I write this from beautiful Shell Beach, where I am visiting my family. This is a very special family gathering, as my father had a coronary stent inserted into him earlier in the week. He was, as the doctor put it, a heart attack waiting to happen. His artery was 95% clogged. The downside to all of this – and given the alternatives it is nothing at all – is that he can’t hold pick up Lain or much of anything else. Which is unfortunate. But he’s here, and his circulation is good.

I am only barely here. We drove from Royal Crossing to Queen City – by way of Crowns Pointe. The latter is where my aunt lives, and where we dropped off Lisby for dog-sitting. One of the downsides to leaving Arapaho was the dog-sitting arrangement we had out there so that we didn’t have to put Lisby in a Kennel. Fortunately, my aunt is a dog person and is more than happy to take care of her.

Now, on to the story…

Babies make everything take longer. So we were running behind on the drive to CP and QC, which is about two hours in all. We also had some congestion at the tolls. I still felt confident when we arrived that we would make the flight. We had over an hour (arrived at 3:15, flight at 4:30). I dropped Clancy and Lain off and went to find parking. Which took forever. I swear, I am half-inclined to become a graffiti artist if only to improve the signage. It was 3:45 before I found the lot. Then the shuttle took forever. I wasn’t at the airport until 4:05. This created a bit of a problem because you have to turn over your checked baggage 45 minutes before take-off. It sounded like I wasn’t going to make it to Shell Beach that day, until the woman saw that my wife and kid were already on the plane. This spurred her into looking for ways to help.

The solution was for the luggage to go on a later flight and for me to run across the airport. Which I did. I was very apologetic, through my panting, to the woman at the ticket counter. But then four people showed up after me. I can’t remember a time when I was so glad to make the flight. Since the separation from my luggage was voluntary, that meant that I would have to take a separate trip to the airport to pick it up. Which happened today (Sunday). So everybody is reunited, people and luggage. And Dad’s heart is pumping blood everywhere it needs to go.

Whew.