MUSINGS ON MIDLIFE'S MISADVENTURES: Am I jinxed?

Am I the only one who CANNOT travel by plane, hassle free?  Or at least without major incidence? My darling daughter says I have the ABSOLUTE worst track record when it comes to flying.

In light of that comment, and my latest adventure, I decided to go back and review some of my flights over the last four years.  I certainly have had m-o-r-e than my share of hassles.

Returning from Texas last June, I missed my connection, due to sitting on the tarmac in Chicago for an hour. The plane that is, with me in it. So, I was stuck in  Montreal for seven hours.

Upon returning from Spain, I found out my connecting flight home was cancelled due to bad weather. I was stuck TWO days then.  Where? Where else?  Montreal.

Returning from Edmonton one Christmas, the plane circled an hour overhead, waiting for the ceiling to lift. If we hadn't been able to land, I would have ended up in Sept Îles for heaven's sake. I guess there wouldn't have been enough fuel to get back to Montreal. LOL

My recent return flight coming back from Edmonton, was cancelled, again due to bad weather. In September!  Not wanting to spend another 24 hours plus in MONTREAL (you guessed it!), I got myself re-booked to the nearest airport, more than a two and a half hour drive away.

I am thinking the only reason I made it home from Costa Rica in March, is because Hermanita, my little sister, was with me. As it were, we had sat an hour on the tarmac in San José, while they fixed the air conditioning. So we had less than an hour to go through customs and security, and make our connection.  It was an AMAZING RACE dash. Had I been alone, dollars to donuts, I would have gotten stuck in M-O-N-T-R-E-A-L, AGAIN!!!

I seem to have all my problems on the inbound, and NOT the outbound. I can get OUT OF DODGE, fairly well, but I have THE HARDEST time getting BACK.  Is there a message in there for me?
I know... I know! Stop trying to get home to an airport without radar. That is to say... BATHURST, NB.

IS AGE A QUESTION ... of mind over matter...?

SO if you don't MIND your age, it doesn't matter apparently?

Well, it does matter when you...

...wear your yoga pants inside out, to class. A week later, you not only put your yoga pants back on inside out, BUT you put them on BACKWARDS as well! THAT one I caught before I went out the door.  NOT the former.

...forget you have chicken roasting in the oven. The timer goes off; you intend to go check right away, but get sidetracked by work you are doing on your laptop. You don't have a strong sense of smell, so you don't actually smell the burning until you finally get to the kitchen and then the ALARM goes off in your head. The ONE in the kitchen hadn't gone off yet. Thankfully, the bottom of the roaster was well done, but the chicken was edible.  A good friend tells you she has done pretty much the same thing, so then you don't feel so stupid. You put it down to "multi-tasking."  We WOMEN do that SO well, don't we?

...follow your sister to her cottage, some 10 kilometres up the road from the meet-up point,  only to realize half way there, that the license plate of the car ahead of you looks like it is from Québec. Should be NB. You think your eyes are playing tricks, but you still keep following the car until it turns into someone's drivway in a small street, NO WHERE near the lake. OOPS!  You manage to make it to the lake by yourself, and your sister rolls in five minutes later. Why is she late? She was behind you, because she doubled back to your starting point, watching and waiting for you there.   Meanwhile, yours truly had been following another car. Duh!  Plus you have the temerity to try to tell her, AT FIRST, that she was going too FAST! How is that possible, when she was behind you????

...ask a friend someone's last name, and five minutes later, you ask them the SAME question!

 ... despite reading the recipe three times, add a half teaspoon of baking soda instead of baking powder to a small,  two serving birthday cake, and serve it to your friend Nancy, for her 61st birthday. YUCK! She was too polite to make any negative comment, but you whip up another one in no time and enjoy THAT Mud Cake Brownie, lighting up the only two birthday candles you have, showing 83 OR 38 years of age!

... NOT remembering your recent canoeing adventure where you left your keys at the WRONG place, (NOUNOUNE!) you start to walk away from your locked up car at 4:00 am in the morning at the airport, WITH your keys IN hand.  SUDDENLY a light bulb flicks on in your head AND you remember that you are SUPPOSED to lock the keys INSIDE, so that the one who calls you NOUNOUNE, can come by and pick up your car later on. DUH!!!!

CONVERSELY, it does NOT MATTER when you...

roll out of bed every morning, not too much hurts in your aging body, and you are ready and raring to face another day.

Why is it that...

ten minutes before I leave for an overnight visit to family, and I am rushing to get Vimy to the kennel, my eye glass frame BREAKS?  Just like that. Not reparable.  I never even SAT on them. Good job I had two old pair lying around the house.

the day before I leave for a ten day road trip, I blow a fuse in a daisy chain of five outlets in my living room?   It is Sunday. There is no electrician available. Baby Bro spends a good hour trying to find the source of the problem, with no luck, even with new fuses.  I gerrymander an extension from the TV/internet into an outlet in the kitchen, so that my Camino walking partner, who will be staying at my place, during a good part of my absence, can at least have WiFi AND watch TV.  I text her to watch out for the big, white ugly extension cord running through my living room.

when a friend calls you in the am, you are at ONE  bank. She calls you back in the pm, and once again you are at ANOTHER bank.  She makes a comment about my having lots of money, and I realize that while I  CERTAINLY don't, I have spent HOURS running around that day, trying to give money, and get money.  The hoops you have to jump through ... RIDICULOUS!  Est-ce que ça du bon sens?

that darn groundhog is back under my shed?  The cheeky little bugger doesn't even scurry away when I turn in the driveway!  So, back to last year's remedy... collecting you-know-what and dousing his lair.  With any luck, he will end up moving under my neighbour's garage, like he did last year. :)

You can just see his F*A*T, brown rear end poking out in the middle of the photo.

I am not called "Nounoune" for nothing!

It is a gorgeous end of summer Sunday, and TT, my trekking buddy and I, decide to go canoeing.  We drop off Jiminy Cricket just above Pabineau Falls, and drive his truck to Anaconda Mines road, to put the canoe in there.

We have a SUPERB afternoon on the river... absolutely perfect! Bald eagles soar above us, salmon jump and splash near us. We  ride small rapids and shoals, and stop for a picnic lunch on a beautiful plateau of rocks full of sparkling quartz, where I try without much success, to build an Inukshuk, while TT looks for gold. :)

We are about three quarters of the way downriver, when TT asks me where my car keys are. I KNOW as soon as the words are out of MY mouth, that they are NOT the right ones.  I left them in the truck, of course!  I only have one set, and I instinctively thought, "I can't afford to lose my keys on the river, so I will leave them in the truck."  TOTALLY forgetting, of course, that we needed MY keys to get into Jiminy and take TT back UP river to get his truck.

In MY defense, although YES, I was a total ditz, I H..A..D told TT I was leaving my keys and my cell in his truck, when we put in upriver.  Did he listen? NO! Typical male.

To his credit, and probably because he is SUCH a great canoeist and outdoors man, he just laughed, and continued to laugh all the way down to where my car was. Attempting to make amends for what was really MY blunder totally, I insisted he call now and not wait, for someone to come to our aid. His wonderful son-in-law did, and arrived at my car at the exact same time we pulled in off the river.

I must add that I was NOT the only Nounoune here.  A colleague of mine was canoeing with her husband, and friends, and there sat the two husbands, waiting for her to come back with keys.  When she got back, I smiled and said, "I am OLD, what is your excuse?"  A quizzical look and the reply "Baby Brain?", since she has two young children, made us both laugh. We hugged and agreed that we had had even MORE time outside on this glorious day, SO... forgetting our keys was NOT such a bad thing.  Wouldn't you agree?

PS:  Definition of "nounoune?" Woman who behaves stupidly!

FULL CIRCLE , FACTS AND FIRSTS!

Well... LL and I wrapped up our Thelma and Louise road trip, clocking in at 3330.03 KM driven together.   Add on another 450 km for me and 900 km for her, to get to our meet-up place at my sister's, and you see, we did a LOT of driving. Or I should say, Linda did all the driving. I drove about thirty km ALL TOLD. The minute I stepped on the gas, to pass a transport truck near Cornwall, and Linda grabbed the door handle, I KNEW my time at the wheel was VERY limited. I didn't mind... I don't particularly like driving. :) She does!  She is a phenomenal driver too.  Even if someone did give her the finger, and another truck driver mouthed the F word at her.

Linda met F-I-V-E of my cousins.  When she told me my family was phenomenal, (our new word instead of awesome), I told her that she had only met roughly one-twentieth of my cousins.  You see, my mother is from a family of sixteen children, and my father, thirteen children.  I have OVER NINETY first cousins. I could do the same trip again, and visit cousins in Toronto, Montreal, Québec, Trois-Rivières, Ottawa and heaven only knows where else, because I don't know where they ALL are now.  I know that I would be treated like royalty ALL OVER AGAIN.  They would all be like Jeannine, Hélène, Annette, Monique and Michelle... wonderful!!

Of course, LL and I had to end our trip with an another adventure, wouldn't you know it?

After a long day's drive from Farnham, QC to Edmundston, you would think we would have been content to stay at my sister's and chill. RIGHT? WRONG!  LL, aka Imelda Marcos, wanted to cross over to Maine to go check out the shoes at Mardens. We took my car, since it had nothing in it.  We go across and of course, we were pulled right over, and made to wait fifteen minutes while Jiminy Cricket was searched.  WHY?   There could have been many reasons, but when you ask, border security always says the same thing, "It is random."  POPPYCOCK! I think they were into green cars that day, because the one ahead pulled over as well, was bright green. Or could it have been because we were three women, from three different cities, and LL had a Nexus card with her OLD address on it?  Now normally, in a situation totally silly like this one, I would just go into fits of giggling.   WELL... you don't do that in the US Customs office where you are being detained. No way, José!  Anyway, it was TOTALLY annoying, but heck... it was a slow day I guess.

We spend ALL of thirty minutes shopping at Mardens. Does LL buy shoes?  No, I do.  Me, who hates SHOPPING,  and only went along for the ride, bought a $4.58 pair of water shoes. Hermanita doesn't buy anything either.

I do gas up, and then we are back across on the Canadian side... where... we were PULLED OVER again, and Jiminy Cricket was searched again.  Now both Hermanita and I say to LL, "Get a PASSPORT!"  We have to blame someone, geez, for the fact that in less than forty-five minutes, we were DETAINED on BOTH sides of the border. THIS, we all determined, had NEVER happened to any of us before, EVER,  colline de bine!!!  All three of us have lived in border communities for over fifteen years, and so crossed over fairly frequently.  How could they possibly think that three boomers would have anything undeclared? They may have thought we were drug runners? LOL  Another first to add to my list.

OUR frustration disappeared after we wrapped up the evening,  indulging in wine and Pizza Delight's Big Crave pizza, on Hermanita's deck.

We had to finish our road trip with a bang, I guess. This bang was the LEAST harmful.

LL and I have M=A=N=Y wonderful memories of our ten day road trip - but best of all, we are still friends, and Vimy still loves me.