Sunday’s Column – A Win Is A Win

Jun 16, 2013 by winjaw

There are certain rules that should apply when one’s significant other is away for more than, say, five days.

Namely, if the house still stands, the animals still breathe and the offspring still have all bones intact, we consider that a success. In the past, the Little Black Dress has not been quite as pleased with my view of success. Things such as the exact number of baths, if any, cleaning of rooms, and changing clothes more than once come to mind.

We will let the number of pizza nights and actual bedtimes followed pass.

But this trip was different. The Dress was just glad to be home. And it helped that we actually did eat real food and actually vacuumed and changed clothes probably helped our case. And she had clean sheets. Even I can only handle so many days of constant SONs of Thunder and assorted animals wrestling and sleeping in my bed before I go “this is gross.”

But I think the real reason we got a pass was because the LBD had quite a wonderful time serving as the chaplain for the Miss Oklahoma pageant. There was even a story about her, complete with photo, on the Religion front page of The Tulsa World. She was satisfied with the story, probably because she liked the photo. Lord help the photographer if that didn’t turn out. And so now we have a new media star in the family.

And as important is the fact she made it home with all her suitcases. Ah yes, the suitcases.

The Dress, as dear readers know, has a certain style. Hence, suitcases as suitcases simply will not do. No, the LBD’s traveling gear consists of a large zebra-print suitcase, with accompanying roller bag. Due to the vast number of outfit changes, and shoes of course, required for the week-long pageant, additional carrying bags are required. And the only thing that would suffice was my oversized case one normally uses to ship golf bags and clubs.

Let us picture this for a moment. The LBD is dressed to the nines with the appropriate traveling accessories, plus a very large golf bag carrier, and arrives at the Atlanta airport. At least the golf bag was black. To her credit, she has weighed each bag down to the gram and each fall under the dreaded 50-pound limit. This is important because otherwise they charge you an extra $90.

Here, moral support and the best medication is all you visit my foea.org cialis on line australia need to get back your lost power. Physical factors like chronicillness best cialis prices affect your sexual life. Therefore, it is one of the best herbal supplements available in the levitra 40 mg http://foea.org/about/publications/ online market. The PDE5 enzyme disallows the tadalafil online no prescription blood delivery from reaching at the male sex organ. As an aside, remember when you could check three or four bags for free? Now, your first bag is free IF you use said airline’s credit card. Somehow they have us thinking they are doing us a favor.

Anyway, all goes well throughout the week and The Dress packs up and heads to the Tulsa airport. Unfortunately, it appears The Dress has picked up a “few things” in Tulsa. And if you said shoes, step up and claim your prize. So here she is at the airport with a very large zebra-striped bag, the accompanying zebra-print roller bag, the large black golf bag carrier and her purse.

And the large zebra-print bag weighs in at 58 pounds. Now the very nice ticket agent tries to help The Dress figure how to rearrange everything so she doesn’t hit the weight limit. This means The Dress opens up her bags in front of the entire ticket line and starts removing items while the suitcase sits on the scale. She discovered that one pair of shoes alone weighed two pounds.

Another agent comes from the bag, surveys the scene and starts to laugh. He even starts taking pictures with his camera phone. Do not give him too hard a time, because other passengers in line, in between taking their own photos and laughing, are trying to help The Dress out as well.

Eventually, if I have this right, the big zebra-print gets to 50 pounds. However, this involved using yet another “shopping” bag to put in various new shoes and of course a new purse. So now we have all the aforementioned items plus another large shopping bag. She somehow actually gets through security. However, at the gate they tell her the zebra rolling bag will have to be checked at the gate. So she pulls all her jewelry and other items out of that bag, puts the shoes in the rolling bag and yes, this is all done in front of everyone waiting to board.

Fast forward to the Atlanta airport. And let us recap to make sure we have everything at baggage claim, namely, a large zebra-print bag, an even larger golf bag carrier, a zebra rolling bag, another shopping bag and the oversized purse. The question remains, how to get said safari gear to the curbside.

Being The Dress, she is not without help for long. Stewart and Tyler, who worked in the baggage area, soon came to her rescue and got her “items” to the curb. And so we have several people from different states to thank for getting The Dress and The Shoes home safe.

And for those dying to know whether I did in fact pick out the right faucets as I wrote about last week in the column on the DIY project from hell, The Dress did indeed smile, thank you very much. A big risk on that one, but a win is a win.