Up, Up & Away

Happy Traveler

Unhappy Traveler

PoS will take off this Thursday for her first solo trip ever, after receiving an all expenses paid trip to visit one of the many schools on her list.  We're no strangers to the friendly skies, but she's never traveled alone. Is she a little anxious about it? That would be an understatement.

When she was first learning how to drive, she had to ask me how to get everywhere, including the same school she's attended for 5 years.  How do you just ride in a car and never pay attention to the route?  How do you just wander through airports across the country and never pay attention to where you're going?  Her answer is, "That's what I have a mom for."  So in addition to everything else, I'm her navigator?

We're an iPhone household so, to put her mind at ease, I started looking for apps that would make her trip a little easier.  Her airline has an app that allows her to check-in and use her phone as a boarding pass.  How jealous am I about that? I've yet to travel to a market that allows phone scanning for boarding.  I also found an app that maps 68 of the largest airports in the country.  Tomorrow night we'll work on mapping her route from the gate to baggage claim, where a university rep will meet her.

She was just as apprehensive about taking the metro at the beginning of the school year and she now navigates it like a pro.  I have no doubt that she'll master solo travel as well.  She'll have to, right?

For Someone So Smart...

PoS does some really dumb stuff.  I woke up at 4:42 this morning to retching sounds coming from the bathroom.  Let me back up.  I woke up to coughing coming from the bathroom, but I didn't get up because it was just coughing.  5 minutes later I heard the retching and sprung into action.

The lights were off, but I knew PoS was in there with her gremlin like affliction to light. 



Me: You okay in there?
PoS: Yeah
Me: Well what's wrong?
PoS: Didn't mean to wake you up. My stomach is just acting funny.
Me: What did you eat yesterday?

Let me digress for a minute.  We had a similar situation last year when PoS took left over shrimp egg foo yung to school with her, let it sit in her locker all morning and then ate it for lunch 5 hours later.  Surely she didn't something just as stupid, right?

PoS: I had chicken for lunch.
Me: Chicken? The chicken from dinner?
PoS: Yeah
Me: :::knowing there's no fridge at school:::: Well where was it all morning?
PoS: In my locker
Me: ::::big sigh:::: You can't just eat chicken that's been sitting out for hours!  It goes bad in no time.
PoS: I didn't know

By now she just sounds pitiful.
Me: You want me to bring you anything?
PoS: Some baking soda

Since she was a baby this has been her cure all for an upset stomach.  Tums be damned.  If there's some baking soda in the house, she's on it.  She even has the nerve to add it to the grocery list if she notices that we're running low.

Twenty minutes later she had cleaned herself up, was back in bed with a trash can next to it and had gone back to sleep.  Of course I couldn't go back to sleep so I sat up reading all the time thinking, for someone so smart she sure does some stupid stuff.