Donna had a "Plant Exchange Party." Mom and I went! Yes, we traveled to Georgia just for that. Well, and to get out of town, to visit family, hang out, have a change of scenery, get away of the snow.
[Plus, I just had a hard time passing up a $114 Round trip ticket from Las Vegas to Atlanta. ]
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| Donna, Liz, Angela |
She prepared a lot of fun, yummy snacks and served it on fun, collectible plates , bowls and platters. She collects glass for re-sale on her eBay site. She keeps pretty busy with it, too!
Some of Mom's friends came by. This is Carolyn and [Albert?] Lawson from her old Perry Ward. Nice folks. She came by later to drop off plants to Donna to adopt because they are moving to Texas.
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| Mom and Angela chatting. |
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| Donna prepping some capricci salad skewers. |
The trip for me and Mom went as follows:
She spent the night at our house (not to be confused with Our House. . . that joke will never get old) on Thursday February 1. We got up dark and Early on the 2nd to drive to St. George to catch the Shuttle to the Las Vegas Airport. We left at 5 am to be in St. George at 6 am. Dark and Early. And RAINY! It rained on us all the way down, so I had to slow down. We cut it quite close getting to the St. George Shuttle. But we made it. And we made it to the airport in Las Vegas in good time, as well. I had checked in online, but just needed to get a gate check tag for the walker and the wheelchair for Mom. We got through security so quickly that we forgot to drink our water and they chucked Mom's water bottle! But the Gatorade made it okay (medical reasons). We had a bit of a long wait at our gate, but that was okay. Mom could get some walking in. A nice lady at the counter there at the gate told us she was switching our seats. Where we had previously been separate --because I just HATE it that they have the nerve to make us PAY to choose where we sit and I won't pay!! (But I love Frontier's cheap flights), they now moved us up and together. I had previously been at the back of the plane and Mom on row 14. Now we were both on Row 4. Cool!
Smooth, but long, flight to Atlanta. Donna picked us up and we went out for Mexican food. Mom and I were hungry! We had plenty of snacks, but breakfast was a long time ago.
We got settled in at Donna's house, Mom in the downstairs guest room and me in the over-the-garage guest room. Her house is so lovely and accommodating.
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| That's her pool out there in the back yard behind me. But it was way too cold to swim and I hadn't brought a swim suit anyway. |
Saturday morning Butch and Donna had to attend a funeral for a former neighbor, Mom and I hung out, then in the afternoon was the plant exchange. It was a nice opportunity to meet some friends of Donna's and Mom's. Good food, good times.
Dinner at home, games in the evening. Movies here and there. A very rainy Sunday was brunch with the girls in Macon at Oliver's Bistro. Then we all went over to Liz's home. It's on the historic register (the whole block, I believe). Cute. They even helped Mom get up all the stairs to see the upper floor, as she'd never seen it before. Liz has two kitties now, and well on her way to being the crazy cat lady of Magnolia street. haha. Not really.
I thought it was necessary to take a selfie while standing in order of height. I'm shortest. Forever and always.
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| Mom, Liz, Butch, me, Angela, Donna |
It was so fun to see Liz's house and spend some time looking around and enjoying it's unique-ness, her flair for art and decor and paintings, and her two cute kitties.
Monday it wasn't raining anymore, but it was cloudy. Donna drove Mom and me to all her old haunts, and just around Perry and surrounding area, just to see this and that. We went into the antiques store where Donna sells some of her collectibles. She rents space on one bookcase in an entire warren of aisles and rooms and areas. It's like a maze. Junk to me, but some folks just love it. We guesstimated that there were probably around 30 items on that bookcase and she switches things out about monthly and collects money on all the sales monthly. However, on eBay, Donna has close to NINE HUNDRED items listed. Yowza. That's a lot of STUFF. And stuff sells all the time, so there ya go. A hobby that actually makes money. And yes, she also tracks gas and mileage (I think). And has a huge spreadsheet of all of this in great detail to track just about everything.
Mom said she was in heaven, being surrounded by her two girls. It WAS pretty fun, actually.
Butch and Donna fed us well, we had one more Mexican meal out on Monday and then Tuesday it was time to go again. :-(
The trip home:
We didn't have to leave Warner Robins until about 11. Tuesday February 6, 2024. The breakfast and snack that Mom had had earlier wasn't enough to keep her blood sugar from dropping dangerously low. Even with a couple of pieces of hard candy! So we stopped to grab some apple juice for her to glug. Then we stopped to grab a Whopper from Burger King. She ate the whole thing and it was a good lunch. ha. Then Donna stopped in a Hotel parking lot just to CONFIRM that her levels were going up and doing well. Mom felt much better, so Donna dropped us off at the airport. (I had actually said to Donna, "I don't want to bring home a dead Momma.") Only Frontier was at the opposite end of where we were dropped. Oh well. Mom said she needed to walk, so walk we did . . . very slowly. Having your blood glucose levels drop to the 50's is really taxing and leaves one feeling drained and icky. But she make it. "I feel fine. I'm fine, really, I'm fine." I'd checked in online again, so all we needed to do was the tag for her gate-checked walker and get that special boarding pass for the wheelchair folks. We had plenty of time. And it's a good thing because
We couldn't find Mom's ID. ANYwhere!
We were unpacking, unzipping, checking pockets, checking my bag, my pockets. It was getting kind of scary. I was the one who had packed up Mom's "personal item" bag that morning for her. We traveled very very lightly this short trip, you know. She seemed to think I'd stuck it with mine in my phone pocket, I knew it was nowhere in her bag . . . then it hit us, after multiple checks thru her bag, that there was one more pocket on the underside of the walker seat. That is where Mom had placed it. Whew. I was really worried that I was going to have to call Donna to come and retrieve us and we'd have to try again another day. So scary.
On to the wheelchair guy. We got one who was old, gray, wearing a mask, gasping and limping. It was a good thing we didn't have to hurry. But security did take longer this time and we were kind of a scattered mess after the ticket counter fiasco. But we made it to our gate, I tipped and dismissed our wheelchair guy, Scott, and told him we'd be fine from here because Mom does fine on her walker down the jetway into the plane.
Mom left with just her walker to use the bathroom, I called Donna to tell her of our ticket counter experience. Right when the call started, there was a blaringly LOUD announcement starting across the hall, so I plugged my ear so I could hear myself and Donna on the phone. We chatted. I hung up. I re-arranged our bags, waiting for Mom to return from the bathroom. Then I was going to go check on her. . . and who should show up by my side but Scott! He informed me that our gate had been changed and he'd go get a chair and take us there. I hadn't even looked at our gate screens yet, nor had I looked at a monitor since we first entered the airport. Sheesh. That would have/could have been awful. Could be that was the announcement I blocked out. The lady was across the way, but the speaker was right over my head. Doh.
Mom and I completed our bathroom break, Scott arrived with a wheel chair and off we went to the OTHER gat, far, far away in the huge Atlanta Airport. We had something of a wait here, too. But wait! The plane's departure time was now delayed due to a delayed incoming flight. I knew that we'd miss our St. George Shuttle ride at the Las Vegas Airport. Then I needed to decide if I should just have Mike come and get us and I'd cancel the shuttle . . . or I could change the time of the shuttle to a later one. But HOW much later?? Hmmm. I tried calling Mike multiple times to no avail. Not surprising. He seldom/never answers his phone. It's for his convenience, not anyone else's. Oh well. So I called the St. George Shuttle and changed our shuttle to a later time, thinking we'd have LOTS of time, even with that later arrival time. Time even to pick up a real (fast food) meal at the airport before heading out to the shuttle.
Except we didn't take off in a timely manner. Nor did we land in a timely manner. The 40 minute delay was more like twice that. Plus the flight was quite rough most of the way. And wheel chair people are the last to get off the plane.
I informed our wheelchair driver that we were cutting it close to being able to get to our Shuttle Stop at Terminal, and we definitely needed a bathroom stop. He guided us well, and I kept prompting him to "Walk FASTER". I received two courtesy calls from the driver who needed to leave and we weren't there. "I'm coming, we're almost at baggage claim!" He said, "You haven't even got your BAGS yet??!!" I assured him that we had no baggage but just needed to get out that door. The wheelchair guy said to tell him I could see his van, but I'd hung up by then and couldn't see to make a call one-handed while running behind and steering a walker stacked with two gigantic purses.
We made it. 5 minutes late, but he waited for us, bless his heart. Whew.
Between a low-glucose incident, lost ID cards, gate change, delay, it was a very eventful trip home to Utah! I was just relieved to see my car still in the lot at the St. George Shuttle place. I didn't have a permit for parking from them on my dashboard. I wasn't aware until we were in the van that they were required, so I hoped that the handicap placard was adequate. It was. Whew!
We pulled into Mom's place about 11 pm. She was very tired out, but we had managed to snooze a bit on the plane. I parked below "Our House" on the street to wait until her light went on in the room. I think we got away with just swollen feet and ankles!
AND, we had a lot of fun with Donna and family!!
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