Story of the Day 7/ 19/ 2012 - part 2

We are at the airport.
Again.

LaGuardia, where we are hoping to embark on a slightly less adventurous leg of our trip.

We have successfully been strip searched.
Okay, not really, but we were patted down ..and by patted down I do mean very thoroughly, enough that if I was someone else I might have been embarrassed. Certainly, the only person who normally touches me in those places is my husband.

We are patted down because the tall deaf teenager with the auburn curls and her chubby middle aged mother with the flowered dress and 3 containers of high spf sunscreen seem suspicious.
But they don't find any drugs.
Other than the three bags (quart sized) of our allergy and my arthritis medications.

I buy coffee.
I buy Sarah breakfast.
I pay some cash, because the breakfast vouchers won't do it.
The milk is bad.
Sarah can't drink it.
I buy a bottle of orange juice and an orange.
That uses up one of the lunch vouchers. Of course, we are hoping to be out of here before lunchtime.

We make our way to our gate.
It is busy. Lots of passengers with tickets and lots of passengers on stand by.
We sit farther away at some laptop and tablet desks, and spread our food out on the mini desk.
There are two women next to us, each at her own little desk.
They are chatting.
They say hello.
One is a young woman from Florida. She is on her way to visit her fiancé in Maine before he ships out.
He is in the military.
She has an airline blanket over her shoulders. She has spent last night at the airport. Luckily, she was in a part that had working air-conditioning.
I give her the other lunch voucher and warn her that everything costs a fortune.
She has already eaten her emergency rations.
I tell Sarah this, and she is stunned that seemingly normal person would do the same thing that her obviously abnormal mother would do.

She tells us that she has deaf cousins, two of them and she knows a tiny bit of sign language, but she is too embarrassed to use it with Sarah.

She is hungry and goes off with the voucher in hand.. She has left her carryon with us and the other lady. We seem to look more trustworthy to her than we to the airport security people.

On the other hand, she is under slept.

She is back in a few minutes.
She has gotten for herself a croissant and a cup of coffee with the voucher and comes back and eats it at the mini desk.
I give her the orange, when she gets back. A croissant isn't enough.

The other lady is from Maine and headed home.
She looks at Sarah and asks me if we have ever been to Maine. She think Sarah looks familiar.
I tell her we have not.
Maybe Sarah has a doppleganger there. Apparently, a deaf one.
Either that or this women is even more underslept than the rest of us.

An hour later, we are boarding the plane and I have texted the man who was supposed to pick us up in Rochetser.
Yesterday.
And who is busy, today, but locating someone who will.
Hopefully, they will not be driving black Lincoln Town car that is really a blue minivan.