Chicas of Faith 2008 - Gotta Get To GGG

Well.......good, bad or ugly~ here we go.

GGG and I had had the BRILLIANT idea that we would road trip all the way to Philadelphia seeing as how we could not find reasonably priced plane tickets and we needed some catching up time. What's 25 hours in the car?? Somehow that morphed into ME driving 6 hours to HER house 2 days before Chicas and us jumping a plane together the day before Chicas. All well and good. I attended PWOC on Tuesday the 7th and then headed off to her house. I had a lovely trip. Stopped twice. Once to visit Walmart's facilities, and once to purchase petrol.
Once I got there, I met the new children she adopted. In between the time that she moved away from me a couple of years ago, and the day that I arrived back at her house - she had sold HER children and replaced them with ones that were grown up! They used words and drew pictures and ATE WITH FORKS. What on EARTH? I'm still reeling from the betrayal of it all. These new children hugged me as though they knew me. Must've been pre-conditioning from GGG. No other explanation.
THEN - they all treated me to the OG. That's right! Olive Garden. Never-ending-pasta-bowl baby! Thank you God's Guitar Girl and impostor babies. During dinner we fell right into a groove of chatting and laughing and just being together. Plus the boy of the adopted pair kept asking me funny 3 year old questions. And Lil' G was just a charming young lady. We stayed up way too late talking and musing and dreaming.
The morning of the 8th was so nice and leisurely! Our plane did not leave out of Austin until after 1pm so we (we being me) slept in until we (we being I) felt like it. And made our way to the Austin area where we ran an errand and headed for the airport.
We were SO stinking excited to get to meet Jenster InRealLife, as she was picking us up and putting us up. Or, maybe putting up with us is a better description. Because we were so distracty we did not pay attention to what we were reading on our boarding passes. So, here I am, using the airport facilities and I hear GGG yelling, "S4J(name changed to protect the lame)! GET OFF THE TOILET! THEY ARE CALLING US TO BOARD THE PLANE!!" People, we nearly missed our plane to certain adventure because we had to potty! We were flying Southwest airlines, and if you don't know what that means, it means that you don't have assigned seats. You get what you get. And because we were the last people on the plane, what we got was a whole lot of middle seats that were taken by purses. We went all the way to the back of the plane and all the way to the front of the plane before braving up and asking one of the purses to move over. I got to sit between the two polar ice caps, and you'll have to read GGG's description to hear about who she sat next to. You can be sure it wasn't me. I tell you, the lady who the purse belonged to was T-I-C-K-E-D that her purse had to give up its seat to someone who breathed and paid.
I started praying! Lord, let me be Your light. All I want to do is be mean right back. Take over HS...get to it Man! I pasted a huge smile on my face, and started passing notes back to GGG. At some point I wrote something about how I was not going to hide my light under a bushel, NO - I was going to let it shine!! So, I asked random questions to the lady, "Are you visiting Philadelphia?"
She replied, "NO. We are going to PROVIDENCE." And looked quickly out the window.
Me, "Oh! How nice!*smile smile* I've never been to Rhode Island!"
She, *yelling across me* "Tommy! Do you want a SNACK?"
He, *shakes head no, looking embarrassed*
She, *yelling across me* "Tommy! Do you want me to tell you when it is time to shoot up??"
He, *shakes head no, looking more embarrassed*
I'm passing notes with GGG ~ something like, "I think this is going well. I think the polar ice caps are starting to melt."
Anyway, the lady ~ Vera I think her name was ~ saw the little notebook I had taken my notepaper out of and asked, "Are you a member of PWOC?"
Me, "Why, yes!"
She, "I also am a member of PWOC."
Me, "No way!! Oh my goodness!!" *thinks to God, "Lord you are KA-RAYZEE"
Anyway ~ Me, Vera and Tommy chatted it up the rest of the flight. Chatted about serving on the board of PWOC, retirees and their place in PWOC, life in the military.... That's right! Turns out Tommy over there (who shoots up insulin and by the end of the flight had TWO women harassing him about snacking and testing his blood sugars and properly taking his injection) retired after 26 years in the Air Force. What do you know? Then he retired from another company, and then if I remember correctly - another one.
We talked about different places we have lived, their collection of over 300 Christmas village buildings of which Vera and Tommy disagree about the placement of such so Vera has solved the problem by inviting her local friends over for tea and decorating. Tommy will have to be satisfied to cut the tomatoes and cucumbers from his garden. Vera's favorite assignment was Spain.
We landed in Philadelphia and started discussing how we would recognize Jenster seeing as how we had never actually met her InRealLife, yet we were accepting her invitation to sleep over. Judge away. I can't care. We realized that we had no idea who we were looking for. (The only picture I remembered seeing of her, she had no hair)......