chicken noodle soup for lunch as I washed the clothes that I would need for the upcoming trip.  I weeded the front yard, washed dishes, cleaned the kitchen, packed my stuff and took a small nap.  I briefly worked on Grammie's slide show for her celebration.

I ate a quick dinner, threw all of our stuff into the Escape and headed to grandma's house to give her some money for watching our pets for when Ben is on shift.  She told us to have a great time and she would see us when we got back.  We went over to our parents house and picked up mom and her stuff and off we went to SeaTac.  We left mom's house around 8 p.m.

Along the way near Des Moines, we had some butthole drive past us really fast and it scared us.  He really could have caused an accident.  We really didn't have time for any accidents.  We got off at the airport exit and had Nuvi direct us to the Ajax parking lot.  This was the same one we parked in the first time we went to Ecuador back in September 2017.  We got our card and they told us which row to park in.  The shuttle came right away.  We made sure we had all of our stuff, the Escape was locked and we all made it on.  They took us to our airline inside the airport.  We checked in, got our boarding passes and had to pay $25 each for our luggage.  It didn't take us very long to get through security because it was so late.


We had a little over an hour to wait for our flight to leave.  We were on United flight 2112 and it left at aprox. 11:59 p.m.  Erika and I walked around the airport.  I needed a snack so I grabbed a drink and some chips.  We walked back to mom at the gate and chilled until it was time to board.  Since Erika bought her tickets at a different time she got to board before us which I questioned because we bought our tickets way before she did.  I thought it was odd.  Oh well.

We boarded, found our seats and awaited departure.  This is the latest flight I've ever taken in my life.  We decided on this flight because I was able to go to work for at least part of the day, get some stuff done and it was a cheap flight because it was late.  This would be a 4 hour flight to Houston, Texas and we will be arriving at 6 a.m. central time.


I bet you could guess what we did on this flight...that's right, we tried getting as much sleep as we could!

Next Adventure:  Houston We Have A Problem, Nashville, Antique Archaeology, Broadway, Murals and Bar-B-Cutie

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