“It was the best of times it was the worst of times” -good ol’ Dickens.

In this case my two cities were Cincinnati and Dallas.

Z and my mom on the way to Cincinnati

The flight to Cinci was a cinch, it was the way back to Dallas that gave me a run for my money. Well, really it was a run for my son, but I will get to that part later.

First of all we almost didn’t even go to the airport because I was flying standby and our flight was OVER SOLD. We decided to go and hope for a miracle. When we arrived we had to face the dreaded nudie x ray. I have done a lot of research on this advance security and have very strong opinions and oppositions to the new methods of screening. I have even contacted my congressman about the issue. Anyway, I was asked to step into the backscatter machine to which I protested “Well, what about the kids?” and he assumed my mother would take them since she was holding SJ, but I quickly blurted out somewhat indignantly “But they are my kids!” So he allowed the kids and I to go through the metal detector and left it at that.
Afterwards we headed toward our gate, but my mom had to stop at the bank inside the airport so I told her we would keep moving toward our destination. I insisted I would be fine by myself with 3 bags and both kids, it wasn’t going to be for long. However, I quickly regretted that decision as Z began to run ahead of me. He kept going faster and before long he was well out of my reach surrounded by tons of strangers in an unknown place and I had no way of catching up with him. To make a long story short a couple of kind ladies and some airport buggy drivers picked him up and brought him back to me. It was a horrific experience, like worse than a body scanner bad.
The good news is we didn’t have to go through it all for nothing because we were all cleared to get on the plane!

SJ after she finally gave in to sleep just as we landed in Dallas.
A rude flight attendant and one upset baby later we had made it home and everyone knows there is no place like home.