Category Archives: Diversions

The stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere.

Family matters, On the Road

Reunited

Poppy and I flew from Detroit to Nashville unscathed, thanks to the nice couple from Texas and their 13-month-old twins who played with Poppy for an hour or so in Detroit; the mustachioed man in a Hawaiian shirt who carried the car seat for me while I toted two bags and a Poppy onto the plane; and our friend Jan, who met us at the airport and helped us wrangle Poppy and our luggage.

Poppy fell asleep as soon as I buckled her into her seat on the plane. She slept peacefully through the take-off, and she would’ve kept sleeping if the crew hadn’t made their oh-so-important announcement about the in-flight catalogue. She stayed awake and slightly cranky until we hit turbulence just before we got to Nashville. She snoozed through the bumpy ride, all the way to the equally bumpy landing and straight through until I unbuckled her from her seat. She was a little groggy when we met Rockford and Jan, so it wasn’t quite the joyous reunion I’d pictured. But once she woke up, she was very happy to see her dad.

Just as we were about to finish up our efforts at the car rental counter, the power went out. At the airport. I’m so glad we were already on the ground. I guess they’re equipped to deal with that sort of thing, but still.

Anyway, the power outage set us back about half an hour, and I got a free upgrade from a Taurus to a Hyundai Tucson (a comfortable little SUV with very little go). So we headed to Knoxville, where we planned to stay for the night. And it rained and rained and rained, and I saw some spectacular lightning. And then, about 10 miles from our exit, traffic stopped. And we sat and sat and sat. For two hours. And then I forgot which exit I was supposed to take and had to call Rockford from a payphone (in the rain). It was not a pretty sight.

Then we slept and got up and drove and drove and went to …

Our 10-year high school reunion

High school wasn’t really a horrible time in my life. It wasn’t, like, totally rad or anything, but I don’t have any mental anguish from the experience. But I still felt weird about going to the reunion. And it was, at first, surreal. But it ended up being fun. I’m glad we went. I don’t really have much more to say about that.

On the Road

The incredible shrinking zoo

Yesterday we went to the Children’s Zoo we used to go to when I was a kid. It was so much smaller than I remembered. The prairie dogs (my favorite) are still there, but their enclosure used to look like it really was the whole prairie. Now, somehow, it would fit into Dad’s garage, with room to spare. The p.d.’s don’t seem to mind, though, and they were just as cute as ever. Poppy was enthralled with them, too, so all is well.

I was a little conflicted to find that the zoo no longer has the same snake exhibit. It used to be on a little red boat in the middle of a lake, and you had to cross a neverending bridge to get to it. I hated the snake boat. It gave me nightmares. But I forced myself to cross that darn bridge and step into that little red boat every time.

Dopey kid.

I’m glad they’re updating things at the zoo, but I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to say, “Hey Snake Boat! You’re not so scary! Your bridge is short, and your paint is peeling!” Now it will be forever terrifying to me.