Roman ruin (and I'm in ruins)

Done before India. Unrelated to India. Them's the breaks.

He's mine, all mine!

We got home night before last and today I woke up with a head cold and sore throat. It doesn't help that it is again (still?) very cold and snowy, and I have to go out in it to do some errands. I'm procrastinating by blogging, you see.

I just have to kvetch some. Don't read the following if you don't want to hear my personal pity party:

The trip home was utterly miserable. Beyond miserable. In order to get home, the following was required, sequentially:

1 hour taxi to Hyderabad airport

3 hours wait in Hyderabad airport

9.5 hours flight to Frankfurt

3 hours wait in Frankfurt airport

plus 1 hour delay

plus 1 more hour delay in plane on tarmac

9.5 hours flight to Denver

1.5 hours wait in Denver airport, including new extra-belligerent security measures

1.5 hours bus to Boulder station

taxi ride to house

I am sooooo wrecked. To make matters worse, I injured my back in India about a week before we left, what apparently may be a "torn annulus" (a disc problem). Sitting hurts it, a lot. Do you think I had to do any sitting on the journey home?! I went to a doctor in India a few days before leaving, concerned because I was going to have to sit so much to get back to the U.S., and he pretty much steepled his fingers, looked thoughtful, and then asked me what I was going to do about it.

Right.

(He did prescribe me a muscle relaxant, one of which I tried the day before we left to see if it would help. It put me into such an awful state--like what I've read as a bad drug trip--near-hallucinations, depression, and lethargy--that the minute I got my head straight again, I promptly threw the rest into the trash.)

The final flight (Denver to Frankfurt) had to be the worst ever in my long history of flying. We were of course in "sardine class," and to my great horror, not one, not two, but three (bad luck comes in threes, no?) toddlers were seated directly behind us. Imagine three toddlers on their very worst, loudest behavior...for nine and a half hours. I had earplugs in and then special earphones over that, to absolutely no avail. Due to the delay in Frankfurt, I finished my last book (note to self: never let that happen again) and all the magazines on the plane were in German. (Oh, and did I mention that the man in front of me was very large and with his seat reclined, I didn't even have room to put my tray table down. Oh, and that Delhi belly had finally caught up to me about 3 days before we left.) Oh well, I thought, make the best of it, watch whatever stupid movies are available on my little individual movie screen on the seat back in front of me. Fifteen minutes into my first movie, both my screen and The Husband's (next to me) died. On the entire plane, only ours died. Every seat on the flight was full. The flight attendant did everything he could but could not revive our screens. "It's just plain cruel," he acknowledged sympathetically, and later presented us each with a small bottle of in-flight red wine, each housed, sausage-like, in one of those horrible synthetic navy-blue airline socks. It was quite surreal.

I'm very glad to be home and with my fur babies again. If I go brave the outside now to go walk them and then go to the store to restock their dog food, perhaps they'll pay me back by keeping me warm the rest of the day.

$115.00 - Roman ruin (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com