And I'm back...EAST!

Hey y’all! So apparently, I only write in my blog when I leave home and have to exert myself to labors beyond staying in my bedroom all day with a book. Anyway, my brother Daniel and I are on vacation at our grandparents’ house in Brentwood, Tennessee for the next week or so, and I will do my best to give you (y’all, I mean – excuuuse me! Try-ain to get back in mah Southern belle dialect heah) daily reports.

My day started out at 6 am, when Mom woke me up to go running on the track. It was cool and dark and kind of fun, except that we found out that one of our neighbor’s houses had been robbed last night – yikes! I made a mental note to not ever leave our door unlocked, even for a short period of time.

After exercising, I took a shower, fixed my hair, ate breakfast, and completed all the last minute packing. We left the house a little after 8 am, and ended up arriving at the airport a little flustered, after Mom took a wrong turn to get to a parking lot, rather than the parking garage, and Daniel and I argued the benefits/disadvantages to the latter option. Anyway, we made it inside without any difficulty, and checked in our bags (and I managed to assure Mom that my rather large—but still within the size limit—carry-on bag would not, in fact, be sufficient cause to weigh the plane down and cause a tragic crash in the vast desert between Salt Lake City and Phoenix). My bag had a lock on it, which I thought nothing of, since both my bags on the flight to D.C. had locks and I had never had my attention drawn to it. However, this time there wasn’t a line at the check-in place and the airport security guys seemed pretty bored, so they decided to have me open my bag and to rifle through everything. I was more than a little embarrassed at having my stuffed purple elephant, Derrick, which Daniel insisted I bring on the trip for the sake of old times, bared to the sight and mockery of all the airport security personnel—particularly since I had purposely put him in my large suitcase for the sake of avoiding such an exposure—but fortunately, no laughs were heard, no jokes were made, and both Derrick and my suitcase were able to continue the rest of the trip without further shame.

After kissing Mama good-bye and making it through security extraordinarily quickly, Daniel and I had a 2-hour wait until our flight. We used a good part of the first hour reading our scriptures, and took a long walk around the airport during the second hour. There were a lot of art displays, and I particularly liked a series of photographs showcasing ballet dancers in exotic locations. Daniel didn’t much like looking at any of them, but did say that his favorite was the only picture which didn’t have any females in it (it had, instead, three males in Russian dancing costumes and poses).

Finally we settled down to wait out the last half-hour before our flight, and Daniel struck up a conversation with a guy named Matthew, who told us he had converted to the Church 3 years ago because of his wife, who was Peruvian, and that he lived in Mexico, and that he had done a session in the Salt Lake Temple, and that he used to be pretty wild before he joined the church, among other things. He also thought Daniel and I were married, and asked how long we had been with each other – ha ha ha!!! We thought about saying “Oh, 21 years or so,” but ended up telling him the truth, which seemed to surprise him a good deal. I guess it’s a pretty natural assumption, given that we’re together and the same age, but you’d think more people would check to see if the girl was wearing a wedding ring, at least!

After chatting with Matthew, we rushed to board our plane, which was already boarding “B” passengers (we were “A”), and then Daniel suddenly decided he had to go to the bathroom. I tried to talk him out of it, but only succeeded in making him hesitate for 20 seconds or so before racing off, leaving me with his bag at the end of the line of passengers, which was rapidly moving up. Result? We ended up being the last people to get on—so much for our one chance at boarding first with “A” tickets. However, I was grateful that we made the flight, and it was actually very nice—as in “not crowded.” We both got window seats and a whole aisle to ourselves, and the staff were fun and pleasant. All the flight attendants were men, which surprised me a little. But they were all nice guys, and seemed to be capable of knocking down any passengers who tried to cause any trouble, so I was okay with it.

I didn’t do much on the flight—just read the magazine, which had changed since my trip home from D.C., ate my peanuts, drank my orange juice, and read a little bit in my new favorite book of all time, Fablehaven. I liked the first one, LOOOOOOOVED the second one, and am immensely enjoying the third one.

In Phoenix, we called Mom, ate our sack lunches, and figured out that we could get free Internet. That made the time pass rather quickly, and soon we were ready to board our next flight to Nashville. This flight actually was very crowded, but we still managed to find two seats together, almost at the very back of the plane. I sat in the middle seat, Daniel sat in the aisle seat, and across the aisle sat two teenage girls with two tiny dogs in a carrier. I guess you can now flight pets with Southwest…for a fee of $75, as we overheard. They seemed to be very well behaved dogs, at least, and small enough to fit in a regular sized purse. I was impressed at the lack of messiness and smelliness.


The flight wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I was very tired and couldn’t get in a comfortable position to fall asleep. I read a lot in my book, which helped to pass the time, and they gave us quite a few snacks (more peanuts, crackers with cheese, those Oreo crackers which are NOT in the least bit like Oreos, and bland, dry, sandy animal crackers), which helped since I had only eaten half my lunch in Phoenix. The flight attendant who did all the talking was also a bit of a character – he cracked a lot of the usual jokes, about us being on a flight to New Orleans instead of Nashville, and thanked “all 15 of you who paid attention” to the safety instructions. He also got a loud round of laughter when he introduced the lifejacket bit with “Should we happen to fall into one of the vast oceans between Phoenix and Nashville…” Good stuff! All in all, it didn’t seem like it had been that long when we landed in Nashville 20 min. ahead of schedule. Oddly enough, the 10 minutes or so we had to wait before we could leave the airplane seemed INTERMINABLE! But once out, things were good. We found Aunt Shelly, picked up our baggage, met a tall, handsome stranger and a taller, white-haired giant who claimed to be Andy Hughes and Uncle Billy, and drove to Grandma and Grandpa’s, where we were treated with a dinner of vegetable soup, homemade bread, tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, and zucchini bread with ice cream for dessert. Delicious!

We talked after dinner for a good long time about everything from what Dad’s favorite food was as a kid (strawberries) to what Grandma’s father did in Germany in World War II, to what riding a camel in Australia was like. It felt a bit like time travel, but was fun all the same, and I look forward to having more conversations around the table. Well, time for bed, and to read some more in my new favorite book! Goodnight!