Vacation's End - CA here I come!

Today, I got to shepherd two Things back to CA all by my lonesome. They were very good, which was appreciated, especially due to my high stress level.

When I took Sweetie to the airport, it took about 40 minutes. But today, we got on I-4 and it was a parking lot. (Beach traffic? It's Saturday for god's sake.) I hadn't left enough time for I-4 to be a parking lot, so I scrambled about with the GPS and found an alternate route. I think we got on 417 to the FL turnpike to 528. It was much emptier that way, but I still didn't have time to fill up the rental before turning it in.

Entering the airport I saw that American only had something like 4 check-in spots open, and the line was ridiculous. We stood there for about 10 minutes (with the line not moving) when someone came out and said, "Anyone for LA?". Off we went to the front of the line. Ten minutes later we were in a huge line for security. My stress level was still pretty high. But we did make the flight. We even had a chance to pick up some food before we boarded. Tasty, expensive airport fast food. Mmmmm.

Like I said, the Things were excellent. No whining at all during the entire stressful journey to the plane. They've both reached ages where that's possible, thank goodness. The movie on the plane was How to Train Your Dragon, which is funny and entertaining, although the Things had seen it before. They continued their good behavior all the way to the apartment in SP.

At that point, everyone collapsed into a heap. A successful vacation. We have a day of shopping ahead of us, and then Calvin goes off to sleep-away camp for two weeks. Hobbes will be awfully lonely. About the time Calvin is back from camp, Sweetie will not only be back from the cruise, but done with the class, and then it's just a few weeks until school starts, and life returns to normal.

Or at least as normal as life ever is around here.