Back At It

Sorry for the update delay.  I haven't felt like doing anything.  You'd think that sitting around or lying around for several days would give you time to type on the computer, but I didn't feel like that either.

Saturday I launched in the T-6 for the flyover with John S. in Huntington for their Veteran's Day parade.  I got to the rendezvous point first, so I started messing around, swooping, diving, wing-overs, just fooling around over the lake.  Pretty soon I heard on the discrete radio frequency "Hey Laura.  I'm less than two miles to the north, got you in sight.  Looks like you're having some fun over there."  So I come out of a dive, swing to the right, see him over there, say "I've got you", and swing around and come in for a rejoin on him.  He nods at me when I'm off his wing tip, and we fly around for a few minutes together to practice before heading in for the parade.  We did probably 7 passes in total, including some steeper turns, a dogfighting thing, a wing-abreast thing, and several normal ones.  It was actually pretty fun.  When we split up he said "That was some nice flying".  I said thanks, and headed back to home base, put the plane away, came home and crashed on the couch (my chair really), and haven't moved hardly off of it in 3 days as I've felt like crap ever since.  I've avoided the codeine cough syrup so far, the Delsym and some of Kaylee's former Tesslon Pearls have held me off thus far.  I think I'm on the upside of it.  I'd go back to work tomorrow, but I have nobody scheduled to fly anyway.  I will probably attempt to make lunch for the first time since last Thursday though.  :)

Steve is feeling better, worked all day today, isn't home yet.  He's still coughing, so I hope he's doing okay.

Kaylee went to a Sadie Robertson (from Duck Dynasty) concert/talk at the church with some friends, had a good time and enjoyed herself there.  Her English/Literature class read "The Scarlet Letter".  So her teacher had them do an exercise where they each had to pick a letter to represent something about themselves.  She didn't want them to do sins, for obvious reasons, so just told them to pick something that defines them or expresses them.  So kids did "T" for "Travel", "S" for "Sleep", "P" for "Photography", etc.  What did Kaylee do?  "C" for "Color Deficient".  She painted her giant "C" with a blue paint that truly looks grey to her but blue to the rest of us, got some googly eyes to put on it, printed out a couple of the color charts with numbers that she can't see, and walked around wearing that letter all day.  She said everybody loved it, it cracked them up.  She came home from school today, kicked off her shoes, climbed up on my chair with me, pulled the fuzzy blanket up to her neck, and promptly fell asleep for an hour and a half. I like having her there...

I can tell I've been sick because shows I was watching hit home.  "This Is Us" had what I thought was a really good episode about people in positions to grant other people a chance, against their better judgement, against all odds, and those chances completely changed the lives of a whole host of people, for the best.  One small decision, one small chance, meaning the world.  The other was, believe it or not, "Walking Dead".  It was a good one, but the part that got me was when the "king" was talking to one of the other leaders and was telling her how in the old days he was a zoo keeper, and a large tiger was in distress, and he had to make a choice between helping something and safety, and he chose to be the man who survived.  But that today, today he deliberated, thought, weighed it, and flat made the choice to be brave, he made the choice to stand up and fight, at all costs, that he had to be the man who was strong.  He asked her if she was always as brave as she was now, or if she'd made a choice too, and she said "Like you, I chose."  That's the truth.  You do choose.  I have had a couple of moments in life where I distinctly remember making that choice.  I remember the first time I chose to stand and fight back when other people were hiding and running, because looking at them hiding disgusted me and I decided I couldn't be that person.  When I was deciding that, there was one other person standing up, a tiny little person half my size.  Sometimes courage is contagious, too.  You see it in the SMA world a lot.  People there sort of have the right to fall apart.  But they see others who are strong, who show courage and grace, and it gives them courage too.  People can be amazing.  I feel less strong than I used to be--must be that part of getting older where you get more tired.  Or you lose some of the fire.  Something.  Or maybe it just fluctuates and comes back again later.  I kind of hope so. ;)

Time to get back into life, hopefully with less coughing than the previous days...