This has been a long week that wasn’t long enough. My Australian sister (in-law, but who’s counting?) was here for “not long enough.” We got to do a great deal of catching up as there were no meetings, conferences nor other people to interfere. It is always an amazing thing, when one has not seen someone in a long time, to play catchup and all the pieces fit.
Everything is on “go” and after the first few minutes of hugging and so forth, everything is back to normal and you carry on from there. Those moments make you wonder why it has been so long and then the realization of travel rears its ugly head.
In our case it is a 17 hour flight to Australia and that doesn’t count the time spent in airports waiting. It is sorta discouraging and the airlines are all competing to see which one can reduce the distance between seats to the least amount possible. Right now if you are a tall midget on up then the seats will not fit you. Most four-year-old children can squeeze into most of the economy class seats but that will probably change before the Christmas rush.
Nosir, this is not going to be a rant about airlines but it is an effort to keep it from becoming that. OK, moving along, my S-I-L and I went way over in eastern Oklahoma to visit friends. I grew up knowing the man friend as he and my older brother (her husband) were best friends for life.
The bit about getting caught up played out with him as it did earlier with her. After a few seconds had passed, we were telling stories and anecdotes and happenings from our past lives that we shared and the past that we had missed. It is wonderful when friendship can over come distance and time.
All the traveling around made me miss my “duties” at my volunteer position. I did slip over there one day when the “girls” we to some girly stores to look at girly things. Or, that is my story and I can’t change it here.
For those who have a memory left, you may remember there has been a complete change in the way the books are handled now and not too long ago when we had a system that made sense. However, I must say that this time things worked out as there hadn’t been any books delivered from headquarters for a week or more so it was very easy to not sort and shelve books. When you have nothing to work with or work on it doesn’t take you long to finish. I did go back a couple of days later and put away a dozen or so books.
I suppose my brain/psyche/persona would not let me continue just going over there and looking at shelves which had “holes’ in them. So - when we went to the airport to meet out guest, I stopped at the volunteers desk and asked about that position. I had asked more than once on other occasions but there didn’t seem to be openings at that time.
This time the volunteer on duty was excited that I was interested. He gave me the name and telephone number I should call and showed me a volunteer schedule. There were some openings where there were no volunteers to fill them. That sounded great to me as it is very nearly impossible for me to have nothing to do.
As an aside, I have heard men say that they were not going to do anything when they retired. That is pretty much heresy to me, but it is good for them and I hope they enjoy it.
The director returned my call and sent an application to fill out online which I have done and sent it in. Yessir, now the waiting begins. I would very much like to do the airport thing but I cannot see how I can give up the books as it has become so much a part of me.
I know meeting people at the airport will lead to different conversations and totally different responses from people who are looking for airline information and not looking to see if we have Sharon Sala’s latest novel. Having been born with the “Cook gene’ which causes one to tell other people what to do, I think I can handle the airport gig but I have proved I am more than adequate at doing the books.
But... there is one way to solve the dilemma, I need to get a real job.