travel

Sour flies, greenheads, ticks: Bug-eyed in South Jersey

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There is a cricket in my dad’s house. Upstairs. I sleep upstairs. I had planned to sleep peacefully upstairs, but three or four times per night the critter tunes up: Eek-eek-eek.

My eyes fly open and my heart starts pounding. The noise isn’t scary, just unfamiliar – and unfamiliar sounds trigger the hyperarousal has been my companion ever since my daughter’s illness. It’s the one part of post-traumatic stress disorder that I haven’t been able to shake.

I’ll calm myself down, finally doze off and it happens again. Eek-eek-eek. My dad’s home has a nice big downstairs and a huge basement, but naturally Cri-Cri just had to choose the penthouse.

I’ve got nothing against crickets – outside.

 

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Deplaned.

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It’s a little after 1 a.m. and I’m writing from my dad’s place in South Jersey. Already sweating, and boy, are those crickets loud. You forget.

Had to rewrite a paragraph for the next “Living With Less” column — didn’t want the editor to have to wait until tomorrow — so as long as I was up I thought I’d let people know what gives here in the land of tomatoes and prisons.

For starters, I had an excellent experience flying on United Airlines. Not a single flight attendant cursed or leaped out of the plane, beer in hand.

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Re-entry is, um, a challenge.

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I stumbled into my apartment at 12:30 a.m. today, dragging/lugging about 60 pounds of luggage from the plane to the train to the downtown bus. It might have been half an hour sooner but I just missed the train, which meant I just missed the bus and had to wait another 37 minutes.

I just missed them because I stopped to help a young mother with her two-under-two kids when we got off the plane. They’d been sitting next to me, apparently on their way to what cartoonist Scott Adams called the Colicky Baby Convention. They were like family, especially since the 5-month-old had thrown up on me during the flight.

 

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I travel with mayonnaise.

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Recently I flew to Anchorage, Alaska for a 10-week housesitting gig/visit. I generally go with just a carry-on bag, but my new neck-supporting pillow takes up a big chunk of that bag. I couldn’t stuff much Stuff into the small space where the pillow wasn’t.

A real frugalist just hates to pay checked-bag fees. Were this to have been a short trip I’d have simply used a rolled-up towel under my neck. But 10 weeks is a little long to subject my creaky neck to a tube o’terrycloth. Into the bag went the pillow and into another bag went a bunch of my stuff.

Plus some birthday presents, and some mayonnaise.

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